Klaus Kleinfeld, the former CEO of Siemens and Alcoa and the only leader to have successfully served as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies on different continents, recalls going to work at age 12, and covers the perils of sign language in the business world, getting close to the source of an issue, why we should be talking about energy instead of productivity, the "rule of feedback", the 5 critical components of a high performance team, why purpose is a laser, and being a "hypothesis generating machine".

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Nashville Tennessee. Okay, that's very

nice.

Where in Germany? Did you grow up again? Or was

it...

I was born in Bremen, but I left when I was

18, and my parents were refugees from East Germany. Currently,

I'm outside of New York.

Well, uh, ich bin ein actor Berliner.

Oh wunderbar, let's start with that. So, how

come you speak German?

Both my parents were opera singers, and they're

us, born in the US, but they live 14 years in Bonn and

Cologne.

And they performed there at the.... does

cologne. Cologne has an opera house?

It does, yeah, yeah. My dad performed locally

at the Cologne Opera House. Bond had an opera house still does.

And my mom performed there, and then she, she had an

international career after that, and performed all over.

I love opera. I'm also on the Metropolitan

Opera board, you know, so I just love it. Yeah, lovely,

absolutely lovely. And bond at the time probably still was the

capital of Germany, right?

Yes, yeah. My dad and mom would sometimes perform

in Berlin during that period. And the way they were paid was,

it was always interesting, and you always wondered if your pay

would would make it back across to the other side.

What were they paid with gold coins? It's

interesting, yeah. I mean, I went to Nuremberg, or my first

place of work. Then from Nuremberg, I went to

Switzerland, you know, worked there in the pharmaceutical

industry, back to Munich, and there I started my career with

Siemens, you know. And then Siemens moved me to to Erlangen.

And then from Erlangen, I was asked to go to New York, then I

was asked to come back to Munich. And then after that, I

decided to leave Siemens, and I came back to New York. And when

I co headquarter was in New York, you know, so which most

people don't know, because the presence was usually in

Pittsburgh.

You know, when you were a young man, though, did

you did you already envision this, this path towards

administrative leadership of of major companies? Or were you in

it for the details of the science?

And yeah, so no, I did not. I did not imagine

that. In fact, I enjoyed learning. I mean, I've always

been curious and wanted to want to learn more. I enjoyed being

in the outdoors, doing stuff I only later realized I was forced

into working when I was 12. Was my first paying job, you know,

because my father died. So when I was so, so little, you know,

but I enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoyed working in core

business. You know, for me, it was making money, but it's also

something that I I started to really like, you know, making

things, doing things, you know, so to be I always enjoy being

with people, and I also enjoyed complicated problems, you know.

So in the early days, I would have thought I stay in academia

and and make an academic career, because I saw what some of my

friends who studied with me, when who went into business,

what type of jobs they had. And I thought that I wasn't

interested in that, you know.

And so, I mean, 12 I just, I gotta spend a minute

on this, and then we can, what could a 12 year old do?

Well, first of all, it's illegal to employ a 12

year old, you know. But, but, but the local supermarket, first

of all, I was fortunately relatively tall at a young age

already, so they never asked me for a passport, you know. So

they, they needed somebody who refills the the racks, you know,

and and ideally comes in early in the morning, and changes also

the fresh goods, milk and stuff, you know, before the supermarket

opens, and be there on the weekends, you know, and where

there was a lot of traffic, you know. So, so I did that, and

they paid me two Deutsche marks an hour. Made my first money.

The motive was very simple. I wanted a new bike, for instance.

So things like, things I want to does a 12 year old one, you

know, you want a nice bike. And very early on, then also, I

started to love music. So then it became records, you know, I

was very intrigued by this thing that had just gotten started,

called software as as a as a individual, there was no way you

could have a computer. It didn't exist, you know, even the the

thought of it was insane, you know. So I wanted to, I wanted

to get my hands on a computer and do programming. And at

gutting, there were only two locations where I could program.

One was where the physics. Department. And the other one

was with the economics department, you know. And I

decided to start with the economics department, you know.

And and immediately got into software writing, which I

enjoyed tremendously.

You speak to this a little bit in your book. And

maybe this is a good opportunity to take, take a principle out of

the story, your ability to or one's ability to untangle a

problem. It's a good visual image because they're like nuts

in business, and the knots are sometimes created because of a

communication issue. Sometimes they're created because of a

strategy issue, but what was a procedure that you found most

helped you untangle the knots in business?

