Leading to Thrive, with Klaus Kleinfeld – Episode 490 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Klaus Kleinfeld, the former CEO of Siemens and Alcoa and the only leader to have successfully served as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies on different continents, recalls going to work at age 12, and covers the perils of sign language in the business world, getting close to the source of an issue, why we should be talking about energy instead of productivity, the “rule of feedback”, the 5 critical components of a high performance team, why purpose is a laser, and being a “hypothesis generating machine”.

About Klaus:

Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld is the only leader to have successfully served as CEO of two Fortune 500 giants on different continents: Alcoa in the US and Siemens in Germany. With a nearly forty-year career spanning multiple industries, from established businesses to tech startups, he has advised US presidents and global leaders across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. As the founder of K2Elevation, he invests in North American and European tech and biotech firms. Actively engaged in private sector, public affairs, and cultural boards, Dr. Kleinfeld, a dual US and European citizen, enjoys work, life, and family near New York.

Today, Klaus is an international manager, investor, and entrepreneur. He is the Founder and CEO of K2Elevation, a company that invests in and develops international enterprises in the technology and biotech segment. Currently his portfolio consists of activities in Germany, Austria, and the US. He is Chairman of KONUX and Chairman of FERNRIDE, a member of the supervisory boards of GreyOrange, Fero Labs and NEOM as well as an Advisory Partner at EMH Partners GmbH.

Prior to this, Dr. Kleinfeld was the first CEO of NEOM. He is a member of the NEOM board and advises the Kingdom in matters of economic development. From 2008 to 2017, he served as Chairman and CEO of Alcoa/Arconic. He steered the company through one of the worst commodity crises in its history while building out high-value aerospace, jet engine, and automotive businesses and positioned the company in innovative high-tech sectors, finally allowing the company to be successfully split into Alcoa and Arconic.

Previously, Dr. Kleinfeld had a twenty-year career with Siemens. He became CEO of Siemens AG in early 2005, and successfully led the company through a substantial transformation. Prior to this, he had been President and CEO responsible for the largest Siemens region, the Siemens U.S. Corporation. In this function, he successfully restructured the U.S. operations, and this resulted in a sustainable turnaround. During his tenure at Siemens, Dr. Kleinfeld held various positions in the medical, telecommunication, IT, automation, and power generation businesses. Before Siemens, he worked as a product manager in the pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland. He began his career in consulting.

Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld is an Honorary Senator of the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting, an Honorary Trustee of the Brookings Institution, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Board of Directors of The Metropolitan Opera. He was appointed advisor to several U.S. Presidents in various roles, was also a member of the Global CEO Advisory Council of Premier Li of the People’s Republic of China, a member of the Mayor of Shanghai’s International Business Leaders Advisory Council, and served as a member of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of Russia, the Chairman of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, and the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum. He also served on the boards of the Center of Disease Control, Turner Construction, Bayer, Citibank, Hewlett Packard, and Morgan Stanley. Dr. Kleinfeld was born in Bremen, Germany, and holds both an MBA from the University of Göttingen and a PhD from the University of Würzburg, Germany. He holds a dual citizenship from the USA and Germany and lives in New York. 

Learn more at Leading-To-Thrive.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Klaus Kleinfeld
Oh, Nashville, Tennessee. Okay, that’s very nice.

Adam Outland
Where in Germany did you grow up again? Or was it G-

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. Um-

Klaus Kleinfeld
Oh, wunderbar.

Adam Outland
Yeah.

Klaus Kleinfeld
Wunderbar. Then let’s, let’s start with that. So how, how come you speak German?

Adam Outland
Um, both my parents were opera singers and, uh, they’re, they’re US, uh, born in the US, but they lived 14 years in Bonn and Cologne.

Klaus Kleinfeld
And, and, uh, they performed there at the, um… Does, does Cologne… Cologne has an opera house, right?

Adam Outland
It does, yeah. Yeah, my dad performed locally at the Cologne Opera House. Bonn had an opera house, still does, uh, and my mom performed there. And then she, uh, 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, so I lo- I just love it. Yeah, lovely. Absolutely lovely. And Bonn at the time, probably still was the capital of Germany, right? I mean-

Adam Outland
It was, yeah. My, my dad and mom would sometimes perform in Berlin during that period. And, uh, 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?

