EUROPE Winner...
PATRICK KATENKAMP CEO of incadea Group
CEO INSIGHT Q
What are your most important professional achievements at your current company?
The transformation of a privately owned Austrian based company to a leading international automotive business solutions and services vendor was surely a substantial milestone in my professional career. Incadea has evolved significantly during the last couple of years from a single entity with 80 people to an international company with 14 subsidiaries and more than 500 people, and there were a lot of challenges to overcome. I had to achieve fundamental changes on the organisational culture and in parallel ensure the successful opening and operation of new offices in key markets such as Russia, India, and China. The company has responded successfully to all the challenges and is now listed in the London Stock Exchange. I would describe this as a successful company transformation, from A-Z!
Q How did you do that?
Incadea is a unique business opportunity and has a successful story to tell, however, we as a team had to put all the pieces together and developed an aggressive expansion strategy to present the great market potential to investors and shareholders. In parallel, we had to work on adapting our organisational culture for this great change and as company where employees are our biggest asset – work all together on this amazing challenge in front of us.
Q
What education or prior experience helped you succeed at your current company?
In total, I have more than 16 years of experience in the automotive sector, strategy development and implementation of global projects in large organizations. Before joining incadea in 2010, I was holding executive positions and leading international teams in companies such
as General Motors Europe, Booz Allen, EDS/HP being responsible for the implementation of various large automotive and IT projects. These international assignments and spending significant time of my career abroad together of course with my educational background helped me built a global state of mind, adapt to changes and take advantage of any great opportunity ahead.
Q
What lessons did you learn on your way to becoming a CEO?
Everything starts with a strong team and a performance culture. One of my strongest beliefs is that everything can be achieved with the right people and the right corporate culture, a culture that inspires people for innovation, to challenge the established and willingly go the extra mile. An organisation can only go the next level if a CEO has the ability to inspire, integrate different skills, backgrounds and cultural diversity and perform as one team and a CEO can only perform if he has the right team to support him
Q
What lessons have you learned as a CEO?
Mainly two: As a CEO you need to set the tone, from A-Z, you need to lead by example and this is when people will believe in you and follow your vision. The second thing is that leading international teams require a great understanding of cultural differences, so once you know about these differences you need to learn first of all how to respect and then manage them.
Q
What are the key success factors for a CEO?
You need to be a visioner, a leader and a team player! If you do not combine all these, there is not enough space for success. Another important thing is that you need to have people to believe in you and have the charisma to inspire them to work for you!
Q
What are the key challenges for a CEO?
It really depends on the organisation you lead. In each business environment you come across with different kind of challenges, however, from a very broad perspective is that of creating a ONE TEAM atmosphere, be tough but fair stand to your own values. An additional challenge is to never let the daily tasks carry you away from your main goals – you need to stay focused . These two could be ranked as the top ones.
Q Q
How did you overcome those challenges?
Making sure that your team understands that the company’s success is depended from the entire team! You need to be clear that together everyone can achieve more. The priorities issue has only one solution: Focus!
How do you manage the relationship with your Board of
Directors?
With total transparency and open communication the relationship becomes very easy. There is a very open communication line that ensures that all Board members are aligned which also helps leveraging the board’s value. I believe that the critical factor here is to build trust and your daily choices prove that you as a CEO can take the organisation to the next level and bring value to investors and shareholders.
Q
What do you look for in your successor?
First of all I am looking for visionary people, people who have a dream and the drive to make it happen. Then, as I have said before, you need to lead by example, so anything that you do in your pre-CEO life is very important and will help me judge if you can be the next one.
Q
What advice do you give to rising CEOs?
Be yourself. Be Fair. Be a Team Player! If you want to be a successful CEO, you need to place your personal career aspirations and focus on your team…and make sure that your team is focused on their goals. A good leader can be differentiated by being able to say NO when necessary… saying YES is easy but saying NO and convincing people on a tough decision is what makes a CEO. Also, I would tell him/her that becoming a CEO is not that difficult, staying a CEO is.
Q
Do you admire another CEO or a leader (current or historical)?
Why?
I do have a lot of people in mind right now, but a CEO story that I find very impressive is the one of Jack Welch, of GE. Welch’s management style is legendary. He earned the nickname “Neutron Jack” for streamlining GE in the 1980s. His philosophy has always been that a company should either be #1 or #2 in an industry, or get out. He worked his way up the ranks, first joining GE in 1960 as a junior chemical engineer. Twenty years after he transformed GE from a $14 billion manufacturer to a more than $410 billion corporation, making it the most valuable and largest organisation in the world. I find his road to success very interesting because he started as a really good engineer who knew really well what he was doing and ended up being one of the most successful CEOs in history. He proved that if you stay focused and have realistic goals, one day you can reach the top – and stay there !
Q
Patrick Katenkamp, CEO of incadea Group Website:
www.incadea.com
22
www.finance-monthly.com How do you manage organizational politics, and
conflicting personalities, interests, and views?
I believe that if you are a strong communicator, sharing your views and beliefs with your employees and
FINANCE MONTHLY CEO AWARDS 2014
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