And when my boss found out that my wife speaks Swedish and he had the first five Swedish beers he said you know Ralf, from Monday onwards if she can speak Swedish then you should speak Swedish. And from the next week onwards all the board meetings were in Swedish, not in English anymore.
Andy:Welcome to Career-view Mirror the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry. Looking back over their careers so far, sharing insights to help you with your own journey. I'm your host, Andy follows. Ralf Zimmermann listeners, Ralph is a Kaizen evangelist and customer service enthusiast who has spent his career helping to transform automotive businesses. His passion for the Toyota way the Toyota Production System and Kaizen evolved through multiple job rotations throughout Toyota during a 24 year tenure with the brand, which included holding the position of General Manager After Sales Operations at Toyota Motors Europe, General Manager After Sales at Toyota Sweden and Regional Manager Sales and After Sales at Toyota Deutschland. He spent over eight years with Al Futtaim Group in Dubai, three years of which were in the role of Managing Director Al Futtaim Automotive, Ralf's currently working in Doha in Qatar as Group Director of After Sales for Jaidah Group. It was my absolute pleasure to talk with Ralf about his career. As you'll see, he's an incredibly warm and friendly human being and very open and generous in sharing his experiences, as well as allowing me to question him about the unique methods and culture used to powerful effective Toyota, he was equally happy to talk holistically about the role his wife has played in his journey and the impact on his family of their international life. I'm excited to give you the opportunity to get to know Ralf through his episode, and I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. If you enjoy listening to my guests career stories, please follow Career-view Mirror in your podcast app.
Aquilae Academy:This episode of Career-view Mirror is brought to you by the Aquilae Academy. At the Academy, we turn individual development into a team sport. We bring together small groups of leaders from non competing organisations to form their very own academy team. We build strong connections between team members and create a great environment for sharing and learning. We introduced the team to content that can help them tackle their current challenges. And we hold them accountable to take the actions that they decide as priorities. We say, we hold our team members feet to the fire of their best intentions. We do this internationally with teams across the world. If you'd like to learn more about the academy, go to www.aquilae.co.uk.
Andy:Hello, Ralph, and welcome. And where are you coming to us from today?
Ralf Zimmermann:Hey, Andy, thanks for making time. So I'm in I'm in Doha, Qatar at the moment.
Andy:Fantastic that's a place that I have passed through the airport. That's all I haven't set foot in the country itself. So thank you for joining me. And where did your journey start? Where did you grow up? Where were you born?
Ralf Zimmermann:So I'm born and raised in Germany. And my terrible accent tells you that of course. So I'm I'm born in the 60s in the middle of the 60s in Bonn in the former capital of Germany, a small place which consists of small villages, 300,000 population. That's where I'm born and raised.
Andy:Right. And please, I'm going to ask you a little bit about your childhood and growing up and your family situation. I do this with all of my guests. Personally, I think it's really fascinating to understand where people started out and what their life was like as a child. So did you have brothers and sisters?
Ralf Zimmermann:Oh, yeah. Elder Brother, eight years older than myself. Quite a great guy engineer, right. spent his whole life in, in the in the broadcasting industry. So on high tech stuff, which looks like NASA offices with a lot of screens and a lot of high tech cameras and stuff like that, yeah great guy. And I've grown up with my basically my single mother. I mean, think about it in the 60s, a single mother. That was not the standard like today, right? And with an amazing grandma. We lived in her house in grandma's house. And Grandma was born in 1909. Right? I'm saying that because she was the most funniest person you can imagine. Right? And always with a strange joke. Usually a little bit inappropriate. But if you think about her life, right, she is really a role model grandma Kathy 1909 means that when World War One started, she was six years old. And her beloved elder brother passed away, he died, he did not come back. And when the second world war started, she was just married with two children. And her husband came back from Russia as one of the last ones in Germany. So he came back in 54. Right, wow. So her her life was a struggle, how people cannot imagine today. And again, she was the most funniest and beloved person you can imagine. I think that her sense of humour and her way to approach people respectful, and funny, and nice to everyone has has impacted a lot in my life. She's a super role model. So it's really, really somebody I'm missing a lot grandma Kathy, right.
Andy:She sounds wonderful, Ralf. And yes, what a you know, what a tough life to have had that you describe, she really the timing could not have been worse really for, for being born and growing up and so fascinating. That could have gone different ways. But for her, it turned her into an incredibly friendly, warm, special person. And some of that has rubbed off on you. Definitely, I can tell that already. So you had an older brother, who was very bright worked in broadcasting, your mum was a single mum, so And Grandma Kathy, was there as a huge influence in terms of values and how to behave. What about the sort of jobs that you had sight of what roles did you have visibility of when you were growing up?
Ralf Zimmermann:Yeah. So it was I mean, we were surrounded mainly by that was a little bit of suburban of this Bonn city. So yes, Bonn people believe there are politicians. And of course, that was a version of my hometown. But we were kind of a working class family. Very basic. People had to work hard for their money. That was very obvious. As I said my grandma's profession, she was a tailor all her life. Right? So she worked hard, my mother was working in an office as a small office clerk. Right. So that was all working class, hardworking people. Of course, there was a car workshop around the corner, which might have impacted and we might talk about this later, there was a car workshop around the corner, where I from time to time, help washing cars and doing stuff like this. So there were some engine roaring around right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.
Andy:Okay, so there was a little bit of possibility there of some influence and early opportunity to get your hands dirty in the workshop. What was school? Let's just briefly talk about school. Do you have good memories of school what sort of a student were you?
Ralf Zimmermann:my school career was not great. I was not a super student, right. I was more interested in my moped, in girls and guitars, and not so much into what these people could have helped me with. There were some teachers who really stood out. And that taught me that it's all about people. It's really about the motivation, because the mathematics was the same. But when I changed school, and there was a different teacher, suddenly I got it. And before that, my brain was the same but it was just the motivation, which made the difference. So one of my I called him uncle, in fact, that was a friend. The family was friends of my mother. His name was Klaus Bleidon, he was a teacher, and he helped me after school to improve my mathematics. And he was just amazing, the way how he could explain things, the way how He basically took me on board, this rebellion, little teenager idiot, who was not really following school properly. That taught me a lot. So he was also quite significant in me getting back to a proper school career and then later even studied engineering. Right? That was pretty much history. Yeah.
Andy:That's a really interesting point Ralf, that idea that the subject matter was the same, your brain was the same. It was the interface that changed, the user interface if you like the motivation to learn and what an important role teachers have and if you get a good one, what a difference that can make. So what subjects were you leaning towards at school or what did you want to do when you left school?
Ralf Zimmermann:As I said, I'm grown up basically in a village in a part of the suburb of Bonn and all my friends. We were all into mopeds and later cars and motorbikes and stuff, so it was like a natural herd, which moved into this car technician leaning to this engineeering or technician or mechanic thing. And that was what I was looking at. And in the beginning, the motivation was not the big fascination or the big plan. It was just that's what all my friends did. So I followed them. And yes Oh, yeah, that seems to be great. And so I started this, you know, we have this apprenticeship system, the dual education. In Germany, where you are in a business, in my case, that was a car dealership, and in parallel, you go to a vocational school and after three, three and a half years, you are you have your exam as a technician, basically, and that the first thing was always my friends and fun, we all do that together. And, you know, the place I'm grown up is not far away from the famous racetrack, the Nurburgring. I'm not sure if that tells you anything. So that's our living room, right?
