Do you picture the search consultant arriving at his office around 9.30, with a view over Odeonsplatz or perhaps the Kö?
Admit it, that’s roughly how you imagined it:
he pats his well-fed stomach and arranges lunch with his business partners. Far from it.
I imagined it differently at first, too.
The people we look for and meet are rare and busy. Meeting them takes personal commitment. They meet us as equals, but nobody in our circle throws their whole diary out of the window because the search consultant wants a word.
The same goes for our private equity clients: whoever flags is out. So we get moving, even if it means an ungodly hour.
By the way, the woman who served me my cappuccino had been on her feet for 12 hours,
right across Germany.
I asked her what the nights on the train are like.
“Hard,” she said.
She doesn’t get a long-term incentive or an exit bonus.
I share some of the criticism of where Germany stands today, but I also see plenty of people who still give it their all. Candidates who commute hundreds of kilometres every week, CEOs and CROs who take on (have to take on) very unpleasant tasks, right through to the woman who runs the dining car all night.
So there’s a lot of good out there too. Ulrich Schnabel wrote about it in his 2023 book “Zuversicht” (Confidence): it’s the perspective that counts.
