Klaus Kleinfeld: Nashville Tennessee.

Okay, that's very nice.

Adam Outland: Where in Germany?

Did you grow up again?

Or was it...

Klaus Kleinfeld: I was born in Bremen, but I left when I was 18, and my parents were refugees from East Germany.

Currently, I'm outside of New York.

Adam Outland: Well, uh, ich bin ein actor Berliner.

Klaus Kleinfeld: Oh wunderbar, let's start with that.

So, how come you speak German?

Adam Outland: Both my parents were opera singers, and they're us, born in the US, but they live 14 years in Bonn and Cologne.

Klaus Kleinfeld: And they performed there at the....

does cologne.

Cologne has an opera house?

Adam Outland: It does, yeah, yeah.

My dad performed locally at the Cologne Opera House.

Bond had an opera house still does.

And my mom performed there, and then she, she had an international career after that, and performed all over.

Klaus Kleinfeld: I love opera.

I'm also on the Metropolitan Opera board, you know, so I just love it.

Yeah, lovely, absolutely lovely.

And bond at the time probably still was the capital of Germany, right?

Adam Outland: Yes, yeah.

My dad and mom would sometimes perform in Berlin during that period.

And the way they were paid was, it was always interesting, and you always wondered if your pay would would make it back across to the other side.

Klaus Kleinfeld: What were they paid with gold coins?

It's interesting, yeah.

I mean, I went to Nuremberg, or my first place of work.

Then from Nuremberg, I went to Switzerland, you know, worked there in the pharmaceutical industry, back to Munich, and there I started my career with Siemens, you know.

And then Siemens moved me to to Erlangen.

And then from Erlangen, I was asked to go to New York, then I was asked to come back to Munich.

And then after that, I decided to leave Siemens, and I came back to New York.

And when I co headquarter was in New York, you know, so which most people don't know, because the presence was usually in Pittsburgh.

Adam Outland: You know, when you were a young man, though, did you did you already envision this, this path towards administrative leadership of of major companies?

Or were you in it for the details of the science?

Klaus Kleinfeld: And yeah, so no, I did not.

I did not imagine that.

In fact, I enjoyed learning.

I mean, I've always been curious and wanted to want to learn more.

I enjoyed being in the outdoors, doing stuff I only later realized I was forced into working when I was 12.

Was my first paying job, you know, because my father died.

So when I was so, so little, you know, but I enjoyed it.

I mean, I enjoyed working in core business.

You know, for me, it was making money, but it's also something that I I started to really like, you know, making things, doing things, you know, so to be I always enjoy being with people, and I also enjoyed complicated problems, you know.

So in the early days, I would have thought I stay in academia and and make an academic career, because I saw what some of my friends who studied with me, when who went into business, what type of jobs they had.

And I thought that I wasn't interested in that, you know.

Adam Outland: And so, I mean, 12 I just, I gotta spend a minute on this, and then we can, what could a 12 year old do?

Klaus Kleinfeld: Well, first of all, it's illegal to employ a 12 year old, you know.

But, but, but the local supermarket, first of all, I was fortunately relatively tall at a young age already, so they never asked me for a passport, you know.

So they, they needed somebody who refills the the racks, you know, and and ideally comes in early in the morning, and changes also the fresh goods, milk and stuff, you know, before the supermarket opens, and be there on the weekends, you know, and where there was a lot of traffic, you know.

So, so I did that, and they paid me two Deutsche marks an hour.

Made my first money.

The motive was very simple.

I wanted a new bike, for instance.

So things like, things I want to does a 12 year old one, you know, you want a nice bike.

And very early on, then also, I started to love music.

So then it became records, you know, I was very intrigued by this thing that had just gotten started, called software as as a as a individual, there was no way you could have a computer.

It didn't exist, you know, even the the thought of it was insane, you know.

So I wanted to, I wanted to get my hands on a computer and do programming.

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

One was where the physics.

Department.

And the other one was with the economics department, you know.

And I decided to start with the economics department, you know.

And and immediately got into software writing, which I enjoyed tremendously.

Adam Outland: You speak to this a little bit in your book.

And maybe this is a good opportunity to take, take a principle out of the story, your ability to or one's ability to untangle a problem.

It's a good visual image because they're like nuts in business, and the knots are sometimes created because of a communication issue.

Sometimes they're created because of a strategy issue, but what was a procedure that you found most helped you untangle the knots in business?

Klaus Kleinfeld: Asking questions.

I think, I think that I don't think I was shy asking questions and and I even today, and I think friends who have worked with me, and what, even those who are not friends who've worked with me, would say, closes a hypothesis generating machine, you know, because I always try to verify or falsify and find, find a course and, and I'd like to drill down to the bottom, you know, to really understand how the mechanics work.

Because that did me also well, already in school, you know, when you understand the principle, then you don't have to learn much, you know, you can deduct everything from the principle.

And in a way that helped me a lot, you know, because I also had to be very efficient with my time, because I had to do other things like work, you know, where other people could spend the time doing homework or whatever, you know, I use logic, you know.

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

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

And also, you also have to remind people that they should talk to you in non expert language, because way too often have I seen that expert language is a way to hide behind and very often, certain terms that have been coined in the expert world describe the phenomena, phenomenon in a limiting way.

I mean, language is a limiting thing.

That's one of the reasons why you see there are large differences in languages, like, for instance, the Australian aborigines when they describe the different kinds of red, you know, because they live in an environment, if you ever been in Australia and fly over it, it's red.

The same with the Eskimos.

They have gazillions of words for snow, whereas we say it's snowing and the snow is a snow there.

Yes, you know.

So.

So I always believe that you have to be careful in in accepting this terminology, because it might actually prevent you from finding the real issue.

So I asked them to explain it to me in plain language, and I would continue if they use terms, I would not be shy to say, Can you please explain how you use the term?

What does that term mean?

Then, then you get it, you know.

And very often people then say, word classes is complicated, because if somebody tells me it's complicated, I mean, but first I would say, we're in a very friendly way, yes, please explain.

I have time, you know.

Because that's the other thing that they would say, oh, takes too much time, you know.

And say, no, no, I have all the time.

I want to understand.

What is this, you know?

Why don't you explain it?

You know?

But very often, you see very quickly that they can't explain it, then you find, then very often, flaws in the logic.

The moment you have flaws in the logic, you say, why did that individual, who's supposedly the expert and not not ask these questions?

Maybe I have to get some other people looking into this.

Or maybe I have to drill even further here.

Adam Outland: You know, this brings it to mind another question where I feel that this strength of yours played out, which is that there's, there's really only been, I think yourself, that's, that's Captain multiple companies at the CEO level on different continents that are in the Fortune 500 right?

There's two companies that you've led as a CEO on two different continents, and that really hasn't been done before, and one was US based, and one was German.

So, you know, I think about the cultural and language differences between two different countries, what did you find from a leadership standpoint, as how you had to adapt?

Klaus Kleinfeld: Yeah, I think that, yes, there are a lot of differences, but the fundamentals are similar.

You know, because we all as human beings have some fundamental principles that we live by.

How we interpret certain things is different, you know, but get the fundamentals is, everybody wants respect.

And I mean respect comes to simple things, listening to somebody, you know, asking, you know, their opinion, you know, being thankful when, when they do something.

So these type of behaviors are, I think, unilateral, all around the world.

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

You know, certainly the most tricky thing is sign language, very I would advise everybody to be very, very cautious on this, you know, very carefully.

Can get you into real trouble if you think that you know the sign language and suddenly realize it means something not so nice to their sign word, you know.

But those are little things.

Those are little things you know, that you learn.

And overall, I think the commonalities, particularly when it comes to leading people, are bigger than the differences.

One other principle is that I always try to go as close to the source where the issue originated.

Because you very often you have filter processes.

I mean, the higher you get, the more filter theoretical filter processes you have, and to really understand what is going on, you know.

I mean, I would always go to the source, you know, and literally, to the person who is standing at at the machine, you know, where something is going wrong, and understanding what exactly are you observing that gets lost in translation, you know.

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

You talk to the division head, you want to make sure that you really, really go down to the core.

Adam Outland: It very rarely is, is someone's life just pure accelerated growth.

There's plateaus, there's down curves, because you've had such extraordinary success, not just in arriving in leadership at a company, but helping companies really scale and grow.

What have been some of those plateau moments that presented real challenges for you personally?