Adam Outland
Yeah.

Klaus Kleinfeld
Yeah, it’s interesting. Yeah, I mean, I went to Nuremberg for my first place of work. Then from Nuremberg, I went to Switzerland, you know, worked there in the pharmaceutical industry. Back to Munich, uh, 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 joined Alcoa. Alcoa’s headquarter was in New York, you know, so which most people don’t know because the presence was usually in Pittsburgh, you know?

Adam Outland
When you were a young man though, did you d- 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 and-

Klaus Kleinfeld
Yeah, so no, I did not. I did not imagine that. In fact, um, I enjoyed learning. I mean, I’ve always been curious and wanted to, wanted to learn more. I enjoyed being in the outdoors doing stuff. I, I, I only re- later realized I was forced into working when I was, uh, 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, “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? Started to be… L- I always enjoyed being with people. Um, and, um, I also enjoyed complicated problems, you know? So in the early days, I would have thought I’d stay in academia and, uh, and make an academic career because I saw what some of my, uh, friends, uh, who, who studied with me when… who went into business, what type of jobs they had. And I thought that, uh, 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 talk. What, 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, uh, but the, the local supermarket… First of all, I, 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, uh, ideally comes in early in the morning and changes, uh, also the fresh goods, milk and stuff, you know, before the supermarket opens. And be there on the weekends, you know, and, uh, where there was a lot of traffic, you know? So, so I did that and they paid me two Deutsche marks, uh, an hour. Made my first money. The motive was very simple. I wanted a new bike, for instance, you know ? So, so, so, so things like, things… Uh, what does a 12-year-old want, you know? He want a nice bike. And, uh, 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, uh, 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, at Göttingen, there were only two locations where I could program. One was with the physics department and the other one was, was 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 then… 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 knots in business. And the, the knots are sometimes created because of a communication issue. Sometimes they’re communi- you know, created because of a strategy issue. But what, what was a procedure that you found most helped you untangle the knots in business?

Klaus Kleinfeld
Asking questions. I think, I think that, uh… I don’t think I was, uh, shy, uh, 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 worked with me would say that Klaus is a hypothesis generating machine, you know, because I always, uh, try to verify or falsify and find, find a course. And, uh…And I’d like to drill down to the bottom, you know, to really understand how the mechanics work. Because that did, 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, uh, 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 f- fa- fault, you know? So I first of all, I, I don’t think there is such a thing than a, than a wrong question, you know? So you also have to, um, uh, remind people that they should talk to you in non-expert language, because way too often have I seen, uh, that expert language, uh, is a way to hide behind. And very often, uh, certain terms that have been, uh, coined in, uh, in the expert world, uh, describe the phenome- phenomenon in a limiting way. I mean, language is a, 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, uh, because they live in an environment. If you’ve ever been to Australia and fly over it, it’s red. The same with the Eskimos. Uh, they have gazillions of words for snow, whereas we say it’s snowing and the snow is… There’s snow there, yes, you know? So, so I always believe that you have to be careful in, in accepting the, this terminology because it, it, it might actually prevent you from ri- uh, 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 that term? What does that term mean?” And then you get it, you know? And very often people then say, “Well, Klaus, this is complicated.” And because if somebody tells me it’s complicated, I mean, at first I would say in a very friendly way, “Yes, please explain. I, I have time, you know?” ‘Cause that’s the other thing that they would say, “Oh, it takes too much time, you know?” I’d say, “No, no, I have all the time. I wanna understand. What, 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 not, not ask these questions? Maybe I have to get, um, some other people looking into this, or maybe I have to drill even further here, you know?”

Adam Outland
This brings to, to mind another question where I, 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 captained 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. Uh, so, you know, I, 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, uh, 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, uh, I mean, respect comes to simple things. Listening to somebody, you know, asking, you know, their opinion, you know, uh, being thankful when, when they do something. So the- these type of behaviors are, uh, 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 careful. That can get you into real trouble, uh, if you think that you know the sign language and suddenly realize it means something not so nice to-

Adam Outland
Yeah.

