Strategy interview with Lars Fiele, Managing Partner STREMMER Sand + Kies GmbH
Family businesses face major challenges, especially against the backdrop of generational change. Old and new managing directors meet and have gathered different views and experiences in their lives. This results in different perspectives for the future, where everyone assumes they know what will happen in the future. In addition, all employees have to be picked up and convinced of new ways. The right mix of tradition and innovation is required here.
In a world full of change and innovation, it is no longer enough to rest on the past successes of the family business and to persist in old ways. If you want a secure future for your company, you need further development, diversification and above all: openness and freedom for new ideas. But this freedom is often sorely lacking in day-to-day operations.
In the strategy interview, Christian Underwood and Lars Fiele, managing partner at STREMMER Sand + Kies GmbH, talk about how he is driving the company's digital future viability organizationally and strategically in the core business, as well as in new innovative business models and business areas, after joining the family business. Find out how this can be achieved, why apps and technology play an important role in a traditional industry, and how, despite entrepreneurial activities, you manage to take time off and discover new areas of interest in the new episode "Hope is not a strategy".
SHOWNOTES:
Detailed episode description:
Company information
STREMMER Sand + Kies GmbH is a family-owned company, founded in 1938 in Bottrop Kirchhellen and now managed by Lars Fiele in the third generation. With the STRESAN brand, STREMMER Sand + Kies GmbH is the leading supplier of riding sand in continental Europe.
Lars Fiele - Personal information
Mr. Fiele completed his MBA at the WHU. Prior to that, he completed a degree in business administration at ISM in Dortmund. He worked in change management at E.ON Ruhrgas AG and, as Director Consulting at netStart, heads the ventures and consulting activities of Professor Kollmann's company, one of the Autoscout24 co-founders and one of Germany's leading digital minds.
Since 2013, Mr. Fiele has been a member of the management board of the family-owned company STREMMER Sand + Kies, where he has been managing partner since 2017. He is also co-founder of ABOUT my Horse, a social commerce platform for equestrian fashion, as well as shareholder at Bernds Reitbodensysteme and partner at the innovation consultancy for startups, scaling and technology platforms 1stMOVER Management in Düsseldorf. In addition to his political involvement, he is also a successful startup investor, including STARTUP TEENS.
Tradition meets innovation
STREMMER Sand + Kies was founded in 1938 by Mr. Fiele's grandfather Franz Stremmer as a small company with only one truck. Since then, the company has grown steadily, the strategic focus has been set anew and one has said goodbye to some former business fields, such as civil engineering and earthmoving.
In the 1990s, the demand for high-quality riding sand increased sharply, partly due to advancing information on equine health. The then riding arena builder of the German Olympic Committee Hermann Duckek was enthusiastic about the sand of the STREMMER company. Mr. Fiele reports that probably every successful company had a little moment of luck and that was the bit of luck for STREMMER, which allowed the company to grow very strongly in the equestrian sand niche. In the meantime, STREMMER supplies riding sand particularly strongly to Western Europe and the niche makes up an important part of the entire company.
STREMMER is particularly characterized by its combination of tradition and innovation. The somewhat traditional industry has left the topic of innovation out of the equation for a long time, because until then it was not necessary to take action here.
But now they face the challenge that many things are changing, especially at the political and social level. There is an increased demand for demand with, at the same time, limited availability. So the company now has to ask itself what is going to happen over the next 80 years. Accordingly, Mr. Fiele started thinking early on about what could be done alternatively as a family business, but which would also be close to the core business. That's why innovation plays a very important role here in order to show future perspectives.
Mr. Fiele's path into the family business
It was not Mr. Fiele's plan to join the family business from the beginning. He has traveled a lot abroad, worked in various companies, including large corporations and consulting firms, and has been able to pick up a lot of knowledge, meet great people and experience a lot. With the experience he has gained, however, he has also learned to appreciate the chance to join a family business that is doing well. Here, too, Mr. Fiele makes it clear that this opportunity also has a luck factor that not everyone has.
