WEBVTT

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Klaus Reichert: Rolf Kunisch, Mr. Kunisch

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Whoever is acquainted with Mr. Kunish,

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knows that he doesn't like
to be in the spotlight.

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But what happened,

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was that whether he was self motivated

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or persuaded by others,


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it is a very interesting phenomenon

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and it transpired by itself.

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The fascinating thing that
I've heard about him,

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is that for him, his work, his company,

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and his products
were the very focal point.

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Mr. Kunisch has made some 
very significant moves in his life

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and my impression is

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that he is a person who had
a very large team of people

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behind, next to, and under him

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to whom he gave clear leadership.

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In doing so, he has this energy that
he puts into his team, the individuals,

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so that they don't go off
in all directions, but are channeled

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towards one goal, towards one outcome.

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I believe that he, as leader of the team,
has shown them the way.

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That he contributed to the welfare 
of the group, the company,

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the product, the stakeholders

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-- not to cozy up to them --

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but for other reasons.

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I am very pleased to now
introduce Mr. Kunisch,

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and offer him the stage.

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Rolf Kunish: Good morning.

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I want to speak with you about choices.

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Not about power or drive,
but about choices.

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Choices that perhaps can drive you.

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The first choice I'm going to talk about
is the decision to speak here.

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This wasn't actually my choice,

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but rather Mr. Reichert's choice

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as he talked me into it.

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(Laughter)

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I didn't really want 
to give any more speeches,

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at least not in public,

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because in April of this year

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when I turned 70, I said:

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After 70, you shouldn't have 
to speak in public anymore.

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You shouldn't have to dress up.

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You should only have to look after
your family and your grandchildren.

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I held onto this position until today.

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I'll give it a go once again.

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I am, if you will
-- it always sounds a bit funny --

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what you would call "a PIP."

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You know what a VIP is:

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Very Important Person,

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and I am the next generation

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and that is Previously Important Person.

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(Laughter)

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You can recognize us
because every phrase,

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every sentence begins with the words:

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"Don't you know how important I was?"

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And no one is interested in that.

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But you have to learn this.

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And being willing to learn this
is a an individual choice.

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Mr. Reichert very nicely said:

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"When you have been 
the head of a MDAX company,

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then you have something 
to give back, to pass on."

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And he hit a nerve there,

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because the question of choices is:

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How do you find your choices?

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How do you know when it's not a choice?

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What does a choice mean?

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This is extremely important.

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Not only in your work life,

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but also in your private life.

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I wanted to tell you something about this

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and perhaps also pose the question:

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How can you learn this?

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How can you learn to decide,

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and how can you unlearn to decide?

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This is what I'd like 
to talk with you about.

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I am not allowed to advertise,

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but I sat in this building 
at the top right for 15 years.

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This is taken from the Web
and so is not confidential.

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[Picture of Beiersdorf Headquarters]

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Also I don't have any intention
to promote products,

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but I'll show you one
of the leading products

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so that you have seen it.

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Beiersdorf is a small scale company.

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It is the smallest worldwide
consumer goods corporation.

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It has sales on the order
of six billion Euro,

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four billion of which come
from the Nivea brand.

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Nivea exists in every
country in the world.

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We have about 70 - 80 
subsidiaries across the world,

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I have spent a lot of time traveling.

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But I have also spent time
now and then with decision making.

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The big question is:
how do you get to the top?

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I want to make it brief,

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but you need to know about
a couple of important choices.

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The first big choice in my life
was not: "get to the top."

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The first big choice was

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that in 1953 I decided that

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I needed to have a Mercedes.

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In 1953 it wasn't very common
to have a Mercedes.

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There was only one person 
in our area who had one.

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He was a director of a factory,

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a rather small factory, as I know today.

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But he had a Mercedes.

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And that was awesome.

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Why is that significant here?

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Because it's a fundamental way of life.

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Not everyone has to emulate it,

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it was very materialistic,

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and you can only
understand it when you know

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how crappy the world still was in 1953.

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When I started school,
there was no currency,

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just wheeling and dealing with cigarettes.

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When I turned seven,
the D-Mark came along,

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and suddenly you could
buy stuff with paper.

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That was an entirely 
new experience for us.

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Though to say, "I want a Mercedes,"
sounds trivial,

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it is indeed an important choice.

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On the road to the top

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the obvious first choice to my family

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was that I should become 
a lawyer, like everyone else.

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I should study in Marburg

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because tuition was free --
I am North Hessian.

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Well then you can go into
the same fraternity as your father.

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So everything was fixed and predetermined.

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When I was 16 - 17 years old
I went through the normal rebellion,

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and said, "I want
to do something different."

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That wasn't so easy at that time,

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because outside of Marburg
there was only Giessen.

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Kassel wasn't there,

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and, thank God, Darmstadt.

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Darmstadt had the advantage

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that is was a long way away from Arolsen

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and I would be 200 km away from home.

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That's how I decided to go to Darmstadt

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to become an industrial engineer.

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At that time nobody knew what that was.

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Today a couple of people know.

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Back then it was quite new
and I thougt that was great.

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I had no idea what it was

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but the name was so great

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that I have continued to use it.

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After I'd been saying for two years,
"I'll be an industrial engineer,"

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I finally had to do it.

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That's how I went to Darmstadt,
and not to Marburg.

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It is a relatively difficult choice
for someone that age

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to rebel and go against their family,

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but not unheard of.

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The second choice was 
substantially more difficult.

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At that time I was an assistant
at the University in Cologne

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and should have and wanted
to follow a scientific career path.

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But I earned a salary of 1024 D-Mark.

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My apartment cost me 500 D-Mark.

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And my wife was pregnant.

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It was easy to see

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that 1024 D-Mark was not going to make it.

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Then I bumped into an advertisement
from Procter & Gamble

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that asked in the headline,

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"Do you want to earn a lot of money?"

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I liked that.

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(Laughter)

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So then I started working

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at Proctor & Gamble, a company 
that was totally unknown at that time.

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At that time they had the Rei plants.

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Procter & Gamble was
the marketing school of the nation,

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even in America.

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If someone wanted something,

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he went to Procter & Gamble

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to learn marketing and then
would go somewhere else.

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It sounds absurd but there
are plenty of examples.

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Jeff Immelt from General Electric
was an assistant there,

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and Margaret Whitman,
who is now with Hewlett Packard

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was also there.

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Thus, it was the school of the nation.

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It was great and I worked my way up
to product manager,

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first in Germany and then in the USA.

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The third choice was in 1989,

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when Procter & Gamble
relocated me to the Soviet Union.

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I figured out pretty fast

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that that was really not my thing.

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Especially since my knowledge
of Russian is very limited.

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But I was General Manager for
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

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Then a headhunter
reached out to me and said

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he wanted to offer me
a job at Beiersdorf.

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After that, I went to Beiersdorf

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and was there for the past 15 years.

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The most important decision

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I had to make in my time with Beiersdorf

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was the question: do we sell the company
to Procter & Gamble or not?

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That was ten years ago.

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Here are the headlines from that time.

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[Taking over Beiersdorf 
won't be easy: Kunisch]

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It says here, "Kunisch would
make it difficult for anyone

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to take over Beiersdorf."

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That was a very difficult decision.

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I knew Procter & Gamble,

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and that when Procter & Gamble
wants to buy a company,

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they buy it.

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There is not a single case
where they had failed at this.

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The question that my wife 
and I had to answer, was:

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Can we fight back, though there is 
a high probability of failure?

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Or do we go along,

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with the high probability 
of earning a lot of money?

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That is a very difficulty decision.

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Thank God that Beiersdorf
is still independent today.

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And Beiersdorf stayed independent,

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not on my account,

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but rather the city of Hamburg stepped in

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and laid one billion Marks
on the table and bought it.

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That was a good investment

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because today Beiersdorf continues
to be a solid taxpayer in Hamburg.

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That wouldn't be the case otherwise.

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An extremely difficult decision.

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And my last choice was,

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as I indicated earlier:

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When do I voluntarily quit?

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This is also difficult

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because when all of a sudden
you are no longer truly important,

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then you have a problem with that.

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Decision making, ladies and gentlemen,

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is an extremely challenging subject.

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Why is it so difficult?

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You know the extremes:

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We speak colloquially 
about the burden of choice,

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or we concede
the decision making to others.

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It is neither one nor the other.

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It is, in my opinion,

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a necessity, to define our life.

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Sometimes we have to decide this.

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And it's hard.

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Because once you've made a decision,
your options are eliminated.

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And we like to live with options.

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We like to leave things open.

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Making the decision ends that,

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and that is what makes it so difficult.

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Saying, "Yes" is relatively easy.

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Saying, "No" is extremely hard,

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but extremely important.

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The best example is marriage,

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as the motto says,

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"You can't marry all of them."

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So that means a commitment.

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And we don't like commitments.

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Which is why the modern media allows us

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to no longer make commitments,

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that is, everything that
you do today, with chats, etc.

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A very simple example:

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Where do we want to go tonight?

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What are we going to do tonight?

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This is a topic that today you wait

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until seven or eight o'clock
in the evening to discuss

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before you decide.

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A long time ago it was different.

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A long time ago you would call
on the telephone,

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but this continuous information,

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this always-being-available,
didn't exist earlier.

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When my first daughter 
wanted to use the telephone

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there was one telephone in the house.

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It was in a clear, visible place.

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When you wanted to make a call

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you had to go to the phone

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and the whole family could hear

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what you said.

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It was uncomfortable.

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The second daughter had more luck.

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By then we had a cordless phone,

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you probably don't know the term anymore,

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and you could go into your own room

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when the reception was strong enough

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and the door was not closed all the way.

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But you could retreat.

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An entirely different
quality of engagement.

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Then came the mobile phones,

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and today obviously
the chat options and the internet

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being connected
simultaneously with so many,

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without their parents knowing.

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Back to the very simple question,
"What are we doing tonight?"

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Where as before you had 
to decide earlier in the day,

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now you don't have to decide
until seven o'clock in the evening.

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This is something that is helping us

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to forget how to make decisions.

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And my point here is:

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make an effort to -- I will say
a few more words about this --

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endeavour to make the decisions

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even when it hurts.

NOTE Paragraph

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I'm going to use the economy
as an illustration.

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There you have to make decisions.

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In addition you have to be clear.

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We call this strategy.

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It is very simple --
make a plan to reach a goal

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and you have to consider 
what will lead to the goal.

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You develop options for the strategy,

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such as, "Where am I strong?
Where is my company strong?

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Where are the others weak?"

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Then you choose which
are the strongest aspects.

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And the choices that contribute
to the strongest aspects

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help to reinforce them,

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and these then are the decisions.

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That means you need to set
a benchmark for the decisions.

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It is a choice between alternatives.

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We're not talking about emotional choices,

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which are also important.
I cannot speak to these.

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These choices you must make yourself,

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but there are rational decisions.

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And the guideline for these
rational decisions,

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your strategy, you must take
from your end goal.

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My suggestion to you is

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that you consider for yourself,

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not every day, but maybe
every three - four months:

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Where do I really want to go?

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Where are my strengths?

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What are my weaknesses?

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How will I be seen from outside?

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How will I see myself?

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All of these are strategic questions
for your personal life,

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for your future.

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You must choose

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and then you must evaluate.

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What is actually, really important to me?

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That is the hardest part.

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What is really important to me?

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When you have figured that out

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then you can align
your choices with that.

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Back to my example:

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When the Mercedes
is really important to you

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you have to earn money
and you have to say,

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I'll take on some hardships
in order to earn money,

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to earn a lot of money.

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You can also practice making choices.

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When you sit down on 
Monday morning once a week

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and ask: What do I want
to accomplish this week?

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And then sit down on Friday
and see: What did I accomplish?

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Then there are different possibilities.

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If you didn't accomplish anything,

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then either your goal wasn't right 
or it wasn't important,

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or you weren't honest with yourself.

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If you accomplished everything,

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the same can be said from the other side.

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Meaning, you must consider the question:
What do I want accomplish in this week,

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in this year, in this life?

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What is actually, really important to me?

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and then take action 
based on this framework.

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I'd like to invite you to do this.

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Begin on Monday morning,

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to consider what you're 
going to do tonight.

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It is very simple,

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and will lead you,
in the long run, to consider:

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What am I? What do I want to be?

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What do I want to accomplish
or not accomplish?

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Those are you choices.

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Accordingly, in the words of Goethe,

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the decision is great and important,

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but the execution
of it is equally critical.

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Otherwise it remains thought simulation.

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You need decisions

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in order to move beyond
the mental exercise

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and enter into actual life.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)