Andy:Oh, my goodness. So we
Ralf Zimmermann:So weekends, we spent there watching races, right. And later, basically, later, I have driven on the Nurburgring with everything on two or four wheels. But as a kid or as a youngster as a teenager and a young adult. That was our story, right? Like, we were hanging out together in the beginning with motorbikes. And later was the cars and we were driving up and onto this thing. So that was driving my professional interest at the beginning very much. It was about fun Andy very much
Andy:that no, that does sound amazing. And that's my my brother's favourite place on Earth is the Nurburgring. And he loves, He loves to visit I have not yet been. But I can imagine growing up that would be incredible, and a big influence. So you were drawn by your friends, really that was the current was going in the direction of that sort of work. And it's this wonderful system you have where you get to carry on studying as well, but you're working in a business. And so you started out as a mechanical technician. And the whole journey really has stayed in the automotive world. Ever since hasn't it. But you've, you've really achieved some very senior roles and travelled extensively as a result. So tell us please a little bit about the early days of that journey and how you got on the trajectory that you you've been on,
Ralf Zimmermann:basically, basically having been in this car dealership, and then at that time, military service was still something you had to do. So I followed that. And that was also in the workshop with trucks and so on. And then after this military service, I decided to put something on top of the education because I knew that I will not stay my whole life in the car dealership. I was very glad about the education. But I also saw the limits of this environment. I think I had something in mind like being a trainer or being an expert assessing cars or something. So I went to this academy for two years, which is like an engineering grade, you could say right, a lighter engineering grade this level in Germany. And when I finished that after two years and by the way, this school for me, it was maybe the most successful piece of school or education I ever did on the academic side. Because if you think about it after my not so great school career after my working in a dealership see what real work looks like with greasy hands and tough environment. And after military services, it made very much click and I understood, wow, how great is this environment I'm allowed to learn. Education suddenly became something which I valued much higher in this later year. So it was quite a successful thing. And it allowed me to also write my final thesis about the development of car dealerships and network. So my, my horizon had grown a little bit with that step. So I applied on jobs after the successful Academy and one of the jobs I applied for was at an agency which was looking for people for Toyota Germany. So the German distributor of Toyota cars in in Germany and which was a very small business, right, of course, you know, Bonn is close to Cologne and Cologne is fourth fourth of Europe is located in Cologne, big factories, very dominant, you would basically say that's the place where you go. Toyota at that time was a 2% market share one of these Japanese guys, right end of the 80s in Germany, so and when I applied at this agency, it was pretty much let's say training myself in interviews, that was my main motivation was to go there, after this academy finished and I have to do some interviews to get some confidence right, was quite funny. And very much later, the boss who interviewed me at Toyota you know, he said, you know why you got that job? It was clear that you had no experience on Toyota whatsoever. But you were the most confident guy we were talking too. Quite interesting experience, it seems that it was relatively laid back in the interview.
Andy:Do you think that was because you were only doing it for practice?
Ralf Zimmermann:That's the thing. Yeah, that's the thing. So that was something I took away later also for other circumstances. So it's really the question of how confident you are or how, what is your motivation to walk into, let's say critical situations? Quite an interesting question right if you ask yourself
Andy:Yeah, no, very much so, if the way you're thinking about this interview is I'm not actually here to get the job, I'm here to get some experience, then you're totally relaxed, takes the pressure off you and you perform, you perform well.
Ralf Zimmermann:And that's the thing, right? Again, the person is the same, the brain is the same. It's just the way how you walk into the situation and condition yourself, which is quite an interesting observation. Right? So yeah, I felt Yeah, yeah. And that started the journey. And so I started on a customer hotline and technical support hotline as one out of three guys. And I was surrounded by super experienced people who sat on this hotline since 10, or 15, or 20 years with Toyota .So I was a super junior. And that went very well, that went absolutely surprisingly well, because I was able to use the tools and the books, I was able to communicate quite clearly, with technicians, or foreman in a workshop. But I was also it seems that I was able to handle customer complaints quite well. And the takeaway from this first job from me was really that this is the best place to understand customer satisfaction, and especially the opposite. What makes a customer totally dissatisfied. And it's interesting, in the Toyota world, this is the core of the operation, right? measuring customer satisfaction, on the one hand to understand the improvement and Kaizen, and all this, but on the other hand, also, how do you fix a case, when you really messed up a customer situation? How do you fix that? How do you gather information? And then how do you understand the real motivation of the customer and the total story, and then fix it and understand the cracks in your organisation and the weaknesses in your organisation to fix them? Right? So it was it was a great, maybe eight months of learning on this job.
Andy:It sounds like a very good place to start in the business. Because you're getting the feedback, you are at the point of the business where feedback is coming in all day, hundreds of examples, giving you very good intelligence of what's going on, as you say, What's probably mostly What's upsetting your customers, not many calls to tell you what they're excited about. And I'm thinking, Okay, you were good at that. The technical background you had been in the garage, you know, you'd done the technical side so you'd be comfortable with that. But the the attitude towards dealing with people, we know that's special, and that doesn't necessarily come from work. But you said you had this wonderful grandmother who had been a huge influence. And I imagine you watched her how she treated people, she treated people with respect. And so you would have, even by that age had a good idea of how to treat people,
Ralf Zimmermann:I believe that a certain sense of humour. And of course, yes, I'm German. So people might not believe that this exists in Germany, but a certain sense of humour and interacting with people is helping to, let's say, loosen the conversation from the beginning, right, I believe that's true.
Andy:Yeah, and a warmth, you know, what I get from speaking to you already is a warmth and a you give me confidence that we could sort something out, if I came to you with a problem, you'd give me confidence that okay, I'm in good hands here, he's gonna help me sort this out. So you almost got into Toyota by accident. So there wasn't a long ambition to get into Toyota. And then you found yourself in this wonderful seat in Toyota, where you could really get exposed in a very short space of time to all the feedback that was coming in about how the products were, and amazing culture in terms of kaizen and how to how to deal with it and a focus on the customer. So where did you go after that customer service role what what happened next?
Ralf Zimmermann:So, once you are in in an organisation of course, you have access to the internal job applications and stuff which offers and, and there was another element which I found and looking back which I found quite significant. Look, the the service department of Toyota Germany was maybe 200 people. But this little unit, this four people unit, which is listening to customers was basically located in front of the Office of the General Manager. So maybe the most exposed location you could have in customer services is this. And the reason is because managers in Toyota are educated to listen to customers voice. So my boss, Mr. Schmidts, right, that was the General Manager, the big the big guy in this whole thing for me the most senior hierarchy there. He was passing by our desks every day. And sometimes he stood and he listened. And he asked questions. And that was a great piece of education, because suddenly I realised he's naturally interested in this, he's not just making a nice conversation, he wants to understand. Why is the organisation in Germany where the problems, what can I fix, because that's the other thing. So that was quite an impression. And that made me believe that this is a great organisation, and I should better try to find a job in this organisation. So one opening, which came up even after five months or so four months was they created a new department called service development. So that was all all the non technical stuff, from training to tools, from KPIs data, to measuring customer satisfaction to basically marketing, what kind of service marketing it was all in the beginning and end of the 80s that was not really developed in a small distributor like Toyota, Germany. And it happened that I wrote my final thesis in the academy. Exactly on this topic. I wrote basically, I did some work on looking to a customer dealership, the one I did my apprenticeship this Volksvagen thing. How did that look like in the 60s, when when a technician and the business guy got together an accountant and a technician created a little workshop. And when I was there, it was a unit, which was selling 1000 cars a year, Volksvagen, Porsche and Audi. And how had that develop? What were the decisions they had taken? How has the industry developed? That was my thesis. And that fit perfectly as a kind of as an attachment to my CV? To my application? And yeah, obviously, I had made a bit of an impression. So they gave me the job. But I was the happiest man on earth, right? So started the job in Toyota in 1989. Basically, yeah.
Andy:So what was that job, then Ralph.
Ralf Zimmermann:So at that time, the dealer network of Toyota was 750 locations all over Germany, right, so quite a big network of workshops, and they need help to improve their service. That starts with having the right technical manuals and the right tools. So the administration of this service backup, right, the organisation of the training for those people, the organisation of measurement of customer satisfaction, and now one of my first projects was starting, of course, initiated by the big mother in Japan. And maybe that's important to know, Toyota, Germany at that time was already 100%, daughter of Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan. So technically, I was hired by TMC. And they initiated the first global customer satisfaction survey. So we implemented that in Germany, it was quite a thing for German dealers that we started to ask their customers, how happy are you, with your dealer down there in Bavaria, and the learnings from that and the analysis, and the big element was starting to establish major service indicators for our dealers to say, how what can you learn? How can you improve? What is the profitability which should come from your parts from your service, and so on. So start to develop the service and the parts business as a business, which is a contributor to profitability, and not just the ugly, oily, greasy thing. We're just behind the shiny showroom, right? So what was great because it was a setup of a department, only elements of it were there before and I was asked together with two three other people to set up this part of the business right and grow that great experience. I was quite glad to do that.
Andy:Yeah, no, it sounds, I mean, that became has become such an important part of the, the business now and to think that at that time, it was just the very beginning of turning it into a profit centre rather than just a must have. It seems also that this is quite sophisticated work that you're doing. So you've really come quite a long way from the mechanical tasks of fixing the cars in quite a short space of time. So like you said, the raw materials the same brain, but now with an appetite, an interest, a passion a fascination an appreciation for I like this business. I like the way they focus on customers. I like the way they try to improve things and I want to stay here and then an ability. With that interest. You had the ability then to really get into the details of understanding what what these 700 Plus dealers needed, what processes what systems they needed in place in order to make this transformation in transforming that part of the business.
Ralf Zimmermann:Yeah, At that time, the term aftersales didn't even exist, right? The vertical, the vertical was like a super silo service. And there was another silo parts. And of course, you don't talk to these people, they are strange people, these parts, but you don't do that, right? That's really, really wrong. So amazing, right? If you think about where we are today, or how that has transformed, as you mentioned, how important this is to the profitability of the entire value chain, but at that time, they were sitting on a different floor, we were not talking to them.
Andy:I wonder who first used the term after sales and put the sales word into that bit of a bit into that silo, if you like and recognised the value there. So where did that take you that role?
Ralf Zimmermann:So the idea of Toyota people development is based on the concept of rotation. And this is because of the values in the company. And it's amazing how consistent these values are implemented in the global organisation. It's quite impressive. And later, since I travelled a lot inside Toyota, I've seen that doesn't matter when which office you come you find these elements back. And one of those values is called teamwork. How boring is that right? We all heard about teamwork, it's nice to work together and you need to be nice to colleagues and teamwork in the Toyota way, has a totally different meaning quite amazing. It basically means the responsibility of the individual, I need to develop myself further, I need to step out of my comfort zone, to grow my horizon to grow my skill set to contribute better to the team. And if you chew on that a little bit, it's an amazing concept of people development, because the company is basically encouraging me to look for my next step in this company, it tries to empower me to say, what else could I do? My boss is always encouraging me, what else could you do? Is there any other role which you could be interested in, right? But at the same time, and in the job where I am, I'm empowered to grow also in this world. So it's quite interesting. So in the next 17 years, I basically rotated through many countries and through many roles, which also part ly had nothing to do with service or technical or after sales. And that's a very typical Toyota career basically. So I moved, for example, to my very next job after that was environmental project. Right. And the reason was end of the 80s, most of Western Europe, but definitely also Germany, started to talk more about recycling and reuse of materials. And if you are a car manufacturer in Japan, and you hear about regulations in Germany, that you need to reuse the plastic material, you are at least panicking, right? So we needed somebody to look into the question, what does that mean, as a distributor in Germany, to reuse plastic material from Germany, right. So this role exposed me not only to the top management, because that was at that time, the top management topic. And to the politicians in Germany in Bonn, I learned a lot from this, but also to material management to logistics to supply chain. And one of the projects there was, for example, we started to collect plastic bumpers from our dealers all over Germany, and move them back into factory clean them, granulated them and produce new raw material. And this brought me to my first visit to Japan in 1992. A fascinating and mind blowing experience because I had to give a presentation and all over Japan and all different departments about this. What does that mean this recycling in Germany? What is the intention of the politicians? What is the consequence for us as a car sales company, because we were not an engineering company, we were a distributor usually is very sales driven. And the knowledge and competence is very sales driven. So it's one of the examples of the steps I was able to make, because that's the Toyota way of developing people. Right. So
Andy:I Yeah, I'm just want to jump in there, Ralf. That is another example, isn't it, where it's the same brain if you like the same person, but what has been planted in your mind and in their mind of your colleagues is it's my responsibility to treat I've got this fantastic opportunity. I'm in a corporation with all these roles around me all this all this work that needs to be done. And it's a it's my responsibility, to find opportunities for myself to develop myself to equip myself to provide value to contribute to the team. I love that I really love that and I encourage everyone to think like that in any organisation See, see the opportunity you've got, don't leave it for someone else to manage your career path for you. So thank you for sharing that. So then your decisions when you were making the decisions about where to go, what sort of things were driving the choices that you made?
Ralf Zimmermann:Interesting question. Interesting question. I hope I don't disappoint you Andy. I told you about the heart, right, my decision making process when I became a car technician and apprentice, I followed to heart, right. So, in fact, my reality in these first two, three jobs was, I was having fun in my job, I was having the best job in the company. I didn't think for a minute about checking all the openings and checking, all right, it always took somebody to knock on my door, usually the boss of the department, which was interested in me and said, Hey, have you seen this vacancy? We are looking for somebody who is would you not be interested. And why I'm saying this, that means one I have, that's the disappoint. But there was no big plan, at no point in time. The other one is, it's a system in this company, going for the opportunity means that you have no fear, you should not have fear. And you don't have to have fear. Because, in fact, people empower you. and empowering people to think like this is a big thing. They give the best at the job. But that means also your talent management and the talent management that this company was like this, right they make sure that talent is visible assessment system discussions in manager groups about who are my strongest candidates who are maybe the guys I have to work on, right. And this made it possible that I was seen by other departments. And when somebody knocked on my door and said, Hey, aren't you interested in this? There was no fear to say, oh, that sounds interesting, right. And I could openly talk to whoever was my line manager to follow such a suggestion, right? That was the atmosphere in this company. And I must say, looking back and having been in many countries, and in different companies, I think, if you manage such an environment, if you manage to establish such an environment, you might call it culture. It's based on values and the values are shared and people talk about, it's not just because it was given by a marketing company, and it looks good when you paint it on the walls, right, then this is creating an amazing energy of people who are willing and able to move around and improve their skills and contribute more to your company and get more out of them in the end right. And that's pretty much what happened to me in the next four or five, six jobs within Toyota Germany.
Andy:So you create an environment, and you create an expectation, you create an environment where it's safe for this to happen, you create an expectation in the individual that I am supposed to travel through this organisation, I'm supposed to keep getting more valuable to the organisation. And one of the ways that I can do that is by travelling and learning about it. And you create transparency around talent performance, you create an expectation in leaders that they need to bring people on, they need to identify talent, they need to make it visible, they need to create opportunities. And by doing that, we will all succeed as an organisation,
Ralf Zimmermann:they need to let go, you know, the biggest stumble point in this is if you have the diamond in your team, the best horse in the stable you're a superstar, you have to let go on him or her. Right. And this is, in fact, again, a learning from at that time, I didn't know that my boss was fantastic on this. But what I know today is the biggest hurdle in this nice picture is bosses who do not let go would say no, no, my success is that I have this superstar in mine, or whoever this performer this high performer or whatever you call them in my team. And of course I don't let him go because my performance is at risk. I don't know what I get back. So this is also an element of this culture, which you have to overcome as a company. Because one or two or three of these guys, depending on the size of your organisation, they can basically at least disturb the system significantly or maybe even break it. Right. So quite an interesting layer of cultural elements and organisational elements which make that happen.
Andy:Very interesting. And did you find that it was replicated across the different markets where you experience Toyota?
