Author: Klaus F. Hepp

We here in Brazil have firmly incorporated this talent into our live style and call it “jogo de cintura”. I`m terribly sorry, but I can`t translate this to English. Please – my readers – let me know, in case You have an idea, how to translate this beautiful expression. The great majority of all foreigners moving for longer periods or even forever to Brazil, learn this very fundamental ability sooner or later – or fail, continue to other destinations or return to wherever they originally came from. 

Let me share a wonderful travelling experience with You, which I made twenty years ago during my years end vacations in the exciting and challenging country Cuba. The year 1999 had been my first year back to Europe after three years of experience as Project & Engineering Manager for Henkel do Brasil at it`s chemical and adhesives plant in Jacarei, Sao Paulo. During 1999 I was in charge as Technical Manager of Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s worldwide flagship plant for hair coloring products in Viersen Dülken, Germany. This plant was a huge, multi-story concrete bunker full with state-of-the-art highspeed mixing, filling and packaging machinery on which we manufactured non-stop  consumer products for Henkel`s cosmetics division in the market sales value of 1.5 billion Euros per year. Anything but a kindergarden. Perfectly organised and operated by highly qualified employees on all levels. This was by the way the last time, that I have been working in Germany. Since then I stick to  the famous motto about boxers: “They never come back”. When years end 1999 came, I took my holidays and catched a plane to Havanna for two and a half weeks. Cuba had always interested and fascinated me and I decided, that  this was the right moment in my life, for getting to know in all details and aspects this unique country once. 

I arrived at Havanna airport shortly before midnight, stood patiently in the immigration control queue for almost two hours and took one of those fifty years old colorful Chevrolet, Buick or Oldsmobile taxis and asked the driver, to bring me to my clandestine – this was one of the repeating periods, where Fidel Castro had prohibited once again all private small enterprises, which he had let grow before during a few years – private accomodation in the old and almost totally broken and run down part of Havanna. We hardly found the old villa in the dark night and for my surprise, the very friendly young owners couple was already waiting for me in front of the house. Because beer was not available, we trank a bottle of rum as my welcome drink in their kitchen before I installed myself in my very rudimentarily equipped room without door for sleeping my first night in Cuba.

My original plan – developped in Spain before I started my travel – had been, to stay for a few days in Havanna and then travel from there with public busses across the island through Santa Clara and Camaguey to Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in the extreme south-east, not so far away from Guantanamo, at the cuban coast. But I must admit, that from the first arival there on, I fell in love with Havanna so deeply, that instead of doing this bus trip, I decided to stay more time in Havanna,  book a one week salsa course and just fly to Santiago for a few days before the end my vacations and my return to Spain. 

On the first weekend I visited some cuban friends in a small settlement at about fourty kilometers distance outside Havana City. One of my cuban friends drove me there in his car and on monday morning after the wonderful weekend,  I walked from the soviet style apartment block, where I had stayed with my friends, to the nearby bus stop. There were in total approximately twenty people waiting for a bus to Havanna since more than a hour already and from my arrival there on, we waited at least another hour, during which some more people joined us. Nobody could say, when exactly – if ever on this day – a bus to Havanna would arrive. Anyhow there was no fix bus schedule. When finally a bus appeared, the plate behind it`s front screen showed as destination in big letters the name of the city San Cristobal, a place which I will never forget again in my life. And this bus was completely empty. The driver stopped the bus in front of the waiting crowd, opened the passenger door and asked, who of us wanted to go to “San Cristobal”. But there was nobody, who wanted to go to San Cristobal. All the people waiting there, instead of this wanted – like me – to go to Havanna. When the driver realised this, he shouted “Ok people, let`s change the schedule of this bus. I will bring You to Havanna”. And he just substituted the indicator plate “San Cristobal” behind the front screen of his bus by another  indicator plate with the new destination “Havanna”. The whole crowd was receiving this decision of the driver with all kinds of loud cheers and stormed into the bus, which after approximately two hours delivered us to downtown Havanna. 

That`s exactly what I meant above with what the Brazilians call “jogo de cintura”. What sence would it have made for our bus driver, to drive an empty bus over thirty kilometers to San Cristobal and to let at the same time thirty desperate passengers wait besides the dusty road for another bus to Havanna for two or three more hours? This man for my concern was a real decision taker and merited a decoration because of his courage and flexibility. I have no idea, how many people because of his spontaneous decision had to wait additional hours at San Cristobal for a bus to Havanna, but to be true, You cannot always imagine and consider all other things, which might happen atother places in the world. Live is not – at least not always – a chess play.  

This little sympathetic adventure and my lessons learned from it, helped me later-on during my in total six years as Managing Director for two different German autoparts suppliers in Mexico and during my subsequent – meanwhile eleven –  years as Managing Director for three different German industrial companies in Brazil, which were all specialised on different businesses, products, markets and industries, to get more easily adapted to the survival tactics, which You need – at least in this part of the world – for becoming able to master Your daily challenges successfully one after the other. That`s the reason why palmtrees dont get broken by the wind, as  it happens quite frequently to oaks and other strong but stiff trees during intense storms.

This was exactly what I wanted to share with You today. Hope You have enjoyed it – at least a little bit. Please don`t hold back  with Your comments and explanations of own experiences with this kind of subjects and life and job situations.

Have a great new day and lots of fun and success.

In September 2014, on the first day of my freshly started career as President of Vulkan do Brasil at it`s factory in Itatiba in the beautiful interior of the brazilian state of Sao Paulo, I at first held a meeting with the managers of the different departments of our company. My main objective was, to introduce myself and to share some of my own intentions and objectives, upon which I had previously agreed with the owners of our company when they had hired me shortly before. But I also wanted to get a first smell of who all these ladies and gentlemen were and how they received me and responded to my first presentation of myself and my initial ideas.

Once this opening meeting accomplished, I had a first walk and deep look, guided by the operations manager,  into all areas of the company and of the factory. After my first lunch in one of the restaurants in the quite close to our factory located Itatiba Mall, I started to hold short personal interviews with each of my new employees, who had participated in our management meeting in the morning. My intention was, to know each person on an eye-to-eye basis personally and to gain some first  detailed impressions, of who these people were and how we coincidated. These meetings were very interesting and gave me already a strong feeling, with whom I was dealing there and how much comfortable I felt initially with each of the managers. 

So far this was almost a standard procedure, which I had developped and practiced already in the several similiar ocasions during the past 15 years at the different companies in different countries and on different continents, when I had taken over new responsability as General Manager there. But when it comes to human beeings and personal direct contact with them, all routine flies away and the individual feelings, sensations and experiences take over. Each person is unique and has an individual history and personality and must be dealt with and treated in a fair and impartial manner.

