Making choices | Rolf Kunisch | TEDxBodensee

Beiersdorf AG is one of Germany’s best known and long-established companies. It is the parent company of brands such as Nivea, Labello, or Tesa – Rolf Kunisch was the chief executive of this company for eleven years and shares with TEDxBodensee that life is a series of personal choices. He advises against only doing that which others expect of you. As an alternative, he asserts that each of us should find our own way and should always be true to the motto, “Do what you do with all your heart and soul – and do it well.”

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Klaus Reichert: Rolf Kunisch, Mr. Kunisch

Whoever is acquainted with Mr. Kunish,

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

But what happened,

was that whether he was self motivated

or persuaded by others,

it is a very interesting phenomenon

and it transpired by itself.

The fascinating thing that
I've heard about him,

is that for him, his work, his company,

and his products
were the very focal point.

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

and my impression is

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

behind, next to, and under him

to whom he gave clear leadership.

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

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

towards one goal, towards one outcome.

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

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

the product, the stakeholders

-- not to cozy up to them --

but for other reasons.

I am very pleased to now
introduce Mr. Kunisch,

and offer him the stage.

Rolf Kunish: Good morning.

I want to speak with you about choices.

Not about power or drive,
but about choices.

Choices that perhaps can drive you.

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

This wasn't actually my choice,

but rather Mr. Reichert's choice

as he talked me into it.

(Laughter)

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

at least not in public,

because in April of this year

when I turned 70, I said:

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

You shouldn't have to dress up.

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

I held onto this position until today.

I'll give it a go once again.

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

what you would call "a PIP."

You know what a VIP is:

Very Important Person,

and I am the next generation

and that is Previously Important Person.

(Laughter)

You can recognize us
because every phrase,

every sentence begins with the words:

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

And no one is interested in that.

But you have to learn this.

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

Mr. Reichert very nicely said:

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

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

And he hit a nerve there,

because the question of choices is:

How do you find your choices?

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

What does a choice mean?

This is extremely important.

Not only in your work life,

but also in your private life.

I wanted to tell you something about this

and perhaps also pose the question:

How can you learn this?

How can you learn to decide,

and how can you unlearn to decide?

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

I am not allowed to advertise,

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

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

[Picture of Beiersdorf Headquarters]

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

but I'll show you one
of the leading products

so that you have seen it.

Beiersdorf is a small scale company.

It is the smallest worldwide
consumer goods corporation.

It has sales on the order
of six billion Euro,

four billion of which come
from the Nivea brand.

Nivea exists in every
country in the world.

We have about 70 - 80
subsidiaries across the world,

I have spent a lot of time traveling.

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

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

I want to make it brief,

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

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

The first big choice was

that in 1953 I decided that

I needed to have a Mercedes.

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

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

He was a director of a factory,

a rather small factory, as I know today.

But he had a Mercedes.

And that was awesome.

Why is that significant here?

Because it's a fundamental way of life.

Not everyone has to emulate it,

it was very materialistic,

and you can only
understand it when you know

how crappy the world still was in 1953.

When I started school,
there was no currency,

just wheeling and dealing with cigarettes.

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

and suddenly you could
buy stuff with paper.

That was an entirely
new experience for us.

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

it is indeed an important choice.

On the road to the top

the obvious first choice to my family

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

I should study in Marburg

because tuition was free --
I am North Hessian.

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

So everything was fixed and predetermined.

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

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

That wasn't so easy at that time,

because outside of Marburg
there was only Giessen.

Kassel wasn't there,

and, thank God, Darmstadt.

Darmstadt had the advantage

that is was a long way away from Arolsen

and I would be 200 km away from home.

That's how I decided to go to Darmstadt

to become an industrial engineer.

At that time nobody knew what that was.

Today a couple of people know.

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

I had no idea what it was

but the name was so great

that I have continued to use it.

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

I finally had to do it.

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

It is a relatively difficult choice
for someone that age

to rebel and go against their family,

but not unheard of.

The second choice was
substantially more difficult.

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

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

But I earned a salary of 1024 D-Mark.

My apartment cost me 500 D-Mark.

And my wife was pregnant.

It was easy to see

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

Then I bumped into an advertisement
from Procter & Gamble

that asked in the headline,

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

I liked that.

(Laughter)

So then I started working

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

At that time they had the Rei plants.

Procter & Gamble was
the marketing school of the nation,

even in America.

If someone wanted something,

he went to Procter & Gamble

to learn marketing and then
would go somewhere else.

It sounds absurd but there
are plenty of examples.