The decision finally came after many discussions within his family. Because such a decision always includes other people - especially the family in the case of a family business - it has to fit in with the concept of life and entails great responsibility.
The transition between two generations and the human factor
Basically, succession is always a challenging topic. Two generations meet who have different views and different experiences, which also result in different knowledge of the future. Everyone believes they know what could happen in the future, and this differs from generation to generation.
When Mr. Fiele took over the company from his father and uncle, he faced two major challenges.
On the one hand, to see where the company currently stands and what possible future prospects there are, and on the other hand, how he can take the employees along well on this path.
The human factor in particular plays an important role in corporate succession. This does not only refer to the strategic orientation. Rather, one must find the time during one's own induction to inspire the existing employees for one's path and at the same time also to announce new paths, which can only be achieved together with the employees and their know-how. Here, trust must first be built up through many discussions, because the employees do not yet know the new managing director and do not know at this point whether and what skills he brings with him.
Modern corporate communication
In order to make communication better and more interesting, as well as to make it receptive to all areas of the company, various tools were introduced at STREMMER.
The company has a decentralized structure and most of the operational employees do not work on site. They have to be reached, sometimes at very short notice. An email conversation is not a suitable solution here. For this reason, the company has introduced various apps to enable fast and uncomplicated communication. Overall, digitization plays a very important role for STREMMER.
Process optimization and innovation
At STREMMER, all processes - whether analog or digital - were first closely examined for optimization potential, because a bad analog process would usually also be a bad digital process. Then it was examined whether necessary analog processes could be implemented more easily digitally. Initially, he made the mistake of wanting to digitize processes that did not necessarily have to be digitized. Over time, however, he learned which analog processes work more easily when digitized and which do not. The important thing here is to continue to optimize processes.
This is not only about digitalization, such as app introduction, communication, simplification of forms, etc., but one is also subject to high occupational health and safety conditions, which must be communicated and checked.
That is why the company has introduced, for example, that all instructions can be carried out digitally, online and in different languages. This ensures, through various programs, that all employees understand what is being done in the company and what their personal task is.
STREMMER has set itself the premise of continuously reviewing processes even beyond the transformation phase. In some cases, it is very easy to optimize processes, but so far no one has taken care of this. In the future, there should be no processes that show undiscovered potential for optimization.
In addition to process optimization and further development, innovation plays a major role in the company. Although the industry continues to develop, also technologically, it faces major challenges overall. In particular, the topic of energy plays a major role, which cannot be directly influenced by Mr. Fiele. Even when working with large solar systems, the mining fields that are not basically connected to the power grid cannot operate with solar systems alone. Electricity must always be laid, which is obtained from the "normal" sources and thus also causes high energy prices. At first it is difficult to change this, even if one says one would like to set on renewable energies.
Sustainability
Especially due to the direct work with, in and on nature, the topic of sustainability is important at STREMMER. The company tries to minimize the CO2 emissions of its truck fleet. These are measured, digitally recorded and evaluated on a monthly and daily basis, and then published internally. Externally, there is still no interest in this data, but it is assumed that this will change in the future. STREMMER is working hard to reduce CO2 emissions and improve the company's ecological footprint. Employees are also being sensitized to this issue.
At some point, there will be no more sand available in the mining area. That's why the company's future outlook is based primarily on diversification and on very early preparation. But you can only diversify if you know what is possible. You only know what's possible if you also get out and look at things. This includes a variety of sources, such as trade fairs and discussions with potential customers of the future, where Lars Fiele obtains new innovation and future ideas for the company. He also encourages his team to spend as much time as possible talking to other people and gathering ideas.
Find new topics
In order to find new subject areas, three pillars are particularly important for Mr. Fiele.
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Getting ideas from outside
Above all, this means networking and open communication, the willingness to break new ground and to include young, creative people in the team, to support them and to spend time on them.