Ralf Zimmermann:Yeah absolute, let's say when I left Toyota Germany from an already kind of mid level, after sales marketing position, and moved into Toyota Motor Europe in Brussels That's the European head office. And, of course, that's a cultural shock, because it's same mother company, but little Toyota Germany, me 17 years, I know every stone. I know everyone who likes me and everyone who does not like me. And then Toyota Germany is at that time was a 2000 plus people company, managing sales and marketing in Europe, but also production and research and development. So a mega monster, very international, right? At that time, I was very German, German. And, of course, I was of the opinion that Germany is the most difficult market in the whole world. And then I come to this mega monster. And from the beginning, I was working with 54 countries, I was the head of the after sales field operation, right. So I was managing the field manager, the country managers. But the thing which made that easier, was exactly this, what you just said. So this logic, these values are the same. Doesn't matter with which mixture of culture right, it was even a bit more Japanese, because that's very much a Japanese managed company, you have in every department, you have senior Japanese coordinators, the line managers European, but coordinators are all Japanese. And you were even closer to that culture and to the cleanliness of these values and the rules which come from them. So that was quite interesting. And also there, it was all about rotation it was, it was even better organised, because by definition, a bigger organisation, you have more professionalism in the layers of HR, for example, they have a more clear role in this. So it was very interesting learning. Yes. Clearly, I could find that back in this mega part of the company in Brussels,
Andy:and even more concentrated because it was a bit closer to the mothership in Japan. Yes, yes. And you had 54 markets that you were responsible for, which is a staggering number. How did you, I mean, the cultures that you were working with there, obviously having these values across all the businesses would have would have helped, but still, there must have been some differences you had to deal with.
Ralf Zimmermann:Maybe that was the biggest education I've ever got in three years, because that's usually the term you're three years. And I did that for three years. And if you think about the job description of a car distributor, and you take bullet points, they are always the same. There is no change, right? You sell cars, you sell parts, you sell labour hours, you organise a network, you have a contract, you will manage a recall for example, right? You have critical situations, this list is the same doesn't matter if you are in Israel, in Turkey in Germany in UK, it doesn't matter in Scandinavia, always the same. In each and every of these countries, you found I found a different way where what was a massive problem in Germany unsolvable, the guy said this I have solved already. Right? When I travelled from this big market, Germany, one of the mm five in Europe where I know all these German manufacturers, and we are a small Japanese so and you come to Israel, you visit your first dealer and you say how is your business going? How are you? At that time and that year? They were unfortunately throwing bombs at each other again, in Palestine and Israel. And the dealer said Oh, yeah, we are delivering cars. Of course, we don't deliver them here because this is too dangerous. The customers have moved to their families in the north, and we deliver the cars over there. And you look at them and say, Wow, what, under what circumstances these people are selling cars. And maybe it's a very drastic example. But what I tried to express is, it's amazing how creative people are within these values with the same product with the same approach. And of course, with the national culture. In Portugal, that's different from Sweden. But still you find this back and you say how do they find creative solutions to do their business and elements like rotation or openness to move in jobs? Kaizen this is this question of what does that mean as a personal task for a manager to get a team to think about the things they could have done better yesterday? Right? It's a very strange concept. If you think about a bit deeper, it's interesting task. Maybe later we can talk about what does Kaizen mean for managers, but the question was, do you find it back? So my learning was immense, and usually from smaller distributors more than from the bigger ones because they had to multitask and find more creative, efficient solutions. And of course, I collected some airmiles right, I think in the year in Brussels airways and Lufthansa for four days a week on an airport is also an interesting personal experience. Since we were just moved into another country with my lovely family, I have two sons, 10 and 14 at that time when we moved, and basically the next day, I'm jumping in a plane and four days a week, I'm gone. Right? And they are there in Brussels, the new life. So having a family, which is supporting these kinds of movements is also, I mean, it would have not happened without the openness and the willingness and the eagerness to do this, basically, of my family right yeah.
Andy:Yeah, let's talk I'd like to talk a little bit about that, and your family moving with you. Before we do that, I'm just thinking, what came to mind when you were describing, working with the 54 different markets was if you've got a set of values in place, and you've got some guiding principles, like Kaizen, which I will ask you to explain more about later. And you then leave people to operate with those values within those guidelines. But within that, they can really bring their own creativity, their their own cultural sort of national culture, the ways of doing things, their understanding of how things work in their markets. So you don't have to become in there and be an expert on 54 markets. Is that how you how you manage to cope with that many different markets.
Ralf Zimmermann:I mean, the the no absolute, I mean, of course, first of all, in a hierarchy from a head office in Japan, to a regional head office in Brussels, and then to distributors, and later to the dealers. There is first of all sales targets, there are volumes, there are sheer commercial necessities to basically manage this sales channels. The question is how to do that. Right? How do you implement your strategies? And they are usually International, maybe even born in Japan? Couldn't be more far away from Portugal or or France also? And how do you manage to adapt them locally? How do you make them successful locally, that's, that's mainly mainly the key and with these set of values Toyota has quite a is doing that in a very partnership way. Right. So there is for example, the saying, customer first, then dealer, then manufacturer. And again, that sounds so basic, but you can wake up managers, presidents, whatever hierarchy level you want in the middle of the night, and they will tell you that and they behave like that. Right. So since I now in the last 30 years, I moved around a little bit, I had contact with other manufacturers, be it American, be it French be it Italian. And the culture is different. It's not just the nationality, it's also the company. Even in Japan, you might find Nissan is different, Honda is different, Mazda is different, it's pretty much the way how this company has evolved and developed their values. And they have a reason why they are there. They go back to family stories, and so on. And people can tell these stories. And that means if you then work with these countries, and you educate, for example, your country managers how to be non confrontative how to come to joint conclusions. How you build a common sense, right, then it's super interesting as a learning from that, and how you implement strategies. And suddenly, the turnaround and after you have a certain express service model implemented in 30 out of 54 countries. Wow. How is that possible suddenly, right without pushing without pressing without threatening without right. And it's real. It's not just the tick box. So I think that's quite an amazing way of approaching the business.
Andy:I think so what that's making me think Ralf is the expression culture eats strategy for breakfast, which gets used a lot, but what you've described there is if you create the environment and the values, if you create the culture of how we work together, then all you have to do is you drop in the new initiative. And then you you fly back to Brussels, and I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that. But the culture, then you've got a fairly good optimistic outlook that the culture will act on that new new initiative in the way you would expect and when you come back and visit there will have been some progress. Am I making it too simple?
Ralf Zimmermann:Let me share it. Let me share the boring part of this right the culture, I truly believe what I just said is the flower arrangement part of it now, the Toyota way is like a toolbox with tonnes of managerial tools. So you always have an annual action plan which is aligned from top management down to the incentive system of your salespeople, for example, so everyone is aligned on the annual Action Plan, the Hoshin Kanri. Basically it says the direction we are going. Now the Hoshin Kanri, of course, is an element of a five year plan. And this five year plan is revolving and this document is aligned every year between the management of the distributor and the regional head office. So a big part of my job as a GM as a general manager in this was not so much to talk about in the Express service, you need five screwdrivers, and you need a red box, which is in the, my job was more to align your Hoshin Kanri, the three and the five year plan with Toyota Motor management. So once a year, we were organising these meetings, these alignments, these could be very tough debates and discussions. Because next you learned I shared already teamwork is one of the values we touched a bit on Kaizen, which is another value. The third value is challenge. So that means you are very respectful with each other, but tough and transparent. And you can imagine if a head office is coming with a great idea, let's implement a new service product that comes with cost. And this cost must be in the budget. But at the same time there is a strict cost control on every distributor. So there are conflicts in the implementation. Maybe not in the big picture. Everyone likes the product, but how to where's the support? How is the financial? Right? And do I have enough people? Do I have a resource? Did I maybe plan a local product or a local project, which I might have to slaughter now because the head office is coming with this crazy idea. So the toolbox like we spoke about people development that's comparable, same same. The action plans, the Hoshin Kanri, the five year plan, which is evolving every year, these are tools which are extremely important to make this happen. So you're using the same language, the same managerial language, right? To solve a problem, you're using a TBP Toyota business practice, which always starts with the question, okay, to solve this problem, what is the problem? How big is it? So you will always see this gesture, basically express the problem in the quantification. Right? I'm sure you'll have sit in rooms where people talk about the problem. And they discuss it they debate but nobody says the problem is 150. And we should be at 200. So the problem is 50. So how do we fix this? 50? How do we break it into pieces, there is a certain way in eight steps and every manager in Toyotalearns this right. So I basically audit people, and I help people and mentored them in these tools. It's an eight steps, it's one document another tool in Toyota is an A3 document. It's not 60 pages PowerPoints, it's one document and this document is always built at the same way, doesn't matter if you fix a sales problem, or if you fix a problem in production. Or if you fix a problem in finance, it's always the same way how you design this document. It's very difficult for a German who likes to talk to put a big problem on one piece of paper. Very, very difficult. Extremely difficult, right for Europeans as such, because we love to write books, right? So that's why I'm saying yes, there is the cultural element. But in fact, it comes with a very, very clear toolbox, which is also a part of an education you get in the Toyota managerial world to really succeed and get to a result, right.