Klaus Kleinfeld: The first kind of wake up call shock was when my father died and I was 10, you know, and basically life, our life, my life, became a very different life then, because it made me ask a lot of very fundamental questions.

You know, the next one, the next biggest one, was when, after 20 years, you know, 20 plus years, I decided to leave Siemens because, I mean, obviously after 20 years, you have a lot of friends there, you have a lot of memories, you know, you feel at home.

But I decided to that's not that the environment was just not worth for me to stay on, you know.

And I move very difficult, very, very difficult, you know.

And then there's a ton of others, you know, when you when you have to restructure a certain and you you know that that how many families are affected by it.

And you know, at the same time, if you don't do it, you'll risk that everybody will get affected by it.

I mean, so by making that you can at least save the core, I hope that you can save the core, and you can never be certain you know whether it works out or not.

So you you've done the best you can, you've got all the facts together, and you hope that it will work out after you've done your your best.

And there's really nobody who as a leader.

There's really nobody who carries the burden other than you, and at least that's my that's been my view of leadership.

You know, when I when I take it on, I'm accountable and I live with the consequences and I stand up for it.

Adam Outland: Yeah.

And you know, you, you mentioned quite a bit around energy, you know, where it stems from, but also how you can recognize which quadrant you're in in that moment, one of those quadrants, I think you you've labeled as the burnout quadrant.

It's, what was it?

Low Energy, and what was the other variable?

Klaus Kleinfeld: Low energy and negative, you know, so, so burnout is basically your toast, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, that's an interesting one.

Let me take a step back, you know, I've always driven for efficiency, you know, because I also never had time had to do stuff, you know.

So I was always driving for efficiency.

I always thought it's willpower, good German willpower, boom, boom, boom, plow through, you know.

So until one day, I realized it's all about energy and why?

How did I realize that?

I realized it very straight.

It came relatively late in my leadership life, you know.

So when I realized the following phenomenon I saw around me, people really getting burned out, you know?

I also saw that not only older people, but younger people got burned out, you know.

And I thought, wow, what is this?

And then I love playing tennis.

Wish I could play better, but I love it, you know.

And in the tennis world, I saw another phenomenon.

They got older and older and older the top performers.

So I was thinking, What on earth is going on there?

You know, in the end, it's all about performance, whether you're in business or whether you're in tennis you know, all about performance.

How come that there's this dichotomy, you know?

So I started looking into it, you know, as a curious person, you know, I want to learn more about it, you know.

How can a tennis player, you know, who has no time to recover, really, you know, just 20 seconds between the serves?

How can they do that?

And how can they do it at such a late age.

And I realized that in this whole high performance scene, the concept of energy had been introduced, and that they were not talking about time management or whatever on the court.

They were talking about, how do you recharge, how do you keep your energy?

How do you get resilience?

And then I started my own journey and trying to figure out what is energy.

What gives me energy?

And I realized it's the old thing of body, mind and soul.

The body I understand, you know, but then on the mind is basically mental and emotional, and then on the spiritual side.

Nobody even talks about the spiritual sides, but those are the things there are no more.

Those are the things that give us energy, and they can also drain energy.

There's a flow in this, because you burn in the morning, you get up, you have a full tank of energy, typically, if you have slept relatively well, you know, and then you burn it through.

So, and there are a lot of tricks, you know, that the high performance players have learned, and leaders can learn the same thing.

Leaders can learn absolutely the same thing.

So in the end, we are even more high performance athletes, you know, then, then the tennis players.

Because the tennis player after the game or after a tournament, they have a time where they can go somewhere else.

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

It feels almost, you know.

So that got me into this.

And in regards to the ones, it's relatively simple.

You know, you want to be in performance one.

You know, performance one is where you have high energy, positive, but then life happens, you know.

So what do you do?

Panic, you know.

So you immediately go into what I call survival one, by the high energy, but but negative, you know.

So what do you do now?

What do you do now?

You know, you have to find a mechanism how you quickly get back into performance one.

The first thing when you go into survival zone.

It's very good.

And the human body is made for this, because it's a flight or fight response.

We get adrenaline.

Our focus goes like this.

We get superpowers.