When talking to Marco for the first time, he mentioned to me, that he had already been working at Vulkan do Brasil in the HR department since 18 years. This shocked me terribly. How could it be, that such a intelligent and still young man could have spend eighteen long years of his live and professional career in one and the same department at one and the same company? An absolute horror for me. No chance, for me to imagine and accept this. This guy “died” immediately in my eyes and I told Marco openly, that I think he should use this opportunity, to look for a completely new personal and professional development at an other company outside Itatiba, in order to give his life and career new impulses and open space for his urgently needed further development and new career. But I told him also, that although I would not force this immediately, I definitely needed somebody new, less predetermined by the history of our company especially in the HR function, because HR for me always was a key function for the restructuring and development projects, which I had carried out in different companies at different places in the world until then. Actually I had already had a good candidate for this position on hand, with whom I had worked cosely and thrustfully together in one of my former companies. I must admit, that I always love, to have “plans B”, “plans C” and “plans D” in the pocket for all ocacions, which tend to occur during normal private and professional live and where quick solutions are worth one`s weight in gold.

Here a collage of pictures of Marco and me together during joint activities 2014-2019:

On the picture above in the middle Marco and I met my pre-predecessor, Mr. Bönninger, who had been the President of Vulkan do Brasil during 25 successful years and who clearly merits the title of honor as “father” of our huge Brazilian industrial know how and market success. On the foto in the lower right corner, Marco and I are together with my great boss Sven Oelert, CEO of the Vulkan Group. And besides myself on the picture in the middle on the bottom is my lovely wife Selma. (:- 

This was for sure really hard stuff for Marco and I doubt, that he had expected such direct strong comments during his first interview with his new boss. But he did not implode nor explode and during the very frequent meetings which Marco and I had from then on during my first weeks at Vulkan do Brasil`s factory in Itatiba, my impression of him, his openness, his abilities and his capabilities changed dramatically and quite soon a certain good “chemistry” and great understanding of each other started to appear between us. I became more and more impressed by Marco`s talent, to help me as a close colaborator to formulate, express and realise my ideas and projects within our company. Besides this, he showed a high experience, capacity and creativity when I asked him, to help me prepare concepts and presentations for our team and also for our my reporting to our HQ in Germany.

Furthermore I discovered soon, that – due to his extremely long history and experience in HR in our company – Marco had huge know how about all kinds of past and present employees, internal histories and all kinds of general information about our company. Thus Marco became quickly a firmly confirmed member of the new management team, which I set up during my first 6 weeks at Vulkan do Brasil as a mixture of already existing fantastic, highly experienced and motivated employees and totally new people with great experience and also of my personal trust, which I invited from other companies, where I had worked as General Manager in the past. By the way – I am terribly proud to be able to tell You, that this “dream team” never has changed since October 2014. This makes me enormously proud and thankful, because in hardly any other Brazilian company You will find such continuity on top management level during this extremely tense and challenging period in our country, where everything and everybody in the companies, in economy and politics changed several times. 

Because of the truly deplorable bad state of our  company at that time and face to the undoubtedly approaching deep new economical and political  crisis in our country – in fact Brazil suffered the deepest recession since long during the years 2014-2016 – I decided, to kick-off immediately a massive  restructuring program at Vulkan do Brasil including complete reorganisation, strong headcount reduction, consolidation of the at that time in total three different sites and the launch of several simultaneous lean projects in the operations areas. A good program for somebody, who has just arrived freshly at the company but I had always followed the principle “attack is the best defence” until then in my life and – due to my large previous successful experience with such situations – I had not the least fear or doubts about it`s sence and future success. 

Although had I invited Marco to participate in all the different projects, which I kicked-off at Vulkan do Brasil one after the other, without asking him, whether he already felt experienced with such subjects, but he never expressed rejection and he also never showed real difficulties to accompany actively all these projects. In fact Marco became quite quickly one of my “right hands” and the “left half of my brain” in the sence, that we both developped a wonderful and highly productive colaboration and comradship during the first two years since my arrival at our company. His success became my success and vice versa. And Marco became also somehow one of my several “body guards” in our management team, because he gives me openly and without any hesitation always feedback, when I am doing something wrongly and he detects it. That`s like a life insurance. Top managers need this. But many of them unfortunately don`t reckognize the importance of this and wonder, why they fail some day terribly and ask then, why nobody has warned them before. 

Due to Marco`s full involvement and active participation in all the strategical company and business delelopment projects (restructuring, lean operations, Latin America sales expansion, foundation of our DPPA department (Development of Products, Processes and Applications), “Vulkan Southern Hemisphere Initiative”, “Brain” Group, “Factory of the Future”…..) which we one after the other have been inventing and putting into practice, I have changed his functional titel three years ago from “HR Director” to “HR & Special Projects Director”, which describes much better his today`s role and function within our wonderful management team and company. 

Marco has accompanied me and all our other management team members during all our  different projects and initiatives launched during the last five years to many far away places allover Latin America, Australia and Africa and – thank God – there is no end in sight for the continuation of this. Our heads are full with new ideas and projects and I am sure, that our excelent, highly productive and successful colaboration will continue for many more years.

As music recommendation (for real Rock fans only !) the one and only right choice had to be the live recording (at the famous “Rock in Rio” concert @ Copacabana beach in the “Marvellous City”) of  Iron Maiden`s”Blood brothers”, which I know, Marco also likes a lot:

I have told this beautiful story especially for my younger readers, who often ask me for advice, how to plan and perform a successful professional career. I am sure, that this will answer many of Your questions and hopefully inspire You for preparing Your own future careers. 

Thanks to all other readers for having accompanied once more my daily post in this blog. See You here again tomorrow. Have a great, happy and successful day !

As already explained in one of my earlier posts, I have grown up in a small village in the middle of nowhere in the forests close to the city of Kaiserslautern in Germany during the “cold war” years in the early sixties. The only really exciting diversion for children of my age in the small, mainly agricultural, villages during these times there were the quite frequent encounters with US soldiers, which had been stationed all around our area and which we as children were looking up wherever and whenever we could find them during their military exercises in the forests. Many of these soldiers were black men, many others were white men. I do not recall the remembrance of any bad or harmful  situation during all these for both parties involved always entertaining and friendly encounters. And these were the times shortly before massive contingents of GI`s were sent to Vietnam, many of them from the US airbase Ramstein, not really far away from where my home village was. In general all these young soldiers, no matter their color or social background, treated us children very nicely and they obviously had plenty of fun when playing and making jokes with us. And we children have learned tremendously from this contact with them. I am personally convinced, that my strong early interest in learning English, my affection to Rock`n Roll music and my firm desire, to travel the world as soon as possible, have been originally created there. 

My next experiences with people from other countries and parts of the world arose when my familly moved to the nearby city of Mannheim, where I went to secondary school. Actually it was my six years older sister who during her studies of medicine at the famous German university in the very romantic and beautiful city of Heidelberg lived together with lots of young people from allover the world in a students dormitory and made me get to know personally with many of her young international friends.

The most important of all of these new international contacts for me became undoubtedly Trinder, a physics student from India. He spent lots of evenings and weekends with my familly in our apartment in Mannheim, where my mother cooked typical German dishes and Trinder told my sister, my mother, my brother and me stories about far away India. I was deeply impressed by his big turban and he was definitely the first Sikh, which I met in my life. By the way, not too many years later Trinder quit his physics studies in Germany, married his indian wife and moved to the US, where he became the owner of two gas stations and grew a quite big and happy familly. No matter the great distance, my familly never lost contact with him and he always wrote us thankful and longing letters. 

