THINK ACT

world. There’s no point having detailed
expert knowledge unless it can be
shared with everyone within a very
large organization.
So what would you say is the perfect
size? Is it possible to lay down hard
and fast rules?
Götz Werner (right):
“If you’re successful, you
gain a customer base,
and then you grow.”
Werner: You always strive for the
optimal, and everything you do
is sub-optimal. Once you realize
there’s a difference between the two,
you move on to a new stage in your
development, so growth comes from
outside, not from inside. If you’re
successful, you gain a customer base,
and then you grow.
That’s the logic of growth. But why
can’t you say: “We have a very
profitable company, let’s stay
that way”?
Wittig: I’m a strong advocate of growth,
both for businesses and economies,
because it creates more opportunities
for more people. If you try to stop
China from growing, you’re excluding
a large proportion of the world’s
population from prosperity. We have
to live with that and find ways of
dealing with the consequences of
growth. But I think we should always
have a growth component to our
philosophy, because if you don’t grow,
you stand still. Growth is the only
way of coming up with new ideas and
trying out new concepts.
Werner: I prefer to say development
rather than growth. Growth is pretty
superficial, it’s about numbers, but if
you have a company culture that says
people must develop themselves, that’s
clearly about quality. Quantitative
growth is the logical consequence of
development.
Wittig: The automobile industry is
a good example of that. In terms of
numbers, western markets are largely
saturated, and electric cars have
relatively low development potential
compared to the industry as a whole.
But in quality terms, it’s a completely
different picture; there’s still a lot of
potential in personalizing products to
individuals’ needs.
Werner: We have 1.2 million customers,
and we could always provide a better
service to them all.
In terms of customer focus, how
important is it to give branches a
lot of autonomy, and are there instances
where a good old-fashioned
hierarchy works better, even if it’s
less socially acceptable?
Wittig: Nearly all industries and
services have completely different
organizational models, and centralized
THINK ACT SEPTEMBER 2011 5