Andy:Yeah, I love it. So there's the the how we're going to behave that cultural piece, and then there's and these are the tools that we're going to use to deliver the things we want to deliver or to fix the things we want to fix. So there was a bit more to it than just saying, Hey guys, here's the initiative. I'm coming back in three months. Yeah, yeah. Where are we going for dinner? Yeah. I'm going to come back and in three months and see how you got on. So you knew there was also a really rigorous process underpinning how the business functioned. And everyone was taken through it and understood the eight steps and very good, very good. Let's have a little talk about the family. And then let's talk about kaizen. So we'll have a break up the the Toyota stuff with just you took your children, two boys aged 14 and 10. Moved them out of Germany into Brussels with your wife. And you said they were well I had the impression they were very up for this. They were excited about it. They were keen to come on the journey. So had you already discussed this? Was this a plan that you'd discussed Tell me a little bit more about how that went
Ralf Zimmermann:I mean, the biggest engine in this is of course, my fantastic wife. I mean, she used to work in Paris. She spoke French and Italian as her second and third language that was even better than her school English. And she was quite up to it right to basically move countries. And in fact it took relatively long it could have happened earlier right and was really when is the best opportunity when is a job on the right level and and when then the point came where it got really serious she was she was more an engine than being reluctant on this, she is quite easygoing, very brave, much braver than I am. And of course, language wise, Brussels is easy, easygoing for her because it's Flemish, Dutch and French. And I speak a bit of Dutch so that was next to the English which is the company language, of course, that would that helped. Now my son's the elder one, the 14 year old one is coming very much after my wife because he spoke when he was 14, he spoke English and French already quite good. Basically school school trained and, and challenged by my wife, but quite his French was really good. Our youngest son was interesting. Nicklaus, 10 years old, he is the football guy, and he loves his big room and his questions. He was concerned, he's always a bit concerned. And his concern, for example, was but Papa, do they know football in Belgium? It's not was a lovely question, do they know football will never forget that. And he was not great in school. And he was right. He was the edgy guy. And he was concerned now. We try to sell that to them. We travelled to Brussels. We showed them Brussels itself, we drove from Brussels to the sea, which is just an hour, we thought that's a good idea. Right? All that was not really impressing my younger son, he was still very concerned. So even he felt sick during that day, it was difficult. The next day, we went to see the International School. And in this international school, there is a there is a gym, basically the sports facility. And that has a wall where you can climb. And when my younger son saw that thing, we sold the whole the whole package. But that was it right
Andy:Belgium, they have a climbing wall.
Ralf Zimmermann:Here we go. Right. So it was not the sea and the food and the pizza in the evening. No, no, no, no, it was the climbing wall. I mean, the point is, we try to really sell it to them and make it an easy move for them. Because the biggest concern as parents when you leave your home country is your kids. We don't know, right? I mean, we speculate a lot. And of course, I had some upfront information. But in fact, leaving the nest is the big thing for usually the wife, which has built a nest. And then you want to make sure that your kids are doing great and make a long story short for them. It was the easiest, it was so easy for them unbelievable, right? Within three months, they were great in school, English was no problem, even for our younger son. Within six months, he did really well. And after you could say after eight months, and we were sitting at the lunch table, they were correcting my terrible grammar. Even after school, they started chatting in English with each other. And today when you hear them talking today they go through as native speakers kind of right. So it's like quite impressive. So it was fantastic for their development. And they really liked it. They like Brussels very much I must say. was nice. So yeah, made my life easy.
Andy:That is good. It's such a significant part of it working out are your children going to be okay. Sounds like your wife was absolutely a powerhouse with that move. She'd lived overseas before so she knew what she was getting herself into, that makes such a difference. How long were you in Brussels for Ralf?
Ralf Zimmermann:Usually a term in Toyota was three years and that was also the thing so we stayed three years in Brussels and this role. And then when the next rotation came up and there wasn't then that's always a bit the lottery. Are you going back to your home country? Is there another role and I was gifted because I got that call from Sweden. And they were looking into a job rotation between the senior after sales director in Sweden and my role. So basically, we swapped jobs. And that was great because from Brussels then we did not go back to Germany, we moved to Stockholm, Sweden, which is another beautiful place and amazing country. And the interesting learning there for me, first of all, I was the only non Swedish speaking person in the whole company. So I was the exotic German the Tysk, right, so I had to learn Swedish. Second, Sweden is a small market. But for Toyota, Toyota is number three, traditionally even number two sometimes so that means the market share is significant and suddenly being used to a small market share in Germany at that time, I think in Europe market share of Toyota was maybe 5% But in Sweden, it was 15%. So we were number two and later number three behind Volkswagen and Volvo. So that means you suddenly talk to the government, the government is talking to you. And suddenly you are the environmental hero because you have a hybrid product. And this is the time that was in 2009 1011, where the emission and the the start of support to electric vehicles in Scandinavia started to kick in. So we were managing a fleet of 600 Prius hybrid vehicles in Stockholm. Right And with that, basically replaced all the Volvo's and that was the home country of Volvo. So very interesting experience. And again, one of these even on senior level, I was a general manager in the in the Toyota hierarchy at that time, moving to another country and my Swedish colleague from that small Swedish company, he moved into my role in Brussels, which was for both of us and for both organisations extremely helpful.
Andy:It's interesting the different learnings that come with a roll so that one with the big market share number two or three player in the country, there's even though you're doing things, you know very well, you're doing it, there are differences about it. And also being on the front foot there when it came to hybrid vehicles and how that was able to supplant Volvo in the home market. Very interesting. And the contact you had with the government was also a new aspect. And you learned Swedish.
Ralf Zimmermann:Yeah, I had to the Swedes are lovely, lovely. First of all, they speak amazing English. So you meet a technician, technician countryside, and he speaks better English than a German car dealer. Right? So that's amazing. Nevertheless, they also let you feel in a very friendly but strong way that you should better learn the language, right. It's really a nice way. So one of my favourites is, after six months, I was part of the board of directors. I invited them for a barbecue to our house. So my wife spoke Swedish at that time. God bless her six months, right? So that's her talent and when my boss found out that my wife speak Swedish, and he had the first five Swedish beers. I think we gave him German beer. He said, you know Ralf, from Monday onwards, if she can speak Swedish, then you should speak Swedish. And from the next week onwards, all the board meetings were in Swedish, not in English anymore. Yeah, I had to learn Swedish, which was quite a challenge and a great adventure as well. Yeah. So no, no, that was lovely.
Andy:And did your boys manage the transition to Sweden? Were they quite happy in Stockholm?