Several years later, during my highschool times, I gained the opportunity to meet with lots of  students from different international provenances. Maybe my memories have become selective over the long years since then or because of my own later-on own trajectory in this particular world region, but I remember mainly young people from Latin American countries, with whom I had closer contact during those years at the University of Karlsruhe (today: KIT – Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). Anyhow all these friendships with students from Brazil, Costa Rica and Peru, which I concretely remember, enriched my knowledge about other peoples cultures and countries and stimulated my already firmly existing desire, to make own international life and work experience as soon as possible after the conclusion of my academic studies.

The company, where I made thoroughly experience and friendship with many foreign (seen from a German standpoint) people and for which I travelled a lot to other european countries, was Henkel. Anyhow Henkel  during this time was one of the most internationally active, experienced and in general worldwide successfully acting German companies. Decades before the term diversity has become popular, Henkel practiced an extremely open and progressive policy with regards to it`s employees and internal career opportunities. When I still had my office at our HQ in Düsseldorf, it was very common to see and meet colleagues from allover the world during meetings, at lunchtime in the canteens and in general at all departments in different functions. Düsseldorf was our HQ, but there was no doubt, that all colleagues outside Germany and Europe were fully integrated, accepted and highly esteemed contributors to our company`s growth and success. This was a very important learning for me, which gave me a secure basis for my later-on change into the world of quite different and much smaller companies and the challenges, to set up there – in the subsidiaries, for which I became responsible – similiar business cultures and structures.

Since I took over general management responsabilities for different companies at different places in Spain, Mexico and Brazil from January 2000 on, I have become quite experienced to set up nice and successful management teams, in which I always have been the one and only German. I almost never had – and if, only during limited periods – other Germans together with me in the companies, where I was responsible. It never was a question for me, that I had to integrate myself immediately into the local teams and cultures and that my highest responsability was, to establish a “best of both” culture for all of us and amongst us in our company. To be true – this has somehow become my speciality over the years and this actually is what since longer mostly stimulates and drives me. The permanent immersion into a – for me as German – different culture and environment has become my new “normal” and I can really openly admit, that I have become emotionally dependent on that and would never again like to miss it. 

My intensive international and intercultural experience already made in Latin America during the long years of my work in Mexico and Brazil, including my many travels to the whole Latin American region, has been enormously boosted when I got started – upon invitation by our CEO – on supporting my colleagues in Australia and South Africa two years ago within our freshly founded “Vulkan Southern Hemisphere Initiative” with the further development of their companies and businesses. And when quite soon afterwards the decision had been taken, to extend my activities with regards to the development of our industrial business allover subsaharian Africa (49 countries as per our Vulkan internal counting), this gave me an enormous additional impulse. Africa as a continent and the African people and their cultures in the so many different African countries in general have, right from my first contacts and experiences with them on, incredibly impressed and excited me. 

What turns out as a final consequence and deep learning of my above mentioned long and intensive experiences with people of all types of origins, cultures, languages, religions, genders, sexual preferences and colors, is that all lives clearly matter the same. There exists not the least reason for disrepect or any kind of discrimination of any people in the world just because of such distinctive attributes. 

Three years ago, when I started to participate together with my colleagues Josias Leal, Development & Engineering Director, and Marcel Moraes, Development Manager, in public events about new trends, technologies and cultural tendencies, one company, which is located in Campinas, quite close to our own factory in Itatiba, called repeatedly our attention and one day we contacted it and became invited for a visit. I can honestly tell You, that Josias, Marcel and I left CI&T`s  (https://br.ciandt.com/) global headquarters in Campinas, Sao Paulo, after our first fours hours visit there with our mouths wide open.

CI&T is incredibly advanced in its own structural and strategic development, has already fully accomplished it`s own digital transformation and is growing very successfully year by year helping it`s many mainly very big customers – amongst others – in achieving similiar progress, since a few years now also internationally. The definit highlight of our first visit there was for me the personal meeting and totally relaxed and open experience exchange discussion with Cesar Gon (You can find his profile in linkedin), founder & CEO of CI&T, a tremendously experienced brazilian entrepreneur and great cultural and business developper with an immensely open mind. One of the key philosophies and strategies of CI&T is the full and all-around implementation of the concept of diversity within their company and this has undoubtedly prooven as a fundamental success factor for CI&T.

Above a picture from one of our visits to CI&T, in this case together with my colleagues Marcel Moraes, Development Manager and  Ferdinand Senske, VP Operations of Vulkan do Brasil and several of our friendly hosts at CI&T. 

Diversity in a company and at workplaces is closely tied with discrimination and means to exclude completely bias and discriminatory practices towards people who have specific characteristics. Some examples of diversity in the workplace along with ways to tackle discrimination are hiring women, establish gender diversity allover the company including fighting gender inequality in leadership roles, dealing with age and gender discrimination, fostering an age inclusive workplace, building the case for disability inclusion, considering candidates with a non-traditional background, removing unconscious bias from the hiring process.

To practice diversity means to understand that each individual is unique, and to recognize our individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. To built a diverse company means that You don`t discriminate against protected characteristics and that You are an equal opportunity employer. This will help You to built up Your employer brand and keep employees happy, satisfied and productive. Diverse companies reflect societies and demographics more accurately, speak to a broader market and get more creative and profitable.

For sure our company is supporting and promoting all this and at our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, we have been working very actively on all these subjects during the last years and we will do more in this sence for the future, because to create sustainable success for a company does no longer just depend on good products and competitive prizes and lead times. Modern global business requires modern business cultures and high responsabilities recognition towards the society as well. 

 This were basically the insights and personal and professional experiences, which I wanted to share with You today and I am very curious now to receive Your own experiences with respect to diversity and it`s implementation in Your own companies and life. Hope to see You here again tomorrow morning. Take care. 

According to the historicians, the first indians arrived and settled in this country coming from far away in the north or on the land way through Central America or on boats along the coast of the Pacific Ocean about 15.000 years ago. Others might have much later arrived there coming through the Amazon. The Andes highlands of Ecuador became part of the Inca empire only in 1463, means two generations after the arrival of the first Incas in Ecuador, due to the fierce resistance of the highly developped native population. 

Shortly before the arrival of the Spanish colonisators in Ecuador, a civil war broke out in the Inca empire after the sudden death of the emperor  Huayna Capac and his young heir. This created a power vacuum between two factions. The northern part of Peru and Ecuador were reigned by Atahualpa from his capital Quito in Ecuador. The rest of the Inca empire was reigned by Atahualpa`s half-brother Huascar from his capital Cuzco in Peru. As nicely described in Wikipedia, Huáscar ordered Atahualpa to attend their father’s burial in Cuzco and pay homage to himself as the new Inca ruler. Atahualpa, with a large number of his father’s veteran soldiers, decided to ignore Huáscar, and a civil war ensued. A number of bloody battles took place until finally Huáscar was captured. Atahualpa marched south to Cuzco and massacred the whole royal family associated with his brother. 