Asking questions. I think, I think that

I don't think I was shy asking questions and and I even today,

and I think friends who have worked with me, and what, even

those who are not friends who've worked with me, would say,

closes a hypothesis generating machine, you know, because I

always try to verify or falsify and find, find a course and, and

I'd like to drill down to the bottom, you know, to really

understand how the mechanics work. Because that did me also

well, already in school, you know, when you understand the

principle, then you don't have to learn much, you know, you can

deduct everything from the principle. And in a way that

helped me a lot, you know, because I also had to be very

efficient with my time, because I had to do other things like

work, you know, where other people could spend the time

doing homework or whatever, you know, I use logic, you know. So

that's the one thing that you can't have fault, you know. So

I, first of all, I'm I don't think there is such a thing than

a than a wrong question. And also, you also have to remind

people that they should talk to you in non expert language,

because way too often have I seen that expert language is a

way to hide behind and very often, certain terms that have

been coined in the expert world describe the phenomena,

phenomenon in a limiting way. I mean, language is a limiting

thing. That's one of the reasons why you see there are large

differences in languages, like, for instance, the Australian

aborigines when they describe the different kinds of red, you

know, because they live in an environment, if you ever been in

Australia and fly over it, it's red. The same with the Eskimos.

They have gazillions of words for snow, whereas we say it's

snowing and the snow is a snow there. Yes, you know. So. So I

always believe that you have to be careful in in accepting this

terminology, because it might actually prevent you from

finding the real issue. So I asked them to explain it to me

in plain language, and I would continue if they use terms, I

would not be shy to say, Can you please explain how you use the

term? What does that term mean? Then, then you get it, you know.

And very often people then say, word classes is complicated,

because if somebody tells me it's complicated, I mean, but

first I would say, we're in a very friendly way, yes, please

explain. I have time, you know. Because that's the other thing

that they would say, oh, takes too much time, you know. And

say, no, no, I have all the time. I want to understand. What

is this, you know? Why don't you explain it? You know? But very

often, you see very quickly that they can't explain it, then you

find, then very often, flaws in the logic. The moment you have

flaws in the logic, you say, why did that individual, who's

supposedly the expert and not not ask these questions? Maybe I

have to get some other people looking into this. Or maybe I

have to drill even further here.

You know, this brings it to mind another

question where I feel that this strength of yours played out,

which is that there's, there's really only been, I think

yourself, that's, that's Captain multiple companies at the CEO

level on different continents that are in the Fortune 500

right? There's two companies that you've led as a CEO on two

different continents, and that really hasn't been done before,

and one was US based, and one was German. So, you know, I

think about the cultural and language differences between two

different countries, what did you find from a leadership

standpoint, as how you had to adapt?

Yeah, I think that, yes, there are a lot of

differences, but the fundamentals are similar. You

know, because we all as human beings have some fundamental

principles that we live by. How we interpret certain things is

different, you know, but get the fundamentals is, everybody wants

respect. And I mean respect comes to simple things,

listening to somebody, you know, asking, you know, their opinion,

you know, being thankful when, when they do something. So these

type of behaviors are, I think, unilateral, all around the

world. You have to learn, you know, what, what exactly what

means. You know, certainly the most tricky thing is sign

language, very I would advise everybody to be very, very

cautious on this, you know, very carefully. Can get you into real

trouble if you think that you know the sign language and

suddenly realize it means something not so nice to their

sign word, you know. But those are little things. Those are

little things you know, that you learn. And overall, I think the

commonalities, particularly when it comes to leading people, are

bigger than the differences. One other principle is that I always

try to go as close to the source where the issue originated.

Because you very often you have filter processes. I mean, the

higher you get, the more filter theoretical filter processes you

have, and to really understand what is going on, you know. I

mean, I would always go to the source, you know, and literally,

to the person who is standing at at the machine, you know, where

something is going wrong, and understanding what exactly are

you observing that gets lost in translation, you know. I mean at

a certain level you I mean, you don't even talk to a head of the

to the head of the factory anymore. You talk to the

division head, you want to make sure that you really, really go

down to the core.

It very rarely is, is someone's life just pure

accelerated growth. There's plateaus, there's down curves,

because you've had such extraordinary success, not just

in arriving in leadership at a company, but helping companies

really scale and grow. What have been some of those plateau

moments that presented real challenges for you personally?