Ralf Zimmermann:Yes, yes. They had a very good time. I can tell you
Andy:that's good to hear that they transitioned well and obviously, your wife was still forging ahead learning the language in six months.
Ralf Zimmermann:She loved that in both places in Brussels. As I said, she is a tailor. So she all her life. She gave classes to people to learn how to use the sewing machine and and she did that in Brussels. And she started doing that in Stockholm. And so she always connected of course, also through the school through the kids school, you connect to people. Yeah, she she always managed our life over there in both countries quite easy, easy. I would say. Maybe she has a different view.
Andy:Maybe it is you reminded me though, having going on these trips, whilst it's hard with children, and you care very much about what happens they do help you make friends because they go to school, and they make friends and their friends have parents and all of a sudden you've got a friendship circle so it's very helpful. So can we talk a bit about Kaizen, then this wonderful, wonderful topic? And how
Ralf Zimmermann:do we have? Do we have another four hours?
Andy:Well, maybe we'll see how we go. Maybe we have to have a separate conversation just on some of the Toyota Toyota toolkit would be be good. But Kaizen is a famous, famous principle
Ralf Zimmermann:it's a famous one, right? It's famous principle one of the values and maybe the most misinterpreted, especially in the Western world.
Andy:Okay, well, I look forward to hearing more about it then.
Ralf Zimmermann:I mean, I mean, of course, what people know it's about continuous improvement, right? Always do little steps, step by step by step and, but in fact, it has a lot of implications, which can be quite difficult in some cultures. Because to let me as an employee, say, This is my product. This is what I have done. This is my report, or this is my project, but this is what I had to deliver to you as a line manager. But technically, I could have done it a little bit better. I could have done right, because that's what if you if you turn Kaizen into, into another into a more negative view, and basically you come with something and say Technically, I could have done better yesterday, right? Because Kaizen means it's not yet done. It's not yet ready. And that again needs this culture of no fear of, you're allowed, you're encouraged to say, yeah, that is the thing, right? That's one side of the coin. The other side of the coin, is the manager as a manager, how do you manage Kaizen, you manage by asking questions? Why is that? How much is that? Could it have been different? What if? But to do that, basically, you need to earn the right to ask this question. Because as a manager, I'm not criticising you as a person. I'm not attacking you, I'm not offensive, right? You as my staff. I'm not trying to telling you how terrible you are as a person. I'm trying to identify what kind of optimization through my questions I tried to identify. And to be allowed to ask this question, I need to first gain the respect, my associate, my employee needs to know and understand and believe that I'm not attacking him and not trying to make him look bad. Right. And, and to get there again, it's quite hard work for a manager. So this is maybe the human touch on the story, from the perspective of the employee who is allowed and not scared to say yeah, we do this. But yeah, it's true. We could have done. if this is not there. Let's say if this culture is not there, what happens? I ask a question, and the employee will defend his product, his project his report with all he has, and nothing will move, you will never find the elements, which could have been a bit better, a bit faster, what you do next time better. Right? So you'll never get to this continuous improvement? No way.
Andy:Yeah, that's really interesting. And then they will leave the office feeling totally deflated and crushed that they've just been, you're right. criticised for? Yeah, yeah. So the groundwork has to be done, you have to lay the foundation to create the environment, create the bond of trust between and the understanding of I'm going to ask you lots of questions. And the reason I'm going to ask you these questions is because we're all in this together, and we all want to get things better and don't feel threatened. But as you say, it's one thing to say that, but your behaviours have to back that up that you really aren't attacking the individual. Interesting.
Ralf Zimmermann:There's another Japanese term coming, right? The way how you do this is basically by doing a lot of genchi genbutsu, that means go to the source. And that's against something that's in even in our western Anglo Saxon culture, that's very much known. Go to the source, find out yourself, go to the factory, go listen to the customer's voice when you are the GM service. Right? Listen to the real thing. Don't trust excel sheets alone. And you do not do that because you're not trusting the person who is reporting, you do that to make a better decision. And again, you demonstrate, for example, yesterday, I was sitting for an hour with our whole call centre, right? And what to listen to them and let them explain. And on the one hand, I learned something as a director, but on the other hand, also these people get the people there's really interest in understanding what the real problem is right and that creates this trust. Maybe that's a part of creating this trust.
Andy:And that takes us right back to when you were sitting outside the general manager's office, then he would come out and ask you what are the customers saying what are they phoning about? And you you took away the message that he cares about this? So you were doing that yestoday? So many years later, so many years later?
Ralf Zimmermann:Yes. Yes. It's real and it takes us back to Grandma Kathy, be nice to people.
Andy:Yes, yeah. Absolutely.
Ralf Zimmermann:She knew Kaizen, Grandma Kathy knew how Kaizen works now.
Andy:Yeah, intuitively, somehow. So Kaizen, genchi genbutsu, you know, these wonderful lessons guiding principles that can help build a really strong culture and set of behaviours. Very good. What happened after Stockholm, then Ralf, where did they send you after that?
Ralf Zimmermann:The next rotation brought me back to Germany. And that was after Lehman and an end right. So we came back. It gave me the first opportunity to step into vehicle sales, which was a really a new experience. Up to that point. We have skipped some of the jobs I did in Germany. So for example, my first manager job was to build the academy, create a training centre, that was for sales and after sales and technical so at some in touch with the theory of sales management and how you manage salespeople, but from a coach and training and administrative point of view, but I never was a salesman myself or in charge of sales operations. So when I came back to Germany, I was asked to take over one of the four sales regions as a regional director. And this role was giving me quite an interesting holistic picture because I was managing the sales field force for this region, the after sales field force and the F&I people. So that means this kind of regional director was basically overlooking the entire business. And again, what an amazing learning, right? Because on the one hand, it's the Sales Machine, which, yes, in after sales, you have sales targets, no question you need to get your margin your parts. But today, you sell, we were selling in this region, we were selling around the amount of cars, we were selling in the whole of Sweden like 25,000 a year. Right. And quite a significant amount of parts margin 250 dealers, right and f&i penetration. So it was pretty much the Sales Machine, the monthly sales machine and running these field teams with these dealers. But on the other hand, also an amazing learning on sales techniques on people management, because even I had country managers before but they are more on the strategic level. They have some commercial KPIs, but it's on a rather high level between the European head office and the after sales general manager of a country but now this was the field manager who has his bucket full of cars. And he needs to get rid of this old stock red Corollas which are moving slowly. And how does he do that? By combining them with the hot stuff? The green Celicas? Everyone wants? Right? And how much money do we put on top? And what is the most amazing learning for me? And the great thing was that what Germany did at that time, they allowed me to choose the region. So I have chosen the region east, which was the youngest region remember after the reunification in 1990. So suddenly, we got 16 million people in five countries. Right, which, which came from a different background, that means these dealers were all very young, they were just 10 years old, 15, less than 15 years, right when I came to work with them. So that was a great experience. And that brought us back home to Germany and made us buy a house and settle down again with the old school friends of my kids and so on. So, interesting step, right. Again, four days a week, not on the aeroplane, mainly in trains and cars. But travelling a lot, but inside the country, right? So it was with a few teams. Yeah.
Andy:How did you find reintegrating into Germany after being out for what would have been a few years?
Ralf Zimmermann:Six, six years? Yeah. Because Sweden was also three. So it was six years away from Germany after 17 years. It was tough, I must say, as much as I loved the job. But of course, once you have seen the bigger part of the world, and you realise, oh, maybe Germany is not the most difficult market in the world, right. So and of course, working in a big corporation, like TMC coming back, as great as it was and the welcome was amazing and the company helped me with the school package things, they went really the extra mile to make it easy. But on the other hand, you're coming back into smaller unit, right, and the world is becoming smaller again, and more narrow. And, and I must say, I had really I'm not sure what the proper English term is in German, we would say I have tasted the blood on this bigger thing out there on the bigger world out there. So I got the taste, and that always stayed with me for the next two years, as much as I enjoyed the job, but I always say this thing. Is there a way to get to that bigger picture again, right. And even being really successful, I must say, we had fun in the sales role. And but then, at a certain point in time, I got telephone calls from people in the Middle East who start to say, why don't you come and help us to build this business or transform this business? Right. And it was a classical headhunting, which I would have thought could never happen to me, being so happy in this Toyota cocoon. Right? This cocoon, and, and then I moved to the Middle East after two years, basically moved to Dubai, right to Al Futtaim, in a Toyota role. I must say in the beginning.