Since my private, purely touristic visit at the end of 2000, I have in the meantime returned to Ecuador for professional reasons several times. When Arno Ett (+55 11 99512 4929, arno.ett@vulkan.com), Sales Director Vulkan Drive Tech (all kinds of couplings, brakes, backstops and mounts for all kinds of industrial mechanical power transmission applications) and I started to develop our sales expansion project allover Latin America five years ago from out of our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, Brazil, we also had a deep look at Ecuador. Today Vulkan do Brasil`s industrial division Vulkan Drive Tech (VDT) is beeing represented there by our local distribution partner Marco Ecuador ( http://marco.com.ec/index.php/es ), where our friend and partner Esteban Guano and his great team of colaborators work closely together with Arno Ett and Andre Nunes, Sales Manager Vulkan Drive Tech. Actually our colleague Andre Nunes (+57 317 772 0651, andre.nunes@vulkan.com) attends the ecuadorian market from out of our office and sales subsidiary Vulkan Drive Tech Colombia in Bogotá, Colombia, within what we internally call the “northern cluster”, means Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. 

Arno and I have developped and set up – with great support from several other brazilian management teams colleagues – our “cluster” structure for the whole Latin America region incl. Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and all South America (with the only exception of Brazil, which we manage seperately) at the beginning of 2015, when we started our market expansion project in Latin America, and since then this works perfectly until today. 

Since we got started to introduce actively our products and services to Ecuador, we have participated in several events organised by the German – Ecuadorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry , AHK  Ecuador, ( http://marco.com.ec/index.php/es ). At this place I would like to send a warm embrace to our great friends Ulrieke Stieler, Manager DE International @ AHK Ecuador, and Jörg Zehnle, Managing Director of AHK Ecuador, and thank them for the always very friendly and open reception and for the great support during all our joint activities in Ecuador, like f.e. our participation in the german mining equipment supplier delegation to Ecuador two years ago. 

I hope, all this has made You curious for personally getting to know Ecuador, it`s really rich history, culture, arts, kitchen, beautiful landscape in the totally different geographical and climate regions and – last not least – it`s wonderful friendly people. 

My music recommendation for today, which fits nicely to this post is a sample of Lucho Quequezana`s compositions and presentations. Although Lucho Quequezana is Peruvian and not Ecuadorian, his creative fusion of traditional andean music styles and instruments with modern music styles incl. european classical music, finds great interest allover Latin America.

See You here again tomorrow hopefully. Enjoy the remaining weekend hours and get strongly started for the new exciting week tomorrow. 

As of 2018, six Nobel laureates are affiliated with KIT. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is well known for many inventors and entrepreneurs who studied or taught there, including Heinrich Hertz, Karl Friedrich Benz and the founders of SAP SE.

My next contact with the KIT happened during October 2018 in Santiago, Chile. I participated in the yearly “Economic Days Chile – Germany” event, which was perfectly organised once again by Camchal (https://chile.ahk.de/es/), the Chilean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where we as Vulkan do Brasil – the same as in Brazil (Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre), Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico are associated members and play a quite interesting and active role. I made personal contact and friendship with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr h.c. Jürgen Becker from the Institute for Information Processing (ITTV) at the KIT, who held a fascinating panel speech about Industry 4.0 projects which he and his colaborators and students at that time were working upon in Karlsruhe. By the way our friendly contact continues since then and we have agreed  to meet again personally at the KIT upon one of my next visits there. 

As alum of the KIT, I received the invitation to join the KIT Industry Experts Network soon after it`s foundation in October 2019. This is a really fancy invention. The Industry Experts Network connects KIT alumni, means former KIT students, which are now working as professionals in all types of industries and countries allover the world, with the KIT and it`s academic production of ideas, inventions, patents, technologies and processes in order to help to spread these into the industry and make it`s practicle utilisation available for the society in general. 

Since my membership in the Industry Experts Network I am frequently beeing invited to participate in inquiries for the avaliation of the practicle industry applicability of new technologies which the KIT constantly develops. And additionally I receive so called “technology alerts” from KIT about new technologies beeing put at disposition for concrete utilisation in the industry.  

One of these technology alerts made my friend and colleague Josias Leal, Development & Engineering Director at our company Vulkan do Brasil, and me interested in a certain new technology beeing currently developped at the KIT. I therefore contacted the KIT. I was very nicely attended immediately by Laura Bosch, the Project Coordinator for the KIT Industry Experts Network and she brought me into contact with Philipp Scherer, who until the end of last year was the Innovation Manager of the KIT. A few weeks later Josias Leal and I visited – amongst other activities which we had in Germany during this travel – for one whole day the KIT.

For sure to visit the KIT, where had I spent five years of my life during my studies, after so many years once again, was a very exciting and emotional event for me. I was deeply impressed, how strongly the KIT campus in Karlsruhe has developped further and grown since I had been there for the last time. Laura Bosch, Philipp Scherer and several other KIT employees, doctorates  and students received Josias and me very nicely there and after a general visit and presentation of the KIT and a very nice lunch in the  beautiful KIT guest restaurant, we discussed in many details the concrete technology development at one of KIT`s chairs, in which we were interested, together with the responsible professor and his team of experts and students. 

Once back home again in Sao Paulo, we signed a NDA with KIT and started to work actively on the concrete technolgy beeing developped at KIT and which we now want to use for the upgrade of several of our products and also for incorporation into new products, which we are – under the responsability of Josias – developping currently inhouse at Vulkan do Brasil in our DPPA (Development of Products, Processes and Applications) department. 

To close the loop, in December 2019 we received Philipp Scherer and the key developper from KIT for the technology, upon which our cooperation project has been kicked-off in the meantime, as guests at our company and factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, for one whole week and we had a great and highly productive time incl. visits to mining and steel industry customers, where our friends from the KIT could see with their own eyes the application and functionning of our products in authentic industrial processes and environments. 

Before the return of Philipp and his colleague from KIT to Germany, we organised a one full day “Open Technology & Development Experience Exchange” event at Vulkan do Brasil with the participation of several experts from other German and Brazilian universities, technical associations and research institutes, which was highly successful and gave us a lot of new inspirations for future projects, especially with regards to the future extension and intensification of our already existing colaboration with German and Brazilian universities, research and development institutes and technical associations.

It makes me very proud and happy, to have been able to use my personal experience and contacts for creating and strengthening this great friendship and cooperation with these wonderful and highly experienced people over there in Germany and to contribute thus personally and in my professional function as President of Vulkan do Brasil to the transfer of top notch technology and know how from one of the elite universities in Germany to Brazil, where we urgently need all this know how and experience massively in order to not miss “the train” technically and for the improval of our competitivity – as individual companies, industry and society in general, but also on country level. 

As my today`s music recommendation (only for real rock music fans !): The fantastic live version of Neil Young`s “Eldorado” song (originally only published as EP in Australia and Japan, but later-on on LPs like “Eldorado”) from a 1989 concert at the famous “Grosse Freiheit” in Hamburg, Germany:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnwkbJmiJ04

I hope this was interesting, at least for some of You, highly appreciated and welcome readers of my daily posts. See You here again tomorrow. Enjoy the day and the weekend. Best regards from sunny but rather cold (at least in the morning) Vinhedo, Sao Paulo. 