Klaus Kleinfeld
… their, their sign world, you know? But those are little things. Those are little things, you know, that, that you learn. And overall, I think the commonalities, uh, particularly when it comes to leading people, are, 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, uh, 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, I would always go to the source, you know, and re- literally to the person who is standing at w- at the machine, you know, where something is going wrong and l- understanding what exactly are you observing that gets lost in translation. You know, uh, I mean, at, at a certain level, you, I mean, you don’t even talk to the head of the, to the head of the, uh, uh, factory anymore. You talk to the division head. You wanna 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. Klaus, you’ve had such extraordinary success, not just in arriving in leadership at a company, but helping companies really scale and grow. What would’ve 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, and I was 10, you know, and basically, life, uh, 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, I mean, after 20 years you have a lot of friends there, you have a lot of memories, you know, you feel at home. Uh, but I decided to… that’s not… that the environment was just not, uh, worth for me to stay on, you know, and I, I moved…. 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 cert- 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 will risk that everybody will get affected by it. I mean, so, uh, by, by making that, we 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, 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 y- your, your best. And, uh, there’s n- really nobody who… As a leader, there’s really nobody who, uh, carries the burden other than you. Uh, 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. Uh, 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, as the burnout quadrant. It’s um, l- what is it? Low energy and what was the other, uh, variable?

Klaus Kleinfeld
Low energy and negative. You know?

Adam Outland
Yeah.

Klaus Kleinfeld
So, so burnout is basically you’re toast.

Adam Outland
Yeah. Yeah.

Klaus Kleinfeld
Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting one. Le- let me take a step back. You know, I’ve always, uh, 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.

Adam Outland
Yeah.

Klaus Kleinfeld
So until one day, I realized it’s all about energy and, uh, why did… How did I realize that? I realized it very straight. It came relatively late in my leadership life, you know. So wh- 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, I love playing tennis. Wish I could, 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, uh, 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 in trying to fi- 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, it’s basically mental and emotional. And then on the spiritual side, nobody even talks about the spiritual sides, but those are the things they 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 the… And, 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, than, than a tennis player is because a tennis player after the g- 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, I, I, it feels almost, you know. So that got me into this. And, and in regards to the zones, it’s relatively simple. You know, you wanna be in performance zone. You know, performance zone is where you have high energy, positive. But then life happens-

Adam Outland
Yeah.

Klaus Kleinfeld
… you know? So what do you do? Panic. You know, so you immediately go into what I call survival zone. Uh, but 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 zone. 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 zone. So you have to very quickly get back into performance zone. 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, I used to think… I thought life is an ultra-marathon. But it’s reality, life is sprints of var- of various distances and recharge, sprints and recharge. And recharge time and the sprint time is not equa- equal time. You know, it’s, 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, I mean, many of us have some type of tracker, you know. So… And, and this tracker shows me my, uh, heart, 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, uh, 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, 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.

Adam Outland
Mm-hmm.

Klaus Kleinfeld
So, um, because somehow you, you know your body, uh, what… How the body feels, you know, when, when the heart rate is outside of the, the zone that you want it to be in. It also requires a, a certain will to change, I mean, certain will to first be confronted with the realities…. uh, which unfortunately very often, I mean, we kind of know that something is not right. But in the end, 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, uh, kind of a common feedback, uh, when you arrive at a higher level of leadership, is that the, the honesty from your team can diminish because there’s less of an incentive, uh, to, directly to the person, to, to be direct and 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 wanna hear?

Klaus Kleinfeld
By the way, this is one of the big differences. When I was asked, uh, to move into a leadership role, uh, here in the US for the first time, and it’s one of the big differences between a German environment and a US environment. In the US, I mean, if you, as a CEO, start a conversation and wanted, wanted feedback from your team, um, it’s very interesting. The, the team very often does not offer, offer feedback. They ask you questions. And, uh, I, I realized that the reason why in the US you have that situation is simply because in the US if you wanna fire somebody, you know, the person is gone literally in a minute. Uh, and whereas in Europe and in Germany particularly, you know, you can 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 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so in a way, the perceived se- job security is, in this case, is a positive, a positive enforcer of… Uh, 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, uh, there’s more an inclination to please, please the boss. So it, it’s, it’s, it’s, it requires a little bit more of an effort. Uh, and I would always do it in a one-on-one and say, “May I ask you to give me feedback?” You know? And, uh, 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 f- uh, a 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 y- you don’t even, uh, y- you don’t even realize, you know? You’ve adopted some practices. You’ve adopted some language. You’ve adopted some, some habits. You know that… Or dress, you know, so that people interpret it in a certain way, which was not your intention. A- a- and that’s why it’s so important for learning. Just look at the Navy SEALs. I mean, they, after a mission was done, they would criticize what didn’t go well, you know, and then they separate the, the, the feedback from the person. They don’t say, “You are an idiot. You didn’t do. You didn’t do.” They would say, “This went wrong. This went wrong.” It’s clear whose accountability it is, you know? But it’s a neutral 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. S- so for, uh, you know, an executive that might be listening, wha- you know, where they find there’s sometimes accountability gaps for themselves, right, how, how would you advise them to seek accountability for themselves?