Andy:Yeah, so you weren't planning to leave Toyota?
Ralf Zimmermann:No, not at all. That's why I said earlier. Maybe I disappoint you. There was never a big plan. Right. So that's, I mean, it's very much driven by fun. I always thought that I have the best job in the company and it's so much fun. Why would I change, right?
Andy:So you won't disappoint me you're not disappointing me Ralf, I do not have these conversations to prove my own hypothesis. I'm very keen to hear, to hear how different people have navigated their journey and the way you've done it seems to be very successful for you. And I can't imagine you not having fun. To be honest, I can't imagine you not having fun, or or tolerating not having fun for very long, but I am thinking you tasted the blood as it were of international jobs, you'd come back. And however, however wonderful people try and make it, there's still it's different come back than be out there going from country to country. So you were vulnerable, I'm gonna say you were vulnerable to an approach at this point, someone waved something in front of you, which sounded pretty exciting. And also it had Toyota, it had the shared component of you would be in a Toyota role. But in an new position, a big chunk of it was going to be familiar to you.
Ralf Zimmermann:So that was a big decision, I must say, because it's a different thing if you go within the corporation, to Brussels, and to Stockholm, these are all nice places, right? And even it was a big thing was the family and but we had learned that we as a family are able to do that. But now this was a big decision. And it had much more discussions and ups and downs. Because I mean, what did we know about the Middle East and the Emirates? Right? I got questions from friends who said, how can you bring your wife to a place where she has to be covered and is not allowed to drive a car? So that little education, right is I mean, I say us Westerners made me at that time, the little I knew about the Emirates or Dubai or Abu Dhabi or right? And how could I know what kind of amazing place this is in terms of work life and development and speed of life and learning. So it was a big decision to go there. Because again, it was clear that, of course, my wife will join me after a while, and that my younger son will join me because he just had one more year to go to finish school. My eldest son was already in his next education. He finished school in Stockholm. And he did what I did not as a technician, but on the business side on the on the finance and business management side, he was in an education in a big car dealer group in Germany, so he was off that radar screen right, and started already to live his own life. But my youngest son and my wife, they were then coming after a year, they were joining me in Dubai in this in this big thing. And that was of course, a different thing than then going to Belgium.
Andy:Yeah, yeah. Very much so. And you How did you well you've already alluded to the fact that the pace of life in the Emirates the the work life was great. And it was not as restrictive as the stories that Westerners think.
Ralf Zimmermann:No, no, it was it was quite, I mean, the thing you mentioned that it was a Toyota role, it was the biggest conglomerate. And honestly, in the first first or second telephone call, I was not really considering it even I was just interested, like observing. Why do they ask me? What what are they looking for, and they were smart enough to at a certain point in time, and then I spoke to people, they got me in touch, it was not really an interview situation. We did a kind of working session online over a phone, no teams, no zoom, it was more a telephone call. And I got in touch with some amazing people who then later became my peers, right. And I was fascinated by the quality of people I was talking to in this board of directors there. And then they did a very, very tricky thing. They said, You know what? Why don't you come over for three days, four days, maybe we fly you over? We were discussing their transformation of classical service and parts departments into a modern after sale setup. Why don't you come over you have a look. And then we have some workshops together, and you tell us how you would do it. And then you fly back and you had three good days in Dubai on our course. And that's what we did. And then I went there. And I was blown away by the quality of facilities, the size of the business, you know, the Arabic countries and in the GCC, the, the distributor and the dealer is one unit. So that means they own the entire network. The business model here in the GCC is different. I mean, the biggest workshop of Toyota at that time on a Saturday was visited by 600 customers a day. Right? That's a factory and I saw I was blown away. right there was they were managing spare parts in a SAP based air conditioned, 48,000 square metre warehouse fully automated. To be honest, I had never seen something like this in the Toyota world before. Right? And then they come and ask me, how can we improve that? Can you help us? Would you would you mind right? So they got me easy. Oh, they basically had an easy trick to get me get meon board. They were, it was amazing
Andy:I love it. I like that approach. So they didn't try and They did not show me the other stuff, which exists as well, of sell you anything they showed you. And they involved you. They gave you an opportunity to get to know people and to work alongside people. And then they showed you some of the nice parts of the town course. But I must say, that was quite a smart, smart move and yeah Well very sensible, they got to know you as well. And you got to know them and made they made the decision as easy as possible to step away from the corporation. And how was it leaving leaving Toyota after all those years?
Ralf Zimmermann:I mean, bittersweet, of course, right? I mean, after being having been that many years in this company. And usually when you resign, there is no farewell party. Maybe among your friends, you have a pizza or so and I must say I had a farewell party organised by the company with 150 people, and speakers and tiers of presidents. Amazing, the Japanese made a hell of a story. And I must say it was really heartwarming, tough. And in this I'm very vulnerable when it comes to people telling me that I got to do a good job. So that's not good. That's not easy for me to take. So it was heartwarming and tough because it was not just leaving this company where I basically I have to be glad they made all this possible. But look, I was leaving things like the German pension systems and the German security system, right. And in the very end, I'm a German, right? We love our security, and we love our insurance and we love right, this the safety net, I was leaving all the safety nets with my family. So kind of a big step, I must say, right, and I was not 25 without kids double income something. So no, it was as such, personally, maybe that was the biggest decision I ever took. affecting my life, my family and so on. Right. And, and I mean, now looking back now, it's nearly 10 years ago, it's and I don't regret it one minute, what a life changing, amazing learning for all of us. Right from my son, my wife myself, of course, for me learning again, amazing things working in a cultural environment, which I mean, the whole GCC are based on experts from 200 countries. Right? So how amazing is this? How do you manage organisations, in the peak I was managing parts of organisations with more than 1000 people? And you have layers of nationalities on different management levels. So how do you know that your strategy or your decisions are really going through and really getting implemented? Because that's the other learning in the Toyota world? Strategies are great, but it's all about implementation, isn't it? Now, maybe the biggest decision ever, but also an amazing, amazing move in my life.
Andy:You spent longer with Al Futtaim, this wasn't a three year rotation anymore. You were now outside of that merry go round if you like and
Ralf Zimmermann:yeah, seven, seven years, nearly eight. Yes. Yeah.
Andy:So what brought that to an end? And what did you do after that?
Ralf Zimmermann:So basically, during the period there, I pretty much helped to transform the business again, first, within the organisation. The biggest part of the organisation, automotive, being a multi brand organisation was Toyota. And we again, basically made the structure leaner, and it's an old organisation more than 65 years old as a car dealer, which again is an amazing story as such, right? How did these two 17 and 18 year old guys, these gentleman, these Arabic gentleman, which were basically surrounded by tents, how did they come to the conclusion to call and send a letter to Japan and asked for cars? That's the story as such but
Andy:that sounds a fascinating story.