You can see already, that blogging has become a sophisticated and very interesting occupation for me with a lot of learnings and surprises. When I started my blog with my first post 2 weeks ago, I was not sure, whether I would really like this still after the first days and continue it. To be true, I had no feeling, how easy or difficult writing posts day by day would become for me and whether I would be able to select enough interesting subjects for my posts, which really call the attention readers and allow me to identify myself with these. I mean, to write blogs for the public is somehow like taking off Your clothes in front of other people. You need a hell of self esteem and courage, to start this – and even more to continue with it. But for several reasons I did not regret this project so far and I am firmly decided to continue with it for unlimited time. First of all I find it very attractive, to share my professional and private experiences, sensations and feelings openly with You. Secondly You stimulate me very nicely to continue my blog with all Your reads and with Your so many highly appreciated comments.

To be able to address so many wonderful people at so many faraway places is overwhelming and only possible since a few years due to the extremely good and simple internet tools available for this, the same as the widely spread latest generations of smart devices for communication. Another very helpful factor is the fact, that I have been able – mainly due to my really fascinating job – to construct a meanwhile quite big international network of contacts, friends, business partners, customers and many other interesting people and that – from a certain size on – such networks are growing by themselfes, because contacts of Your contact`s contacts contact You (please read it again – there is no word “contact” in excess).

Here`s the right wonderful Rolling Stones song recommendation “Far away eyes”  for my initial blogging experience:

But I am still on the learning curve as a freshly started blogger and there are still many technics and subjects, which I must – and which I will ! – find out, discover, understand, try out, practice and  integrate perfectly. The decision, in which language I should write my blogs was very easy to take. Because of my great number of friends and contacts allover the world, portuguese, spanish and german were no really viable options and it came very clear from the very beginning, that I must write these posts in english language. This is perfect for me, because I have no difficulties, to write and express myself in English. And for sure as a very nice by product this helps me to refine my experience with this language. So please native english speakers forgive me typical non-native english speaker mistakes. 

On the picture above You can see me together with Brian and Jovani. One month ago I came to the conclusion, that I should ask somebody experienced, reliable and affordable, to do some urgently necessary repair works at our house, which I had – thus calling massive protest of my wife – ongoingly postponed during the last years because of my notorious travelling absence. There were some problems with the roof and besides this my wife and I wanted to beautify the entrance to our house, our garage and the terraces in front and behind our house. One of my best friends recommended Jovani warmly to me for this job and since I came over with him, Jovani and his young helper Brian have been working upon all that the whole time. 

Jovani is a 37 year old married Brazilian, has two little daughters and lives in a nearby small village. He was born in the quite near state of Minas Gerais and has moved to Sao Paulo about twenty years ago looking for a job. Brian is 21 years old and lives in Jundiai, our neighborhood city and works together with Jovani since about one year as his helper. Jovani is the typical example of a Brazilian born in poor familly at a quite simple place on the countryside, who – without receiving any help from any others and much less from the state – after primary school started to learn doing different things and developped over the years to a small but successful entrepreneur. Actually he works alone with Brian and from time to time, if he aquires a little bigger jobs, he contracts – on a daily basis – one or two additional helpers. His job and income protection is the dedication, friendlyness and absolute quality with which he does all kinds of typical house repairs and modifications, from groundworks, to civil, over electrical and all other types of crafts. His marketing campaigns are the mouth-to-mouth recommendations of his satisfied customers, which make him practically always find directly a new job when he finishes one. To be true and frank – to a great extend it`s the millions over millions of good and hard working people like Jovani and Brian,who drive the economy of this country and keep the population provided with food and all other important things for their basical needs.

Nor Jovani nor Brian are getting tremendously rich with this. But they are working, earning money, can sustain their famillies (food, health, education) and they are proud on their proven skills and abilities, which their customers appreciate and which they constantly develop further. During the weeks since they started working at our house I sit in my home office in our open barbeque station in the garden and watch them working. We have made friendship since the first days and I enjoy very much, to talk with them a couple of minutes every day and to learn interesting things from them. Very nice and good people. And lucky people. Different to the vast and steadily increasing number of Brazilians in the working age without any jobs and income by own productive activities. The IBGE – Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics – has just pulished it`s recent quarterly survey on unemployment and the results are devastating. For the first time more brazilians in the working age (87,7 million people) are unemployed than employed (85,9 million people). This is the worst result since the IBGE started to do these surveys for the first time in 2012. Just during the last three months 2,5 million oficially registered workers have lost their jobs, but also – even worse – 5,8 million “informal” workers are on the road again now without any more income.

This is very sad and sets our country and society massively back again. Even more important now, that we keep as many of the still operating and functionning businesses in Brazil going and take the best possible care of them. We at Vulkan do Brasil employ roundabout 200 employees. If I assume, that in the average each of them lives in a familly with 4 people, this gives already a number of 800 people. But in reality, due to the above described circumstances, many of our employees need to give financial support to other familly members which do not (any longer) have jobs and income. Thus we can easily assume, that more than 1000 people depend on the jobs and on the income of our employees and thus on the continuity of our business. Besides the income, all our employees have a health insurance provided by  our company, receive meal subsidies and several other benefits, which are very valuable and extremely important for them and for their whole “greater” famillies.

Many companies in Brazil have fallen into deep financial problems and all other kinds of trouble during the last decades – besides the repeatedly appearing economical & political crisis -because of bad and sometimes even irresponsible management. We as Vulkan do Brasil have just proudly completed 45 years of existence and functionning – as well during the many good times as also during the many bad times – in this as beautiful as suffering country and our identification with this country, and the acceptation of the responsability, which we have as employers for all our employees within more than the formal, normal, legally attributable limits has never been ignored nor disputed, since our german headquarters and the owners of our group took the decision, to open our company in Sao Paulo 45 years ago.

So far we are withstanding successfully all negative impacts of the Covid-19 crisis and also the colateral economic recession effects in Brazil and we keep our business fully and successfully going. As President of this wonderful company, I would like to express my thanks at this place and time to all our faithful customers, suppliers, service providers, all other business partners and for sure as well – last not least – to all our fantastic employees. You may doubtlessly count on Vulkan do Brasil and our uninterrupted and unharmed ongoing availability and well functioning, as far as this remains in our own hands.

Thanks and a warm embrace as well to my readers allover the world. I wish You great success with Your own businesses and activities and hope, to meet with You here again in my blog tomorrow morning.

The idea to present to You in this post the very interesting acronym and thought concept VUCA has arisen in my head tuesday night during my participation in a wonderful online training event organised by the AMCHAM (https://www.amcham.com.br/), to which  our company Vulkan do Brasil – the same as to several other associations, which I will present to You on ocasion of future posts in my blog – is affiliated and where our whole management team participates actively in the different work groups and events, which besides very nice opportunities for networking give us tremendous access to lots of interesting information and experiences from friends and colleagues from other companies in our region. 

This was actually the first of  in total four online training sessions of two hours in the evening each under the title “The negotiation show: Sell like a Rockstar”, conducted by the stunning trainer, speaker and influencer “Rockstar” Gabriel Machado, CEO & Changer @ Oxigena Negócios, a brazilian consulting firm specialised on trainings and recruitment for sales teams. 

