Götz Werner: 5 things we can learn from the dm founder

"Outcast son. Real dreamer. Founder against his will." 

That's how Götz Werner describes himself in his autobiography. 

"What I Never Counted On."

Götz Werner was considered a pioneer of modern management methods, fought for unconditional income and promoted visionary corporate ethics. As a trained druggist, he was actually supposed to take over his father's drugstore business. But because of his "stupid ideas," he was fired early on by his father. Disowned by his father in his late 20s, without support but with a vision that hardly anyone shared.

In the 1970s, the entire retail industry was in a state of upheaval. Instead of the usual traditional drugstores with small sales areas and counters for serving and selling, Götz Werner wanted to apply the discounter principle, which ALDI had already exemplified, to the drugstore sector: Doing away with everything that was standard for the retail trade at the time and thus concentrating on quality and price. Werner's concept: "tight assortment, pure self-service, low prices. Despite all skeptics, he finally implemented his idea and became the founder of the dm drugstore chain, which he managed for 35 years.

As the company grew, Götz Werner changed his management style to "dialogic management" characterized by respect and appreciation. On this occasion, we highlight 5 aspects of his life philosophy that we as entrepreneurs can learn from. 

1. people as the focus of entrepreneurial activity

"Business means working for one another. People are the purpose." For Götz Werner, this applied to both the customer and the employee. It is not a matter of awakening any needs in the customer in order to sell him unnecessary stuff. It's about serving people and not their wallets.

Götz Werner spoke out against top-down employee management. Instead, it is a matter of working with each other with the mutual awareness that every employee counts for the company. The employee is given trust so that he can "act on his own insight and responsibility. This makes his actions authentic.

2. understanding the company as a process

If something has led to success in the past, many simply try to reproduce it. But the view must always remain forward and not backward. Changes in circumstances require different skills and different strategies. It is necessary to constantly question the company, to reinvent it again and again.

"Only a bureaucrat acts from the past. The entrepreneurial person always starts anew. He acts on the basis of today and what he anticipates from the future - strengthened with the skills he has developed in the past."

3. from know-how to know-why

"People who know why and for what purpose their work is needed are willing and able to perform genuinely. The more convinced they are of the meaning of their work, the more committed they become." Many people misunderstand leadership as manipulation, as pressure that has to be put on employees. As if you have to show the employee the ropes and make them do something they may not want to do. The modern leader should not answer the how but the why and wherefore. Not pressure is the appropriate means, but a positive pull that attracts employees.

4. not letting adverse circumstances get you down

Götz Werner's ideas often didn't meet with much approval. But he didn't let the admonishers, skeptics and know-it-alls get in his way. "Those who want something will find ways; those who don't want something will find reasons." If something goes wrong, you have to put it away. Instead of looking for mistakes, one should go "forward-looking in search of solutions." "The path to success only becomes apparent in retrospect."

5. constructive dissatisfaction as a motor for innovation

"An entrepreneur is someone who always seeks the new, who has a constructive dissatisfaction with the prevailing circumstances in order to take the new steps." He goes through the world with a "soulful openness" and understands the given circumstances not as a problem but as a challenge. One has to go through the world very awake, listening carefully, observing and reflecting again and again. "The constructively dissatisfied person always has an idea. He goes through the world with the question: How can I improve this? How can I develop this further?"

"Every person is an entrepreneur - a life entrepreneur. Every person writes his own biography. A life is as unpredictable as a business, but both can be shaped. The important thing is to be aware of that. As soon as I do that, I look at the world differently. I judge each day and each task differently. After all, everything I do is part of my biography. And I always invest my lifetime."

 

How do you want to shape your biography? What do you want to invest your lifetime in?

Get inspired at the Entrepreneurship Summit 2022 in October. Götz Werner has already been a speaker at the Summit, and this year we will once again have many thought leaders as guests who will address the small and large questions of our society.    Among others, brain researcher Gerald Hüther and publisher and author Florian Langenscheidt will be there in 2022.

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