The first kind of wake up call shock was when

my father died and I was 10, you know, and basically life, our

life, my life, became a very different life then, because it

made me ask a lot of very fundamental questions. You know,

the next one, the next biggest one, was when, after 20 years,

you know, 20 plus years, I decided to leave Siemens

because, I mean, obviously after 20 years, you have a lot of

friends there, you have a lot of memories, you know, you feel at

home. But I decided to that's not that the environment was

just not worth for me to stay on, you know. And I move very

difficult, very, very difficult, you know. And then there's a ton

of others, you know, when you when you have to restructure a

certain and you you know that that how many families are

affected by it. And you know, at the same time, if you don't do

it, you'll risk that everybody will get affected by it. I mean,

so by making that you can at least save the core, I hope that

you can save the core, and you can never be certain you know

whether it works out or not. So you you've done the best you

can, you've got all the facts together, and you hope that it

will work out after you've done your your best. And there's

really nobody who as a leader. There's really nobody who

carries the burden other than you, and at least that's my

that's been my view of leadership. You know, when I

when I take it on, I'm accountable and I live with the

consequences and I stand up for it.

Yeah. And you know, you, you mentioned quite a

bit around energy, you know, where it stems from, but also

how you can recognize which quadrant you're in in that

moment, one of those quadrants, I think you you've labeled as

the burnout quadrant. It's, what was it? Low Energy, and what was

the other variable?

Low energy and negative, you know, so, so

burnout is basically your toast, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's

an interesting one. Let me take a step back, you know, I've

always driven for efficiency, you know, because I also never

had time had to do stuff, you know. So I was always driving

for efficiency. I always thought it's willpower, good German

willpower, boom, boom, boom, plow through, you know. So until

one day, I realized it's all about energy and why? How did I

realize that? I realized it very straight. It came relatively

late in my leadership life, you know. So when I realized the

following phenomenon I saw around me, people really getting

burned out, you know? I also saw that not only older people, but

younger people got burned out, you know. And I thought, wow,

what is this? And then I love playing tennis. Wish I could

play better, but I love it, you know. And in the tennis world, I

saw another phenomenon. They got older and older and older the

top performers. So I was thinking, What on earth is going

on there? You know, in the end, it's all about performance,

whether you're in business or whether you're in tennis you

know, all about performance. How come that there's this

dichotomy, you know? So I started looking into it, you

know, as a curious person, you know, I want to learn more about

it, you know. How can a tennis player, you know, who has no

time to recover, really, you know, just 20 seconds between

the serves? How can they do that? And how can they do it at

such a late age. And I realized that in this whole high

performance scene, the concept of energy had been introduced,

and that they were not talking about time management or

whatever on the court. They were talking about, how do you

recharge, how do you keep your energy? How do you get

resilience? And then I started my own journey and trying to

figure out what is energy. What gives me energy? And I realized

it's the old thing of body, mind and soul. The body I understand,

you know, but then on the mind is basically mental and

emotional, and then on the spiritual side. Nobody even

talks about the spiritual sides, but those are the things there

are no more. Those are the things that give us energy, and

they can also drain energy. There's a flow in this, because

you burn in the morning, you get up, you have a full tank of

energy, typically, if you have slept relatively well, you know,

and then you burn it through. So, and there are a lot of

tricks, you know, that the high performance players have

learned, and leaders can learn the same thing. Leaders can

learn absolutely the same thing. So in the end, we are even more

high performance athletes, you know, then, then the tennis

players. Because the tennis player after the game or after a

tournament, they have a time where they can go somewhere

else. We are on 24 hours, or 25 hours, eight days a week. It

feels almost, you know. So that got me into this. And in regards

to the zones, it's relatively simple. You know, you want to be

in performance zone. You know, performance zone is where you

have high energy, positive, but then life happens, you know. So

what do you do? Panic, you know. So you immediately go into what

I call survival zone, by the high energy, but but negative,

you know. So what do you do now? What do you do now? You know,

you have to find a mechanism how you quickly get back into

performance zone. The first thing when you go into survival

zone. It's very good. And the human body is made for this,

because it's a flight or fight response. We get adrenaline. Our

focus goes like this. We get superpowers. The only thing is

that the superpower lasts for an hour, for two hours maximum, and

then you drop into burnout zone, so you have to very quickly get

back into performance zone. And what's the trick of this? You

know, there's a ton of tricks mental training, you know,

figuring out the situation, but you have to be aware of it. You

get back into it. So life is not I used to think. I thought life

is an ultra marathon. That's in reality, your life is sprints of

various distances, and recharge sprints and recharge and

recharge time. And the sprint time is not equally, equal time,

you know? It can be much, much less time today there, there is

a really simple way how you can figure it out for yourself, you

know. So, so, I mean, many of us have some type of tracker, you

know, so, and this tracker shows me my heart rate. The heart

rate, for me, is a super good indicator of whether you're

stressed or not. You know one. The second one is breathing. If

your breathing gets very shallow, very fast, you know,

then something is going on emotionally with you. The third

one is vision, you know, if your vision becomes a tunnel vision,

you know. You know, where you only see one thing, you know,

then you know something is going on that is not healthy over a

longer period of time. You know. So, so, so there are things that

you can learn how to observe yourself. And I would think that

it's very easy to learn. You know, I don't even have to look

at the watch, and I know exactly, roughly, exactly where,

where, where my heart rate is, you know. So because somehow you

you know your body, what, how the body feels, you know when,

when the heart rate is outside of the zone that you want it to

be in. It also requires a certain will to change. I mean,

certain will to first be confronted with the realities,

which, unfortunately, very often. I mean, we kind of know

that something is not right, but in the we don't want to hear it,

because it inflicts stress on us, you know, but at the same

time, then, if you are not brutally honest with yourself.

How often have you seen that people have certain strange

habits? You know?

That feedback loop; I've interviewed numbers

of executives and leaders, and it's kind of a common feedback

when you arrive at a higher level of leadership is that the

honesty from your team can diminish because there's less of

incentive directly to the person to be directly honest with their

superior, right? How would you go about moderating that risk

for those around you? Or how would you go about making sure

the feedback was honest, even if it's not always what you want to

hear?

By the way, this is one of the big

differences when I was asked to move into a leadership role here

in the US, for the first time, it's one of the big differences

between a German environment and a US environment the US. I mean,

if you as a CEO, start a conversation and want to want a

feedback from your team, it's very interesting. The the team

very often does not offer offer feedback. They ask you

questions. And I realize that the reason why in the US you

have that situation is simply because, in the US, if you want

to fire somebody, you know the person is gone, literally, in a

minute. And whereas in Europe and Germany, particularly, you

know, you can't fire the person you know you. Know, go through a

process, you know, because otherwise they sue you, you

know, and then talk with the unions. And so, in a way, the

perceived job security is, in this case, is a positive, a

positive enforcer of they are not, they are not afraid of

giving you feedback, even if the feedback is against what they

think you want to hear, you know, whereas here, there's more

an inclination to please, please the boss. So it's it requires a

little bit more of an effort. And I would always do it in a

one on one and say, may I ask you to give me feedback, you

know? And and the and learn the rule of feedback. And the rule

of feedback is you, you do not respond to what the person says.

Your response is simply, thank you for the feedback, and that's

it. If you draw a four by two by two, you know you basically you

say, what do you know about yourself and what do you not

know about yourself? And you have the second one, what do

others know about you? And what do others not know about you?

And the interesting thing, there is a an element there of

something that others know about you that you don't know. So what

you do with feedback? You open that window, and very often it's

these things that you you don't even you don't even realize you

know. You've adopted some practices, you've adopted some

language, you've adopted some some evidence you know that, or

dress you know so that people interpret in a certain way,

which was not your intention. And that's why it's so important

for learning. Just look at the Navy SEALs. I mean, they, after

mission was done, they would criticize what didn't go well,

you know. And then they separate the the feedback from the

person. They don't say you are an idiot. You didn't do, you

didn't didn't do, they will say, this went wrong. This went

wrong. It's clear whose accountability it is, you know,

but it's a mutual description of how can we get to better

performance. So brutal, honest feedback cultures are the

fastest learning organizations, as long as it comes with an

understanding this is not about you. This is about performance.

Yeah, so many good things here. Accountability

seems to be invited by top performers. So for you know, an

executive that might be listening what you know, where

they find there's sometimes accountability gaps for

themselves, right? How would you advise them to seek

accountability for themselves?