The title “Sell like a Rockstar” sounds crazy? Absolutely!  And that was exactly the reason for my interest, to participate in these trainings. Actually in my job as President of Vulkan do Brasil, I am not directly responsable for the sales activities of our company. Vulkan do Brasil has in total four independently and almost autonomously acting Sales Directors for our in total three different product divisions Vulkan Lokring (VL, Mauro Mendonça), Vulkan Couplings (VC, Elisangela Santos) and Vulkan Drive Tech. For our by far biggest and main business Vulkan Drive Tech (VDT), which comprises our full wide portfolio of all types of couplings, brakes and backstops for all kinds of industrial mechanical power transmission applications, which we by the way develop and manufacture almost entirely at our beautiful factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, we have split the sales area responsabilities. Tiago Bedani is responsible as Sales Director for our brazilian VDT sales and his colleague Arno Ett is the Sales Director for our latin american VDT sales , means in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and all of South America with the only exception of Brazil. 

But to be true and clear, in the end the result of our company, for which I am fully responsible, for sure is – amongst several other decisive influencing and performance factors – massively depending on the success of our sales. And since more than 20 years, during my time at all the other companies in Brazil, Mexico and Spain, where I have had been appointed formerly as Managing Director, I was always working very closely together with our sales teams, accompanying them constantly and giving them continuously almost unlimited support. Since 2011 I have actively collected experience with the development of own strategies for the exploration of new markets for the introduction and sale of our products  and services and – working permanently very closely together with our sales teams – I myself have become more and more familiar and experienced with the “secrets” of doing sales. 

All sales professionals amongst my readers can confirm this rule: once sales – forever sales. Successful sales professionals are highly motivated and stimulated by their job and would hardly ever exchange their job for any other. I have made similiar experience over time. To work in sales  makes You addicted. You start to need the permanent confrontation and contact with customers and the constant attempt, to help them solve their problems. Today for me to do business has almost become a synonym for working as a salesman. But – as I have explained above – I have never really been working fulltime and purely as a salesman and am still learning about this profession and work discipline. Therefore and for general curiosity I signed up for the “sell like a Rockstar” training sessions at AMCHAM. 

After the short presentation of each of the event participants, Gabriel Machado gave us as a very interesting general overview about what influences sales business nowadays. He showed and explained to us concepts like reverse obedience, experience vs products, authenticity, wellness environment, coherence, DOY (Do it Yourself) and he also gave us a good idea about the cohort concept, which in statistics, marketing and demography describes the different groups (generations) of subjects who share defining characteristics. You all know already these widely used terms silent generation, baby boomers, generations X, Y, Z and alpha (age groups from 2010 on). 

What impressed me the most – I must frankly admit, that I have heard this term earlier, but I have never really understood it in detail – was the introduction to the VUCA concept. VUCA actually is an acronym first used in 1987 by the US Army War College to describe the volatile (V), uncertain (U), complex (C) and ambiguous (A) multilateral world perceived as resulting from the end of the Cold War. Since then it has been widely used in strategic leadership and by many organisations and corporations.

As nicely explained in Wikipedia, the deeper meaning of each element of VUCA serves to enhance the strategic significance of VUCA foresight and insight as well as the behaviour of groups and individuals in organisations. It discusses systemic failures and behavioural failures, which are characteristic of organisational failure.

V = Volatility: the nature and dynamics of change, and the nature and speed of change forces and change catalysts

U = Uncertainty: the lack of predictability, the prospects for surprise,and the sense of awareness and understanding of issues and events

C = Complexity: the multiplex of forces, the confounding of issues, no cause-and-effect chain and confusion that surrounds organization

The particular meaning and relevance of VUCA often relates to how people view the conditions under which they make decisions, plan forward, manage risks, foster change and solve problems. In general, the premises of VUCA tend to shape an organization’s capacity to:

1. Anticipate the Issues that Shape
2. Understand the Consequences of Issues and Actions
3. Appreciate the Interdependence of Variables
4. Prepare for Alternative Realities and Challenges
5. Interpret and Address Relevant Opportunities

For most contemporary organizations – business, the military, education, government and others – VUCA is a practical code for awareness and readiness. Beyond the simple acronym is a body of knowledge that deals with learning models for VUCA preparedness, anticipation, evolution and intervention.

Failure in itself is not a catastrophe, but failure to learn from failure definitely is. It is not enough to train leaders in core competencies without identifying the key factors that inhibit their using the resilience and adaptability that are vital in order to distinguish potential leaders from mediocre managers. Anticipating change as a result of VUCA is one outcome of resilient leadership. The capacity of individuals and organizations to deal with VUCA can be measured with a number of engagement themes:

1. Knowledge Management and Sense-Making
2. Planning and Readiness Considerations
3. Process Management and Resource Systems
4. Functional Responsiveness and Impact Models
5. Recovery Systems and Forward Practices
6. Systemic failures
7. Behavioural failures

At some level, the capacity for VUCA management and leadership hinges on enterprise value systems, assumptions and natural goals. A “prepared and resolved” enterprise is engaged with a strategic agenda that is aware of and empowered by VUCA forces.

The capacity for VUCA leadership in strategic and operating terms depends on a well-developed mindset for gauging the technical, social, political, market and economic realities of the environment in which people work. Working with deeper smarts about the elements of VUCA may be a driver for survival and sustainability in an otherwise complicated world.

What a fantastic way, to describe our actual global situation caused – amongst others – by Covid-19 and our struggle to find land under our feet again ! I have underlined above what the most inspires me for my own life and duties and responsabilities and I am very curious now, to get to know, whether You have already made experience with the VUCA concept and whether You can apply and use it directly to Your live, job and business.

Let me conclude my post with a music recommendation, which for my concerns fits perfectly to the subjects treated here today. The song “Maluco Beleza”, first published in 1977, was written by the famous brazilian “national rock” singer-songwriter and musician, often called “the father of the brazilian rock music”, the late Raul Seixas. I present this song here in a live version (from the album “O Báu do Raul”, 2004)  sung by Caetano Veloso, another very important contemporary brazilian singer, song-writer and musician.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GBUvW0LP4

This song is about a person, which loves it`s autonomy and therefore is seen by the others as crazy. 

And – last not least – I must explain to You the story and the meaning behind the a little bit scary drawing on the picture above. Actually this drawing reflects a joke, which one of my sales directors at GEA Heatexchangers in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, where I have been working as Managing Director during 2011-2014, and his team members made about me because of my strict and adamant tracking of their sales activities and results. They hung it publicly visible on the wall of their office, besides the KPI indicator board, where they held their daily team meetings. We all laughed about it, because in reality I have never behaved as a “strict dog” but always enjoyed my role as team member. 

Enough. Let`s focus on our today`s agenda and to do list now and meet again here in my blog tomorrow. Wish You lots of fun and success. 

First of all I must tell You that since the Covid-19 forced me, to cancel my multiple international flights already booked – for the most part already in advance last year – until the end of this year, many of my friends, business partners and colleagues ask me, how I handle this and whether I had become depressed because of this totally unplanned new situation. They all ask that because they know that I have been travelling almost uninterruptedly during the last years and that many of my international business development activities depend massively on my conditions to travel to the countries, where I carry out my different projects. 

Actually, since I had finished my academic studies as an engineer at the KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, formerly called Technical Highschool of Karlsruhe) at the end of 1984 and started my professional career, to travel to other countries has become a very normal and ordinary activity within my work routine and culture. 

During the 10 years as project engineer (at the beginning) and as project manager (later-on) in Henkel`s corporate engineering department, I have participated in many capital investment projects for the extension, revamp, debottlenecking and modernisation or construction of completely new production plants and warehouses for detergents, adhesives, chemicals and cosmetics all over Europe. During these years, to fly to other places quite frequently for a couple of days or weeks became my normal working and travelling rhythm. 

When I came back from Brazil to Europe at the end of 1998 after the successful conclusion my 3 years stay as project & engineering department manager at Henkel`s chemical and adhesives plant (later-on part of Cognis, now belonging to BASF) in Jacarei/Sao Paulo, I took over responsability as plant manager of Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s freshly aquired cosmetics plant La Toja in La Coruna, Galicia, Spain. 

Initially I was reporting in this function to the regional HQ of Henkel Iberica in Barcelona, but at the same time, as a member of the management board of Schwarzkopf & Henkel Production Europe, it turned normal for me, to fly very frequently from Spain to all other places in Europe, where we operated our sister production plants and – for sure – to our corporate HQ in Düsseldorf, Germany. 

Once having left Henkel and Europe for Mexico, where I  became the Managing Director of – one after the other – two different german automotive suppliers, I became deeply introduced into the North American automotive industry and business and started to travel endlessly within Mexico, the US and Canada for visiting our customers and many suppliers allover there. 

Imagine that we supplied our products from out of our plant in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, to all North American car manufacturers (OEMs), means to in total 48 different car assembly plants in Mexico, US and Canada. Our average distance to a customer was impressive 1.600 miles. This might give You an impression of the intensity of my travelling routine during the in total six years from 2003 to 2009, during which I lived and worked in beautiful Mexico. And I did not mention yet my also quite frequent flights from Mexico to our german HQs and to our sister plants in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slowakia, Hungary and Romania. 

During my time as Managing Director of GEA do Brasil (2011-2014) in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo state, due to the suffocating deep economic crisis in Brazil throughout this time, I kicked-off our Latin American market and business development and sales expansion project together with my brazilian sales team members and therefore started travelling very often to Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, besides my normal frequent flights to our HQ in Germany and to many of our in total 56 worldwide GEA Heat Exchangers sister plants. 

Freshly arrived at our company and factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, Brazil, in my new function as President of Vulkan do Brasil, I did not loose unnecessarily time – in full analogy to what I had already done quite successfully just before at GEA do Brasil – for getting started on  our business development and sales expansion allover Latin America, this time comprising Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and all South America. 

You can imagine, what this meant for me from then on with regards to travelling. And at last in November 2018, during our annual global management meeting at our HQ in Herne, the CEO of the Vulkan Group invited me, to develop and launch an aggressive market and business development project for the increase of the sales of our Vulkan Drive Tech (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech) division (product portfolio: all kinds of couplings, brakes, backstops and mounts for all kinds of industrial mechanical power transmission applications like f.e. in mining, iron & steel, sugar & alcohol, pulp & paper, oil & gas, bulk solids transport and handling, energy generation in thermal, hydro and wind power stations, cranes, hoists, winches etc.) allover Australia and Africa, to where I have been travelling almost uninterruptedly since then in addition to my travels to our Latin American markets, where we are running very successfully own sales & engineering offices in Bogota, Colombia, and Mexico City and where we have set up a wide network of highly active sales and distribution partners during the last  5 years. 

Now You know the full background for all my friend`s and colleague`s question, whether I was depressed because of finding myself paralized now by Covid-19 and my resulting complete lack of opportunities, to travel anywhere since mid March this year and – even worse – without any previsibility, of when this will become possible for me again. 

It is not a lie at all if I tell You, that this new situation has left me so far totally relaxed and that I continue with all my international projects and plans almost unchanged and practically uninterruptedly. To be true, I like very much to travel and I have got pretty used to travelling to other places during the last decades. 

But I have never raised any doubts about the fact , that my by far best travels have always been my holiday travels together with my wife and our children. Getting up very early, sitting endlessly in taxis, hanging around hours and hours at airports, running to departure gates, passing boring airport safety checks again and again, sleeping in sometimes lousy and loud hotel rooms, eating and drinking much more and totally different things, than usually at home, working 14 hours and more per day, sleeping badly and little, withstanding diarrhea, toothache and other little quite frequent travel tortures, suffering from the loss of my suitcase for days, beeing notoriously absent during my wife`s and our children`s  birthdays, our wedding day anniversaries, our neighbor`s barbeque parties, the school events of our sons and – last not least – not beeing able to maintain a routinary contact with my familly`s and my personal great and wonderful circuit of friends, are unfortunately and undoubtedly the other side of the coin. By the way – I really love this wonderful brazilian proverb: “There is no coin with just one side – all coins have two sides”. It explains so many situations in live so beautifully. 

But please believe me, Covid-19 with all it`s restrictions for our business and private live, did not at all succeed to refrain me from the continuation of my multiple projects, no matter whether this refers to the several currently happening further development projects for our brazilian business, company and factory, or to our international expansion projects in Latin America, in Africa and Australia. Vulkan do Brasil has become like New York – we (almost) never sleep !

Indeed I have made so many good and important contacts of new business partners, customers, distributors, representants, colleagues from other companies, service providers, personal friends and other nice people during the last two years wherever I went, especially in Africa and Australia, and I can now very nicely get in touch again and communicate – thanks to Zoom, Teams, Cisco Webex, Skype, Whatsapp and my mobile fone – with all these wonderful people and discuss and develop joint interests, opportunities, activities and projects. 

And all this is happening at my beautiful and cozy home office, which I have installed meanwhile more than three months ago – soon after Covid-19 hit us –  in the open barbeque area in our beautiful garden. You can hardly imagine, how happy my wife Selma, our sons Geywison (23) and Gabriel (15) and our golden retriever Luke (4) – I mentioned this faithful companion in my post no 2 – are! This is a completely new beautiful life experience for our complete familly, which does not reduce at all my conditions and motivation, to proceed at full speed with all my  professional activities. That`s a wonderful example for a real “win-win” life balance solution. 

Hope You enjoyed this description of my exhaustive travelling experiences and my quick, nice, highly comfortable and productive adaptation to the current new live and work frame conditions imposed by Covid-19.. 

See You here in my blog hopefully again tomorrow. I wish You a highly productive day with lots of fun and success.

If somebody had told me in february this year, that I – the same as the grand majority of all our administrative and indirect employees – would soon no longer be able to work at my office in our factory in Itatiba and that I also would not be able to travel any more this year, without any doubts I would have immediately called an ambulance for taking him to hospital. But sometimes fiction turns into reality, as in the present Covid-19 case. And all this has happened almost overnight, without any prior notice, so that we were practically overwhelmed by the new circumstances and did not have a chance, to prepare ourselfes for what was coming and happening so quickly around and with us.