The only thing is that the superpower lasts for an hour, for two hours maximum, and then you drop into burnout one, so you have to very quickly get back into performance one.

And what's the trick of this?

You know, there's a ton of tricks mental training, you know, figuring out the situation, but you have to be aware of it.

You get back into it.

So life is not I used to think.

I thought life is an ultra marathon.

That's in reality, your life is sprints of various distances, and recharge sprints and recharge and recharge time.

And the sprint time is not equally, equal time, you know?

It can be much, much less time today there, there is a really simple way how you can figure it out for yourself, you know.

So, so, I mean, many of us have some type of tracker, you know, so, and this tracker shows me my heart rate.

The heart rate, for me, is a super good indicator of whether you're stressed or not.

You know one.

The second one is breathing.

If your breathing gets very shallow, very fast, you know, then something is going on emotionally with you.

The third one is vision, you know, if your vision becomes a tunnel vision, you know.

You know, where you only see one thing, you know, then you know something is going on that is not healthy over a longer period of time.

You know.

So, so, so there are things that you can learn how to observe yourself.

And I would think that it's very easy to learn.

You know, I don't even have to look at the watch, and I know exactly, roughly, exactly where, where, where my heart rate is, you know.

So because somehow you you know your body, what, how the body feels, you know when, when the heart rate is outside of the one that you want it to be in.

It also requires a certain will to change.

I mean, certain will to first be confronted with the realities, which, unfortunately, very often.

I mean, we kind of know that something is not right, but in the we don't want to hear it, because it inflicts stress on us, you know, but at the same time, then, if you are not brutally honest with yourself.

How often have you seen that people have certain strange habits?

You know?

Adam Outland: That feedback loop; I've interviewed numbers of executives and leaders, and it's kind of a common feedback when you arrive at a higher level of leadership is that the honesty from your team can diminish because there's less of incentive directly to the person to be directly honest with their superior, right?

How would you go about moderating that risk for those around you?

Or how would you go about making sure the feedback was honest, even if it's not always what you want to hear?

Klaus Kleinfeld: By the way, this is one of the big differences when I was asked to move into a leadership role here in the US, for the first time, it's one of the big differences between a German environment and a US environment the US.

I mean, if you as a CEO, start a conversation and want to want a feedback from your team, it's very interesting.

The the team very often does not offer offer feedback.

They ask you questions.

And I realize that the reason why in the US you have that situation is simply because, in the US, if you want to fire somebody, you know the person is gone, literally, in a minute.

And whereas in Europe and Germany, particularly, you know, you can't fire the person you know you.

Know, go through a process, you know, because otherwise they sue you, you know, and then talk with the unions.

And so, in a way, the perceived job security is, in this case, is a positive, a positive enforcer of they are not, they are not afraid of giving you feedback, even if the feedback is against what they think you want to hear, you know, whereas here, there's more an inclination to please, please the boss.

So it's it requires a little bit more of an effort.

And I would always do it in a one on one and say, may I ask you to give me feedback, you know?

And and the and learn the rule of feedback.

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

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

If you draw a four by two by two, you know you basically you say, what do you know about yourself and what do you not know about yourself?

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

And what do others not know about you?

And the interesting thing, there is a an element there of something that others know about you that you don't know.

So what you do with feedback?

You open that window, and very often it's these things that you you don't even you don't even realize you know.

You've adopted some practices, you've adopted some language, you've adopted some some evidence you know that, or dress you know so that people interpret in a certain way, which was not your intention.

And that's why it's so important for learning.

Just look at the Navy SEALs.

I mean, they, after mission was done, they would criticize what didn't go well, you know.

And then they separate the the feedback from the person.

They don't say you are an idiot.

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

This went wrong.

It's clear whose accountability it is, you know, but it's a mutual description of how can we get to better performance.

So brutal, honest feedback cultures are the fastest learning organizations, as long as it comes with an understanding this is not about you.

This is about performance.

Adam Outland: Yeah, so many good things here.

Accountability seems to be invited by top performers.

So for you know, an executive that might be listening what you know, where they find there's sometimes accountability gaps for themselves, right?

How would you advise them to seek accountability for themselves?

Klaus Kleinfeld: Yeah, I think in general, I believe, as we just talked about feedback, I mean, you even in larger organizations, to I would highly recommend that.