STARTUP TEENS provides a good example. Here, the current topic of GurtGrip was brought to STREMMER's attention by a young man who was looking for someone with knowledge of equestrian sports to support the market launch of his idea for a special saddle girth pad. -
Promoting the proactive expression of ideas
It is important to clearly signal to people who surround you on a daily basis - for example, employees - that they can express their ideas, that they are willing to support them, that they have the freedom to do so, and that they are not afraid of failure.
When ideas were tried out in the past and it was realized after weeks that they would not work in the future, it was particularly important to Mr. Fiele to signal to the idea giver that although this idea had not worked, he was still looking forward to further ideas and impulses. -
Creating entrepreneurial freedom
Lastly, Lars Fiele himself, together with his family, plays an important role. As the youngest in the family team, he is the one who bears the responsibility of leading the company into the future. To this end, he puts a lot of thought into his work and tries to keep his mind free for new ideas. Since this is difficult in the daily, operational business and with the current crises in the world, he advises everyone to find their own way.
Lars Fiele achieves this freedom by exercising, going for a walk or getting up early, during which he takes an hour for himself - without input from others - to think about new, interesting ideas. He gets his best ideas in times of quiet.
Entrepreneurial freedom creates new ideas
Creating free space is particularly important in the development of innovations. This is achieved, among other things, by supporting the resources available in the company. This includes, for example, accounting, infrastructure, both in terms of office space and IT, contact with lawyers, notaries and tax consultants. In this way, the founders can and should concentrate entirely on their core business.
For Mr. Fiele, however, the decisive factor is the people and their attitude. He has developed a 70/30 rule for himself. 70% represent the knowledge of a person, as a basic requirement. But how the person is in his friendliness, cosmopolitanism, attitudes not only to work, but also in dealing with other people, is for him just as important as the expertise.
You need people you can rely on, who work independently and have the desire to become entrepreneurially active themselves. Furthermore, it also makes sense to regularly exchange problems with these people.
Find top performers
There are various ways of recruiting good employees for the company. For operational, commercial employees, the classic model is to rely on social media channels. In addition, the company tries to be known and to defend a good reputation, which is generally an important criterion for the corporate brand.
In the search for suitable managing directors, the company primarily relies on its own network, which has always worked well so far. An example of this is Bernds Reitbodensysteme, where the managing director and also co-partner Björn Bernds, Mr. Fiele was already known for years.
Continuously working on your network, building it in the right direction and getting to know people properly over time is therefore very important.
1stMOVER Management and the development of hubs
In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, Lars Fiele is also a consultant at the innovation hub 1stMOVER Management. The company has already been around for 15 years. The founding partners have been active in the digital scene for a very long time and are very successful there. 1stMOVER Management is a type of innovation consultancy that specializes in building new business models in addition to digital.
They have used the establishment of the digital hub in Düsseldorf to develop other hub models.
Most recently, the hydrogen startup hub "H2UB" was established in Essen together with Open Grid Europe. There, hydrogen-related startups can develop together with various participating partners. Among other things, this is also intended to grow the topic of hydrogen in Europe as a whole and at the industrial location in the Ruhr region.
In the meantime, the operational business has been completely transferred to the hub and will only continue to be supported by 1stMOVER as a sparring partner for a while.
There are also already other hub ideas for all kinds of innovations that are currently present on the market, which should be concentrated and where the opportunity should be created for startups to use existing infrastructures of large companies and where large companies have the chance to learn about ideas and developments from startups. So it's a win-win situation.
Tips from Lars Fiele on how to create entrepreneurial freedom for new ideas
Most important of all are good employees and partners you can rely on. It is important not to have to be on site and still be able to trust that the company is running. This also means investing in people and being attractive as an employer.
You also have to create space for yourself, for your family, but also for yourself, to think and tackle new things and thus develop yourself and the company.
Contact:
Need help planning your strategy process? Feel free to email christian@underwood.de.
Thank you for your interest and until the next episode...
...Because HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY.