CEO Coffee Talks — with Christian Lamprechter

We are pleased to share with our network a new series of Coffee Talks with industry professionals — the visionary people, who have gathered an immense amount of knowledge in their careers over the decades. For us as a Research & Knowledge company, we have our sensors out almost 24/7: for our team, this type of learning really is the paramount.

Our first guest is Christian Lamprechter, a longtime Intel Germany Managing Director, who is now sailing towards new professional horizons. Definitely an exciting time to interview such a vibrant character full of mentorship wisdom and broad view on global businesses.

1789: Let’s start from the beginning. How did you develop your career?

Christian: I joined Intel in 1994 as a freelancer and later I also wrote my diploma thesis there. Then, in 2000, I joined as an employee. Over the 20 years of corporate career, I worked my way up from first-level manager, assistant to the General Managers of EMEA to end up as head of the entire legal entity of Intel in Germany as well as running Sales and Marketing.

After taking an extended leave I decided to leave the company in July 2020. I took this time to look into the startup scene in Europe. I am now an interim CEO to an early stage startup. I also support investors and offer strategic consultancy to founders, who want to support innovation through corporate culture. Interesting times indeed!

1789: When you started your professional career — how did you perceive the markets and its challenges vs. now?

Christian: The microprocessor-industry has a history of very short technology-cycles and it will accelerate even further. What I observed, in the last two decades is that speed and the direction of innovation are hard to predict. This is why founders and leaders have to be open-minded and agile.

Back in the 90s, the world was a global village: it was a lot about a few bigger countries dictating where a global company was heading. Nowadays, you can hardly predict where a country ends up in the internal ranking of a company in terms of revenue, profit or margin etc. Going to the market toward a very specific segment is almost impossible these days in terms of new technologies and product development.

Today cloud computing is ubiquitous. When I started at Intel, my task was to sell hosting capacities to customers — something that was unheard of. That was basically “mission impossible”. There I was, a lonely sales guy trying to sell German customers these hosting capacities with a UK based data-center. There was no way a German company would move its data center outside borders, let alone shifting it outside of their own premises.

Well yes, many IT-managers still regard cloud computing as a server-based business where the server belongs to someone else. But cloud services can provide tremendous opportunities to customers, which becomes very obvious during the Corona-lockdown. The cloud has saved our worldwide economy. That’s how I see markets: from a macroeconomic perspective, but also from the technological advancement perspective. Those early adopters of cloud computing are better off during the pandemic than those, who follow suit.

1789: Why is it that many companies trouble to driving in-house innovation and go down the path of M&As instead?

Christian: I observed a typical “herd behavior” in the last 20 years: company execs are flying to Silicon Valley to find out “what’s their secret recipe”. Upon their return home “a new mindset” is magically put in place: “Let’s get rid of the ties, impersonate casual behavior and working styles, let’s build collaboration zones and change the layout of the offices…” But that doesn’t work! Old behaviors tend to sustain.

Some tell their employees, “please, spend 10% of your time on innovation!” — that doesn´t work either! Because if you do 10 things at 10% each, you shouldn’t be surprised the accumulative result is less than 100%. You´ll lose effectivity and performance. You must concentrate on a certain issue, instead.

Fundamentally, it’s all about taking the big bets. This is what we really should learn from Silicon Valley. In its beginnings Silicon Valley was the Moonshot. It was a strong collaboration between universities and the growing industry in the area — and, of course, the DARPA, where they had a clear vision of what should be accomplished. Essentially, all those people looked up to that vision, believed in it and made it happen. That´s what innovation is all about. It´s not a 10% endeavor. It´s a 100% decision — and stick it out.

1789: Companies and their on-digitalization strategies often reveal a strong “Strategic Dissonance”: what companies “say” on paper to their shareholders vs. what they actually “do”. How to go about it?

Christian: In their book “Strategy is Destiny”, Stanford professor Robert Burgelman and former Intel-CEO Andy Grove used Intel as an example on strategic dissonance. At a given point Grove figured out that a significant portion of budget, people and processes was focused on microprocessors. He then pursued to make a strategic shift and exited the memory business, which was the company´s core business back then. Imagine, what this shift meant to employees and management. The company could have easily gone ‘belly up’. But there was a strong belief that Intel simply had to change.

I assume 70–80% of today´s Fortune 500 refer to some data driven economy in their corporate strategies and vision. But a fully data driven company requires a totally different mindset and attitude. This cultural change is hard to implement. Most so-called innovation projects are more or less a modest modernization. That’s where strategic dissonance begins. And this is why traditional companies feel uneasy when it comes to partner with startups. Their culture is disruptive and agile, their common sense is “bet the company”. Established companies are tied to reluctant customers, industry habits and sometimes aging business processes. This is my day-to-day experience as a startup CEO.

1789: So “Change starts in the head!” — Letting go of power & control is a lofty topic and oftentimes the biggest obstacle for real change. There is a saying that organizations “infantilize” employees, letting their real potential “sleep” under the bureaucratic carpet, followed by disengagement, managerial costs, lack of innovation, etc. How to approach this?

Christian: The worst thing is not talking to people about the challenge of change and ignoring the actual state of your corporate culture. If you don’t walk the talk on a daily basis things will fall apart. Employees observe closely. They smell the lies and feel “infantilized by their employer”.

Leaders usually are very quick to identify new opportunities, but they often ignore questions like: “Does my corporate culture support that?”, “Do we have the right skills?”, “Do we have the right talent and leadership capabilities needed?” Instead, leaders should ask themselves: “Where am I heading?”! Or: “Do I really care about the values and culture in the company?” And: “How can I transform these values to new horizons?”

There is another obstacle: the middle-management layer! They can disconnect vision and values. This is then what employee sense on a daily basis and this is the real threat. At this point the employees understand that the company ain’t gonna change, and they simply move on.

1789: Beyond Budgeting is a philosophy successfully practiced by Svenska Handelsbanken. It all started in the 1970’s when the new CEO saw the severity of the bank’s bureaucratic system and the company’s cost issues. The solution: “The decision power goes to the branches and its managers!”, but he had to explicitly say it over and over again. He walked the talk and kept his word.

Christian: That’s a perfect success story. Unfortunately, there are more examples where things didn’t work out. The CEO knew what it took to make the change. He stuck to that. He didn’t blink. There is a famous saying: “Trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback.” It takes years to win people’s mind and even longer to win people’s hearts, but it takes a second to lose that.

1789: So… the year 2020! How to be better prepared for the next global crisis?

Christian: Nobody could predict what would happen in 2020 — well, during a TED Talk in 2016 Bill Gates foresaw a global outbreak. But nobody had a slightest idea about the extent of a worldwide lockdown and the social and economic consequences. However, those companies who have survived and will in the future, were the ones who immediately started to think “How could we help our customers” on the very day the pandemic occurred (if not earlier) — no matter what they did or what products they were working on, or what they had in the R&D pipeline. By constantly asking this question, you tell the signal from the noise.

On the other hand, struggling companies did not ask what the people actually needed. They have focused on doing what they have always been doing. One of the former CEOs of Intel, Craig Barrett once said: “You can’t save your business out of the crisis; you have to invest in a crisis to come out even stronger.” Thus, innovation is derived from three virtues: culture, customer-orientation — and courage. There is much wisdom in Yogi Berra´s famous quote: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

Thank you, Christian!

I am Liisi from 1789 — Beyond Revolution. We are a group of experts who are fundamentally rethinking the ways future organizations are designed and led in the digital age. Contact us & let’s have a chat!