Ralf Zimmermann:Absolutely fascinating the car business in the GCC you can write books about and maybe one day I do that. But But So I first of all helped the Toyota Toyota side of It sounds like you said, Ralf, that money, you know, it doesn't it to renovate that and worked a lot with TMC. And this period, I travelled nearly four or five times to Japan every year, there is no regional head office Al Futtaim as an organisation is directly connected to Japan, that helped a lot. Then we basically combined big parts of the entire organisation, I mean, the automotive organisation of Al Futtaim, like 12,000 people in 14 countries, 21 companies in 14 countries. So it's not just the Emirate, it's a massive conglomerate. So we did a lot on restructuring this and make it leaner and prepare it for the future. And then I helped to do that with other brands as well. So that was like, seven, eight years journey until 21. 13 I arrived until early 21. And basically, then, first of all, my wife decided to go back. She said, now it's the challenge. If you don't have the kids anymore, the school thing is not there. And you have one part of the family, which is spending 300 hours a day in the job, then of course you need to find your place. And Dubai is a place which is changing a lot and people are changing a lot. So it's quite difficult if you are a wife at home at a certain point in time to really connect. So she decided to go back, the parents are growing older, somebody has to look after them. So basically, that was one part of the decision. So I said okay, sooner or later, I will go back, because that's not the way how we want to live our life after 30 years. And so I decided to leave and had also a big plan. Unfortunately, COVID had some impact. But the big plan was to pack my motorbike. I'm a complete motorbike enthusiast and travelling on motorbikes all my life. So that thing was ready and packed and prepared. The route was planned through Iran and Kazakhstan and the Balkans and over the partner highway to go back home basically to drive home from Dubai to Germany. That is the big dream, which is still remaining. Now it's remaining on the bucket list. Because then a former colleague got in touch and said, Look, there is this company here in Qatar, and they they really, really need help and after says, Do you think they should talk to you? Could they talk to you? I'm like talking doesn't cost anything, let's have a chat. Then the owner of the Jaida company in Qatar, the Jaida group called me Mohammed Jada was an amazing gentleman. And and we got to talk about what is needed and what and, and Qatar is an interesting country, I must say, because this isolation from the other GCC countries over three years, you know, they were they were basically very much separated and blocked really. And then COVID, this combination has shaped this little place, it's two and a half million people, right? It's like a big city plus, has shaped this this very rich place quite heavily and in a very short period of time. They have to transform everything you can imagine from digital to production of agricultural goods, right from supply chains from all over. Absolutely amazing when you like change and quick solutions and transformation. And and I must say I like that. So yeah, yeah. So yeah, I spent one one month at home, and then shipped everything to Qatar and started to work with Mohammed Jedah and a team of fresh managers on helping this company in this shaken country, to transform to the things we have to do from from digitalization to lead structures to improvement of Kaizen to find the synergy, you name it. So it's again, big fun. We have an amazing fun. And now I'm already here for one year. cost anything to have a conversation. And then the conversation that you had was just too interesting, too exciting, an opportunity to not go with. And how was the conversation between you and your wife because she presumably knew your motorcycle was packed, you were going to be riding back to Germany, and then you changed direction. You could say difficult is maybe a way to describe it. I mean, she is as I said, she's not only wonderful and smart, she is also the braver person. So I need to be very careful when I position critical topics now. In fact, she knows me quite well and we are now married. I think this year we will celebrate our 30th anniversary. And we know each other maybe 36 or so. So right that meant something kept her with me and And we agreed that yes, we will make the travel agencies and the aeroplane ticket people a bit richer, and have to travel a bit more and see each other a little bit on this. And we said, let's give it a try. That was then the conversation we had. And we did. And so far it's going okay, so we see each other every six weeks somehow here or there. And she's spending the money on the house. So what shall I say?
Andy:As long as you're both happy. That phrase, let's give it a try seems to come up quite often in this story, let's give it a try.
Ralf Zimmermann:To be open, I believe that's what I think that makes life easier. And that's what keeps us together very much, we have the same. I spoke a lot about values, maybe too much, it sounds too dramatic. But my wife and myself, I think we shared this value a lot. Let's give it a try. Let's see if it works out. And if not, we find a way, right. That's
Andy:how much that opens up to you though, if you're able to adopt that value of let's give it a try or hundreds of 1000s of things that each day they all mount up the difference it makes. So it's very true. I just sense you're very happy. You're in an exciting place. Still, you're learning you mentioned learning. For each of these experiences. Ralf, you mentioned the learning that you are getting this bill more to learn it's a great opportunity to learn. So you're in a happy place you're learning you're helping you're bringing years decades of experience to the organisation to help the organisation in Qatar transform very quickly under difficult circumstances. And it's it sounds like you're really enjoying it. And that's good. So is that that's where you are now that's brought us up to present day.
Ralf Zimmermann:Yeah, that's pretty much where I am. Maybe in the middle of we have the first third of the big journey. This may be done now in Qatar. And so there's some more work to do a lot of more work to do. But on the other hand, the great thing Andy is, that's one of the learnings in the GCC and especially in such such a critical environment or such a difficult environment, single people can make a major difference, right? If we have an opening and in one of the workshops or one of the parts departments or in a sales role, and you don't get the right person then, suddenly you have the right guy and things are moving in lightspeed. Right. It's such an amazing observation. Right? And, and exciting, I must say, really exciting
Andy:and exciting for the person who's feeling that they're making a difference.
Ralf Zimmermann:True? Absolutely.
Andy:And that they can, their contribution can make a difference. So is there anything I haven't asked you, Ralph, that I should have asked? You?
Ralf Zimmermann:No, I think I'm not sure I believe Andy that's pretty much where we are now. And maybe we should repeat that I enjoyed our conversation up to here very much. Maybe we should do that again in 10 years and see what happened. The next trial if I managed to get my bike home to Germany or not.
Andy:Tune in next time in 10 years, does Ralf make it home. We could also have a separate conversation easily about Toyota and the Toyota way and all those principles. For now, though, I'm just going to say thank you so much for sharing your story, it's a wonderful one. And I'm really proud to be able to share it with our listeners. So thank you, Ralf.
Ralf Zimmermann:Thank you very much, Andy. Thanks. Appreciate the time. Thank you.
Andy:You've been listening to Career-view Mirror with me, Andy follows. I hope you found some helpful points to reflect on in Ralf's story that can help you with your own career journey, or that have those you lead, parent or mentor. You are unique. And during my conversation with Ralph, you'll have picked up on topics that resonate with you. A few things I noticed were Grandma Kathy, and her approach to life and how to treat people. The current of Ralph's peers who were flowing into technician roles, that he was swept along with the opportunity he got to sit and listen to customer feedback all day, and to see how importantly, that feedback was viewed by senior management who had a real customer focus, the importance of values to creating a consistent environment and the idea of prioritising customer first then dealer, then manufacturer that he learned at Toyota, the Toyota toolbox that enabled the strategy to be executed successfully. The Toyota paradigm around teamwork that it is the individuals responsibility to continue to develop their own capability to enhance their contribution to the team. I really love that. The family's positivity towards a move to Brussels, at least once the climbing wall was discovered, the opportunity to be responsible for 54 markets with all the cultural differences, but a common set of values and a common toolbox. The learning that was available with each new role, and that was clearly a driver for Ralf, the phrase, let's give it a try, that approach to opportunities that has taken Ralf to some very exciting places and roles. And the sense of fun that I took away from talking with Ralf, I cannot imagine him not finding a way to make each role fun sooner rather than later. And finally, the importance of a strong family relationship to enable such a career path to work. You can contact Ralf via LinkedIn, and we'll put links in the show notes to this episode. We publish these episodes to celebrate my guests careers, listen to their stories, and learn from their experiences. And I'm genuinely interested in what resonated with you. Thank you to all of you for sharing your feedback. Thanks also to Hannah and Julia, who as part of the Career-view Mirror team here at Aquilae worked so hard to deliver these episodes to you. This episode of Career-view Mirror is brought to you by Aquilae. Aquilae's mission is to enable fulfilling performance in what's now becoming known as the mobility industry. We use our very own fulfilling performance paradigm to help you identify what steps you need to take to enable fulfilling performance in your business. Contact me directly if you'd like to know more, my email is andy@aquilae.co.uk. And remember, folks if you know people who would benefit from hearing these stories, please show them how to find us, thanks for listening