Yeah, I think in general, I believe, as we

just talked about feedback, I mean, you even in larger

organizations, to I would highly recommend that. And you can run

this multiple times of the year. It costs you nothing if you want

to have it, have a real finger on the pulse if, particularly if

you're going through transition phases, if you have made an

acquisition, you know, or you have a major transformation

going through, you know. So I would highly recommend that, on

a personal level, I think very often people also don't

understand why this is so important. And it comes down to

what makes a great team. You know, will you be able? How will

you be able to make a great team? And accountability is one

of those five things that are essential. You know, if you want

a high performance team, they are essential. And it starts

with trust. You know, that's that's the core. That's the

core. You have to have trust among your core team, you know.

Secondly, we talked about this, what I call conflict, you know,

is you have to be willing to live with conflict. By conflict

here, I mean, it's also very critical feedback, you know. So

which many people interpret that as conflict, you know, but

people have to have a capability of that commitment is, a big

thing, you know. And then accountability, you know, if

something goes wrong and you are committed and it's yours, it was

your work stream, you basically say, hey, look, I mean, I did

not do well in that moment, I will correct that. And last one

is basically the results. And that's also interesting me,

something that very often is not clear. You would not believe how

often I see when I ask mentors, CEOs, you know, and when I ask

CEOs who complain about that their team is not doing what

they think they're doing, and ask them, explain to me, what

exactly do you want? Do you want from them, you know? And

interestingly, I mean, then they go into a rant, you know, it has

to be crystal clear. What is, what does winning look like? The

moment you know what winning looks like, and you will you can

align the team around that's what winning looks like.

Wow, such a simple question to remember to ask your

team members to test.

By the way, we didn't talk about purpose on the

energy side. I miss that. I mean purposes, this thing on the

energy. It's a very interesting thing, because purpose does to

energy what laser does to light. You know, it basically focuses

the energy around one point. And as you see, light is diffuse,

you know, it's nice. You know, the moment it becomes a laser,

it can cut through large walls. It can. And do anything, and

that's like, that's what purpose does to energy the moment you

know what you want to achieve, what mission you want to do. You

know, all of your energy goes to this one point. Visioning is a

great exercise. And in my book, I have a long chapter on

purpose, because a simple concept, yet a complicated

concept, you know, it's a concept that the mankind has

struggled with as long as we exist.

What was your purpose? What was the purpose

that you landed on?

That's the other thing. I mean, my purpose

also changed, you know, my purpose changed. And, I mean,

and it's not just one purpose, it can be multiple purposes, you

know. So my purpose, clearly, has always been around. I want

to raise a lovely family and have a great relationships with

my children, you know. And want to have children, and want to

have a great relationship with my children and also the family

of my my wife, you know, and want to be a great husband at

the same time. I mean, when I've been running large organizations

or even small ones, you know, the purpose was, I want to make

this successful. And I want to help people excel in here. The

people element also was always there. Those have been constant

elements of of the of the purpose, you know. I mean, I

love it, I change it, or I leave it, you know. So I Yes, I needed

work originally, you know, for for making money, you know. But

I, even then, I lived by the principles, even then I

believed, you know, I want to get energy from it, and I want

to feel that it serves a good purpose for me.

So I love what you said, and this may, it's kind of

a great wrap up point. And if you've you've probably seen this

quote, but it's called the master in the art of living. In

this description, he says, the master and the art of living is

the person that makes it so hard to tell if he's working or

playing, because at the end of the day, he's always doing both.

I like that. Yeah, wonderful.

So many good lessons in here. Klaus, I know

we could probably go for another hour, but I'll stay to our time.

The book was wonderful to do an initial read through, and I'd

recommend it. Where can people find and follow your your future

wisdom outside of what you've authored?

I don't do much on social media. I do LinkedIn,

I mean, so my LinkedIn, LinkedIn profile, you find me on a Klaus

Kleinfeld, and I do write these things myself, and I do comment,

you comment also, and, yeah, so, and the book can be found on

Amazon, you know, and on many other platforms. There's also an

audio book around it, you know, which I really like. I mean, I

didn't read it myself, but I like the guy who read it, and he

has a wonderful voice. I love it. I really love it, you know.

So good, great knowledge today, and coming from

someone who grew up in the land of Haribo gum bears and

Beethoven, really glad to spend time with you.

Well Adam, wonderful pleasure. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Klaus.

Thank you very much.