My wonderful first encounter & great friendship since then with Alfred Gehlen, Great Master of Fighting Arts

Hello again here in my blog to all my readers and followers. Today I am definitely late with my post, but I have an excuse, which will hopefully find Your acceptation. 

Since I have received so uncredibly many wonderful messages in linkedin from friends, business partners and general contacts from all over the world on my birthday, I had originally decided, just to answer to all these collectively in my birthday post. But this morning I came to the conclusion, that this would be unfair and I changed my mind and decided, to answer personally all these highly appreciated messages. And I started directly with it, but because of the really huge quantity of greetings messages, I did not even get through a third of all these until now. 

But You don`t need to worry and may continue to trust my words and discipline. I will definitely conclude with answering all birthday greetings in the latest until tomorrow evening. And with respect to how I will deal with this next year, we can relax and leave it open, until then. As the British say "Let`s cross the bridge when we get there".

When I went through my foto collection last night, I decided to share a wonderful personal and professional experience in my today`s post with You, which I have made in September 2009 during my time as Managing Director of BOS Automotive Irapuato in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. 

At that time I had a very nice circle of friends over there. Many of them were also top managers for other international industrial companies, which had - the same as ourselfes - set up their plants in the quite new business parks in this strongly growing part of the country. Most of them were also automotive parts suppliers. 

One of my closest friends during this time was Knut Steinkamp, who at that time was CFO & Vice President Transformers Americas at Siemens - Energy Sector, Transmission division. And on one sunny sunday, Knut invited me and my familly for going out for lunch and spending a nice afternoon in a Bavarian beer garden in Leon, Guanjuato. As a special guest Knut invited also his friend Alfred Gehlen, who had just finished a week of management trainings at Knut`s Siemens plant. That was how I got acquainted with Alfred and when we started our great friendship. 

Alfred Gehlen (https://www.managerseminar.de/) is a really impressive and highly successful personality. Actually Alfred has started practising Taekwon-Do, a famous corean martial art, back in 1973 and since then he became Great Master of Fighting Arts, Member of the Martial Arts Halls of Fame USA and Europe, two times he won the German International Taekwon-Do Championship, eight times the German Championship and 12 times the Regional Championship. During all this time Alfred gained lots of national and international awards and prizes.

Besides his martial arts sports practice and participation in numerous national and international competitions, Alfred time ago also started to use his great experiences with martial arts for doing trainings for many other people, organisations and companies. Amongst others he realised several trainings for different special forces units and also for the FBI. And for companies like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Siemens, Austrian, mobilcom, G+J, Philips, Gol and many others. 

For companies he has become a much valued and recognized management trainer and consultant. In his seminars and presentations, which can be one or a few days or even weeks long, Alfred covers training subjects like "Error culture", "Transformation Processes", "Agility", "Continuous Improvement", "Kaizen" and many others, which he normally configurates and executes together with his team members tailor made exactly as agreed upon during the initial preparation sessions with the customers. 

Let`s have a more detailed look at the meaning of the management concept of "agility":

(by Martin Luckmann, Andreas Mueller and Christiane Prange; May 28, 2015; http://agilebrains.net/what-is-agility/)

In today’s increasingly complex and complicated world, it has become ever more challenging for firms to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. For instance, the “topple rate” at which big companies lose their leadership positions, has more than doubled, suggesting that “winners” have increasingly precarious positions; product vitality rates, which measure the percentage of revenues coming from new products during a certain time, usually three years, are going up. And many of the Fortune 500-companies in 1970 do not exist anymore today.

To survive under these circumstances, it is expected that companies react quickly to rapidly changing circumstances and accelerate activities on critical paths. Companies are supposed to utilize highly dynamic procedures and processes in their operations to the extent that they invent themselves anew every couple of years. In short, companies need to become more agile. But agility goes far beyond speed. Agility refers to complex decision-making with the objective of increasing value. In order to increase its agility, a company does not only need to flexibly adapt but is required to orchestrate a variety of options, reflect on them, and finally decide to act – or to maintain the status quo. Agility is the freedom and the capability to “act otherwise”.

More formally, we define agility as the ongoing development and maintenance of decision-making capability under changing circumstances. A basic requirement for agility consists of clear and understandable objectives, responsible leadership, respectful communication, a suitable learning infrastructure, and the ability to experiment and play around with new ideas. As linear extrapolations of the past, with managers trying to categorize well-known problems into boxes with strategy labels, are no longer promising, the ability to increase decision-making capability is vital. This involves a higher degree of experimentation, playfulness, and tolerance for ambiguity. Eventually, agility prepares for managing under uncertainty.

Agility is one of Alfred`s management training specialities, where he offers a interesting fusion between classical training methods and contents and the active application of his great martial arts know how.

As a boy I always was fancy for learning and practising martial arts. But unfortunatelt due to my life circumstances and personal development during all the movals to different living places, I did not get started on this. Only later-on, during 1999, when I just had arrived back to Germany from my three years engagement as Project & Engineering Department Manager at Henkel do Brasil`s chemical and adhesives plant in Jacarei, Sao Paulo, I participated during one year in "Kempo" trainings in a martial arts studio in the western German city of Essen, where I lived during that time. 

Shorinji Kempo (少林寺拳法, shōrinji-kempō, meaning "Shaolin Temple Fist Method") is claimed to be a modified version of Shaolin Kung Fu (using the same kanji). It was established in 1947 by Doshin So (宗 道臣, Sō Dōshin), a Japanese martial artist and former military intelligence agent, who combined his quanfa and jujutsu practice.

I had great fun and suffered a lot during my Kempo training sessions in which I participated during the whole year 1999. I would definitely not describe it as "unfortunately", but due to my acceptation of the invitation by the global COO of Henkels cosmetics division Schwarzkopf & Henkel, to take over new responsabilities as Managing Director of the freshly aquired famous "La Toja" cosmetics plant in La Coruna, Galicia, in the north of Spain, I left Essen and Germany for La Coruna, Spain, at the beginning of  the year 2000. Thus my practice of martial arts came to an abrupt end again and since then I never found again the opportunity to retake these. In one of my future posts, I will give You some insights about my other sports activities and the importance of practising sports for my life and health. 

My great friendship with Alfred continues since our first personal meeting in Mexico and also my great friendship with Knut Steinkamp, who meanwhile lives also in Brazil and has become PMK - Comercial Project Manager at Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems and just recently also Chief Financial Officer at Águas Azuis Construção Naval SPE Ltda (https://www.consorcioaguasazuis.com/), the consorcium between Thyssenkrupp Marine, Embraer and Oceana, which has been awarded the contract for building the four new Tamandaré class corvets for the Brazilian Marine. 

With a warm embrace for Alfred and Knut I finish my today`s post and sharing of personal & professional experiences, because lunch time has come on this wonderfully sunny saturday here at Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I live together with my lovely familly.

I wish all of You also a relaxing and happy weekend and hope to meet again with You here in my blog for my tomorrows post. Take care. Enjoy. "After action - satisfaction". Did You remember this from my first posts?