Jeff Immelt from General Electric
was an assistant there,

and Margaret Whitman,
who is now with Hewlett Packard

was also there.

Thus, it was the school of the nation.

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

first in Germany and then in the USA.

The third choice was in 1989,

when Procter & Gamble
relocated me to the Soviet Union.

I figured out pretty fast

that that was really not my thing.

Especially since my knowledge
of Russian is very limited.

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

Then a headhunter
reached out to me and said

he wanted to offer me
a job at Beiersdorf.

After that, I went to Beiersdorf

and was there for the past 15 years.

The most important decision

I had to make in my time with Beiersdorf

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

That was ten years ago.

Here are the headlines from that time.

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

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

to take over Beiersdorf."

That was a very difficult decision.

I knew Procter & Gamble,

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

they buy it.

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

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

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

Or do we go along,

with the high probability
of earning a lot of money?

That is a very difficulty decision.

Thank God that Beiersdorf
is still independent today.

And Beiersdorf stayed independent,

not on my account,

but rather the city of Hamburg stepped in

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

That was a good investment

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

That wouldn't be the case otherwise.

An extremely difficult decision.

And my last choice was,

as I indicated earlier:

When do I voluntarily quit?

This is also difficult

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

then you have a problem with that.

Decision making, ladies and gentlemen,

is an extremely challenging subject.

Why is it so difficult?

You know the extremes:

We speak colloquially
about the burden of choice,

or we concede
the decision making to others.

It is neither one nor the other.

It is, in my opinion,

a necessity, to define our life.

Sometimes we have to decide this.

And it's hard.

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

And we like to live with options.

We like to leave things open.

Making the decision ends that,

and that is what makes it so difficult.

Saying, "Yes" is relatively easy.

Saying, "No" is extremely hard,

but extremely important.

The best example is marriage,

as the motto says,

"You can't marry all of them."

So that means a commitment.

And we don't like commitments.

Which is why the modern media allows us

to no longer make commitments,

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

A very simple example:

Where do we want to go tonight?

What are we going to do tonight?

This is a topic that today you wait

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

before you decide.

A long time ago it was different.

A long time ago you would call
on the telephone,

but this continuous information,

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

When my first daughter
wanted to use the telephone

there was one telephone in the house.

It was in a clear, visible place.

When you wanted to make a call

you had to go to the phone

and the whole family could hear

what you said.

It was uncomfortable.

The second daughter had more luck.

By then we had a cordless phone,

you probably don't know the term anymore,

and you could go into your own room

when the reception was strong enough

and the door was not closed all the way.

But you could retreat.

An entirely different
quality of engagement.

Then came the mobile phones,

and today obviously
the chat options and the internet

being connected
simultaneously with so many,

without their parents knowing.

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

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

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

This is something that is helping us

to forget how to make decisions.

And my point here is:

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

endeavour to make the decisions

even when it hurts.

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

There you have to make decisions.

In addition you have to be clear.

We call this strategy.

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

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

You develop options for the strategy,

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

Where are the others weak?"

Then you choose which
are the strongest aspects.

And the choices that contribute
to the strongest aspects

help to reinforce them,

and these then are the decisions.

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

It is a choice between alternatives.

We're not talking about emotional choices,

which are also important.
I cannot speak to these.

These choices you must make yourself,

but there are rational decisions.

And the guideline for these
rational decisions,

your strategy, you must take
from your end goal.

My suggestion to you is

that you consider for yourself,

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

Where do I really want to go?

Where are my strengths?

What are my weaknesses?

How will I be seen from outside?

How will I see myself?

All of these are strategic questions
for your personal life,

for your future.

You must choose

and then you must evaluate.

What is actually, really important to me?

That is the hardest part.

What is really important to me?

When you have figured that out

then you can align
your choices with that.

Back to my example:

When the Mercedes
is really important to you

you have to earn money
and you have to say,

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

to earn a lot of money.

You can also practice making choices.

When you sit down on
Monday morning once a week

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

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

Then there are different possibilities.

If you didn't accomplish anything,

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

or you weren't honest with yourself.

If you accomplished everything,

the same can be said from the other side.

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

in this year, in this life?

What is actually, really important to me?

and then take action
based on this framework.

I'd like to invite you to do this.

Begin on Monday morning,

to consider what you're
going to do tonight.

It is very simple,

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

What am I? What do I want to be?

What do I want to accomplish
or not accomplish?

Those are you choices.

Accordingly, in the words of Goethe,

the decision is great and important,

but the execution
of it is equally critical.

Otherwise it remains thought simulation.

You need decisions

in order to move beyond
the mental exercise

and enter into actual life.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)