Klaus Kleinfeld
Yeah. I think in general, I believe, uh, as, as we just talked about feedback, I mean, you, even in larger organizations, I would highly recommend that. And you can run this multiple times over 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, to live with conflict. By conflict here, I mean it’s also, uh, very critical feedback, you know? So, which many people interpret that as conflict, you know, but people have to have the, the capability of that. Commitment is, is 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 to me, something that very often is not clear. Uh, you would not believe how often I see when I ask, uh, I m- uh, I, I mentor c- CEOs, you know, and when I ask CEOs who complain about that their team is not doing, uh, what they think they’re doing. And I 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, uh, 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, to test.

Klaus Kleinfeld
By the way, we didn’t talk about purpose on the energy side. I, I missed that. I mean, purpose is this thing on the energy… Uh, it’s, it’s a very interesting thing because purpose does to energy what la- a laser does to light. You know, it basically focuses the energy around one point. And as you see, light is diffused, you know, it’s very nice, you know. The moment it becomes a laser, it can cut through large walls, it can 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 wanna do, you know, all of your energy goes to this one point. Visioning is a, is a great ex- exercise and, uh, in my book, I have a long chapter on, 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, my purpose changed and, and, um… I mean, and it’s not just one purpose, it can be multiple purposes, you know. So my, my purpose clearly has always been around I wanna raise a lovely family and have a great relationships with my children, you know, and wanna have children and wanna have a great relationship with my childrens and also the, the, the family of my, my wife, you know, I’d wanna be a great husband. At the same time, I mean, when, uh, I’ve been running large organizations or, or even small ones, you know, the purpose was I want to make this successful and I wanna help people excel in here. The people element also was always there. Uh, those have been constant elements of, of the pur- of the purpose, you know? I mean, I love it, I change it or I leave it, you know? So I, I… Yes, I, 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, a, a, a good purpose for me.

Adam Outland
So, uh, I love what you said. And, and this may… It’s kind of a great wrap-up point, and if you’ve… Uh, you’ve probably seen this quote, but it’s called The Master and the Art of Living. In this description he says, “The master in the art of living is the person that makes it so hard to tell if he’s working or, or playing, because at the end of the day, he’s always doing both.”

Klaus Kleinfeld
I like that.

Adam Outland
Yeah, wonderful.

Klaus Kleinfeld
Mm-hmm.

Adam Outland
So many good lessons in here, Klaus. I know we could probably go for another hour, um, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll stay to our time. The book was wonderful to, to do an initial read through, um, and I’d recommend it. Wh- where can people find and follow your, your future wisdom outside of what you’ve authored?

Klaus Kleinfeld
I don’t do much, uh, on social media. I do LinkedIn. I mean, so my LinkedIn, LinkedIn profile, you find me under Klaus Kleinfeld. And I do write these things myself and I do comment , recommend also. And, uh, yeah, so… And the book can be found on Amazon, you know, and, uh, and on many other platforms. There’s also an audiobook around it, you know, which I really like. I mean, I didn’t read it myself, uh, but I like the guy who, who, who read it and he has a wonderful voice. I love it. I really love it, you know .

Adam Outland
Yeah. Uh, so good. Great knowledge today. And, and coming from someone who grew up in the land of Haribo gummy bears and Beethoven, uh, really glad to spend time with.

Klaus Kleinfeld
Well, Adam, wonderful, pleasure.

Adam Outland
Yeah. Thank you so much, Klaus.

Klaus Kleinfeld
Thank you very much.