And you can run this multiple times of the year.

It costs you nothing if you want to have it, have a real finger on the pulse if, particularly if you're going through transition phases, if you have made an acquisition, you know, or you have a major transformation going through, you know.

So I would highly recommend that, on a personal level, I think very often people also don't understand why this is so important.

And it comes down to what makes a great team.

You know, will you be able?

How will you be able to make a great team?

And accountability is one of those five things that are essential.

You know, if you want a high performance team, they are essential.

And it starts with trust.

You know, that's that's the core.

That's the core.

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

Secondly, we talked about this, what I call conflict, you know, is you have to be willing to live with conflict.

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

So which many people interpret that as conflict, you know, but people have to have a capability of that commitment is, a big thing, you know.

And then accountability, you know, if something goes wrong and you are committed and it's yours, it was your work stream, you basically say, hey, look, I mean, I did not do well in that moment, I will correct that.

And last one is basically the results.

And that's also interesting me, something that very often is not clear.

You would not believe how often I see when I ask mentors, CEOs, you know, and when I ask CEOs who complain about that their team is not doing what they think they're doing, and ask them, explain to me, what exactly do you want?

Do you want from them, you know?

And interestingly, I mean, then they go into a rant, you know, it has to be crystal clear.

What is, what does winning look like?

The moment you know what winning looks like, and you will you can align the team around that's what winning looks like.

Adam Outland: Wow, such a simple question to remember to ask your team members to test.

Klaus Kleinfeld: By the way, we didn't talk about purpose on the energy side.

I miss that.

I mean purposes, this thing on the energy.

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

You know, it basically focuses the energy around one point.

And as you see, light is diffuse, you know, it's nice.

You know, the moment it becomes a laser, it can cut through large walls.

It can.

And do anything, and that's like, that's what purpose does to energy the moment you know what you want to achieve, what mission you want to do.

You know, all of your energy goes to this one point.

Visioning is a great exercise.

And in my book, I have a long chapter on purpose, because a simple concept, yet a complicated concept, you know, it's a concept that the mankind has struggled with as long as we exist.

Adam Outland: What was your purpose?

What was the purpose that you landed on?

Klaus Kleinfeld: That's the other thing.

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

And, I mean, and it's not just one purpose, it can be multiple purposes, you know.

So my purpose, clearly, has always been around.

I want to raise a lovely family and have a great relationships with my children, you know.

And want to have children, and want to have a great relationship with my children and also the family of my my wife, you know, and want to be a great husband at the same time.

I mean, when I've been running large organizations or even small ones, you know, the purpose was, I want to make this successful.

And I want to help people excel in here.

The people element also was always there.

Those have been constant elements of of the of the purpose, you know.

I mean, I love it, I change it, or I leave it, you know.

So I Yes, I needed work originally, you know, for for making money, you know.

But I, even then, I lived by the principles, even then I believed, you know, I want to get energy from it, and I want to feel that it serves a good purpose for me.

Adam Outland: So I love what you said, and this may, it's kind of a great wrap up point.

And if you've you've probably seen this quote, but it's called the master in the art of living.

In this description, he says, the master and the art of living is the person that makes it so hard to tell if he's working or playing, because at the end of the day, he's always doing both.

Klaus Kleinfeld: I like that.

Yeah, wonderful.

Adam Outland: So many good lessons in here.

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

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

Where can people find and follow your your future wisdom outside of what you've authored?

Klaus Kleinfeld: I don't do much on social media.

I do LinkedIn, I mean, so my LinkedIn, LinkedIn profile, you find me on a Klaus Kleinfeld, and I do write these things myself, and I do comment, you comment also, and, yeah, so, and the book can be found on Amazon, you know, and on many other platforms.

There's also an audio book around it, you know, which I really like.

I mean, I didn't read it myself, but I like the guy who read it, and he has a wonderful voice.

I love it.

I really love it, you know.

Adam Outland: So good, great knowledge today, and coming from someone who grew up in the land of Haribo gum bears and Beethoven, really glad to spend time with you.

Klaus Kleinfeld: Well Adam, wonderful pleasure.

Yeah.

Adam Outland: Thank you so much, Klaus.

Klaus Kleinfeld: Thank you very much.