Not too long ago, a situation like the one we have right now would have interrupted almost all our business processes and rendered any productive continuation of our industrial and general business key functions – mainly because of inefficiently functionning communication and decision processes – restricted, if not impossible. Nobody really noted this attentatively before, but even in countries like Brazil, where this always was a major deficiency and everybody complained endlessly about it, the internet has become widely available, very fast and impressively stable and also the mobile fone networks work almost perfectly – where they are available. And this seems to be the same situation all around the globe in practically all other countries on all continents, at least in the major cities.

In Brazil we can clearly and proudly state, that most companies, which are continuing to function throughout the whole Covid-19 crisis, are perfectly carrying out their normal, fundamental business processes and routines without major limitations regarding their functionality and performance. In the contrary, during conversations and experience exchange with several MD colleagues from other companies I have gained the impression, that in general many of our routinary work processes have obtained measurable efficiency increase and that the efficiency and productivity of many administrative and indirect employees has substantially augmented. And this is exactly the same sensation which I have gained referring to my own work efficiency and overal productivity. When commenting this to others, I use to say “I work and live double since Covid-19 has hit us and changed our world and at the same time I also enjoy double my time and my activities”. 

This might sound crazy, maybe even cynical, but please think about it a little bit more profoundly. Like it or not, how many totally unproductive hours for strictly unnecessary activities (Toyota people would call this “waste”), which formerly during a normal office day were keeping us from focussing on what we really wanted to do, did we spent every day, as f.e. driving to the company, going out to a lunch restaurant by noon, driving home again in the evening etc ? If You live in a city like Sao Paulo, You can easily follow my thoughts about this – admittedly cold headed and somehow provocative – statement. 

If I had tried to invite business partners in different cities or even in different countries and on different continents for holding online conferences earlier this year, bevor Covid-19 appeared, the majority of the people which I would have liked to invite, would most propably have refused to participate. 

Not many people were really open to participate in such modern meeting and communication modes and much less of them were anyhow already familiar with the utilisation of state-of-the-art online conference tools like Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex and all the others, which we altogether nowadays use freely, widely and without any reluctance. I am meanwhile seriously convinced, that the importance of personal, fisical meetings for business purposes has been way too much overestimated and that many people just have used this as an excuse for not wanting to confront themselfes with modern communication tools and technologies. 

No doubt – it is totally clear for me, that my individual situation and experience with all this has been very special. First of all I have mostly been travelling globally during the last decades and thus anyhow already got used to lead, accompany, control, motivate, correct, motivate etc our company and my management team over long distances separating us fisically during most of the time, with normally only a few weeks or days of personal, fisical presence in my office at our company resp. factory between all these travels. 

This was only possible for me without any risk to loose control, because I could fully trust my management team members and all our employees in key functions within our company. By the way, 5 years ago I have oficially appointed almost 30 of our in total 200 Vulkan do Brasil employees in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico in all different business areas and on all different hierarchical levels of our company executing key functions for our business, oficially as “key players”. I will explain this quite interesting and extremely important and successful organisational and leadership concept in a future post here in this blog. 

Actually our management team has been established at the end of 2014 during the early stages of the restructuring project, which I had initiated immediately after my arrival as the new President of Vulkan do Brasil. This wonderful, highly experienced and motivated top management team of our company has never changed since then. 

Each of us knows and accepts all other team members perfectly with regards to the individual personality, experience and work style. This easens enormously our colaboration, as well as our productivity and efficiency as a team. 

When Covid-19 became publicly known as the big new threat for each and everybody here in Brazil, we immediately established a “Covid-19 team” (Luis Trauzola / VP Admin, Ferdinand Senske / VP Operations, Marco Santos / HR & Special Projects Director and myself) and set up prompt protection measures for all our employees and for our company and business as a whole. 

One of our first decisions mid March was, to sent 70 administrative and indirect employees into home office. To be true – when we decided this, I had major doubts, whether and even if, how efficiently this would work in the daily practice and over longer periods. But already after the first days of practical experience with it, all my initial concerns became obsolete. Communication continued uninterruptedly and completely unharmed with all of them, the same as between all of us and all our external business partners, means customers, suppliers, service providers and our colleagues at all international, globally distributed Vulkan Group sister companies. 

During my countless conversations with many of our employees doing home office meanwhile since more than 3 months, the great majority confirmed, that they feel very comfortable with it and that they by themselfes do also feel a substancial efficiency and productivity increase in most of our internal and external work processes. 

During one of our routinary online “Covid-19 team” conferences we took the decision, to formally measure this now and we have just asked all our employees working in their home offices, to participate in a employee survey, in which we ask them, to answer more than 20 questions related to the new home office practice and it`s functionning and impact on each of them, their departments, our whole company  and also their famillies. After the internal evaluation of the results of this employee survey, I will share with You some insights upon the survey results and also upon our conclusions during one of my future posts. 

What I have found out with regards to our new business reality, the performance of the new communication styles and tools at our local brazilian company applies identically to our multiple projects in different other countries on all continents, where I am actively involved. None of these has been seriously affected or even completey stopped. 

During my new work day routine, I participate very often at 5am in webinars and conferences with organisations, associations, companies and all kinds of people – general business contacts, customers, friends, colleagues etc. – in Africa and Europe, during the day I am almost uninterruptedly busy doing communication with my brazilian and latin american employees, customers and many other contacts and in the later evening I am very often talking to Vulkan colleagues, customers and other contacts in Australia and in China, with whom we work closely together in several interesting projects and – for sure – related to requests for quotation and with respect to already received customer orders, where we supply the products from out of our brazilian factory. 

The world – and this definitely includes the business world – has not been interrupted, as much as some of You might imagine, by Covid-19 and many exciting and important activities continue locally, regionally and globally. The only real new situation is, that almost everybody in the business world has been heavily affected by Covid-19 and needs to adapt and optimise his processes and culture quickly, in order to be able to continue with the persecution and realisation of his objectives. 

What really hits many people, economies, industries, companies and countries much more than Covid-19 itself, is the economic recession which Covid-19 is increasingly causing. We don`t know, until when and how in the end this Covid-19 crisis will finally impact and change our world, life and business. But it is anyhow already clear, that lots of people, companies, businesses, economies, political systems and whole countries will suffer massive damages and get thrown into new environmental situations with regards to econmy and politics. 

What this means concretely for each of us is not predictable at all. But no matter the current (?) unpredictability of the future, the only way for trying to avoid the worst and to bring about new hope and light in the tunnel, is to maintain our positive fighting spirit and to never surrender and continue trying to do the very best, which each of us and we altogether are still able to. 

I hope, this gave You a good idea, of how we at Vulkan do Brasil find ourselfes confronted with this terrible Covid-19 threat and that we are all but inactive with regards to our fight for survival and ongoing achievement of our short, mid and long term objectives.

See You tomorrow here again for sharing with You my post “Brave new business world (part2) – experiences with not beeing able to travel”.