"Sometimes a challenge is just the starting point for something great."
#USA #BUSINESS #RESULT-ORIENTATION
I like to say that “there’s something good to be found in anything that goes bad.” – and I have seen it to be true with LEONI as well.
The most impressive example, in my opinion, happened almost 15 years ago, during the economic crisis of 2008 / 2009: While we were impacted just like every other automotive company in the region, I find it remarkable what we built out of this crisis in the years to follow.
Sure, these were tough times – but what got us through was our sense of belonging and our culture of standing together. For instance, when cost cuts became inevitable, everybody agreed to reduce their working hours to avoid any colleague being laid off.
But besides that, in the middle of turbulence, something else happened that I still find truly inspiring today: Day by day, bit by bit, idea by idea we started to see and treat the crisis as a chance to improve.
Before 2008, we produced only a very simple product range, consisting primarily of PVC and XLPE single core as well as ABS cables – leaving a lot of market potential unused. So when our order volume dropped, instead of panicking, we looked at our processes and realized that we could add coax- and battery cables to our portfolio with simple changes to our machines and processes. This kept our production running and ultimately allowed us to further invest into diversifying our customer as well as product portfolio – and when the world economy stabilized, we were not only able to deliver, but to grow exponentially.
I am convinced that it was this mindset of seeing our challenges as chances that marked the starting point of our plant almost quadrupling its size in the past decade – a plant that I call myself proud to lead today.
