Oliver Kaltner has spent more than 30 years leading transformation across some of the most recognisable names in technology and consumer electronics: Nike, Electronic Arts, Sony, Microsoft, Leica, Cherry. At Microsoft, he helped grow revenue sixfold in six years. At Leica, he oversaw a tenfold increase in EBITDA while repositioning the business from camera manufacturer to the leading force in optical engineering for smartphones. He now operates as a CEO, Supervisory Board, and Advisory Board member, with a track record across M&A, private equity, and investment banking.
In this conversation with our Managing Partner Claudia Hansen, Oliver talks about the cultural disruption of moving between radically different leadership environments, why he believes top-down leadership is finished, and what he actually thinks AI will and won’t change at the leadership level.
– Leadership
What’s the hardest leadership lesson you’ve learned, and how did it reshape how you lead today?
My move from Sony to Microsoft was a huge personal challenge culturally. Almost a personal leadership disruption. Sony was very top-down, pretending, little to be in the discourse. The style was rather loud and directive. Microsoft’s leadership principle, on the other hand, was aimed at developing all individuals in the team and being a listening, anticipating and empathetic coach. Diametrically different than in the environment of Sony at that time. The changeover was huge, the learning curve steep and the sustainable result one of my greatest personal experiences. The realization that leadership is a continuous process of personal development matured very early in my career.
Was your path to leadership strategic, opportunistic, or a bit of both?
I always try to keep rationality and emotionality as well as strategy and opportunism in balance. My path to leadership is clearly a very intense, partly volatile, always challenging journey, which will never be over. Leaders always have a mixture of learning ability, willingness to learn and enthusiasm for learning. Today, more than ever, I see opportunistic opportunities even as part of a strategic leadership concept.
What key moments shaped your journey?
It is a central part of my professional career that I had taken on tasks that had to do with change, change, development. At Microsoft, we were able to sixfold the turnover in 6 years and increase the profit tenfold at the same time. At Leica, we managed to increase the EBITDA tenfold while simultaneously realignment from a camera manufacturer to the leading company in the field of optical engineering for smartphones. All successes were based on team play, promotion of individual talent and strengthening team competence.
If you could give one counterintuitive piece of advice to your younger self at the start of your career, what would it be?
Your own talent paves the future career path. At the beginning of your career, don’t look too much at money and quick promotion promises. Rather, it’s about finding an environment to constantly expand your own intellectual, management, and personality skills. Learning ability, willingness to learn and motivation to learn should be constant companions throughout the entire career.
What qualities do you believe will define the most successful leaders of the future?
AI will revolutionize processes and business models. However, leadership through personality is not interchangeable. The ability to combine great strategic concepts with adaptable actions is just as meaningful as creating orientation and perspective. It is important to lead the engine team and to give the individual talent sufficient attention and support. Leadership through empathy is crucial. With a view to one’s own career, the essential contribution should be the identification and promotion of talents. Not metrics such as sales increases or the acquisition of further market share. That is common business standard. People are the highest good in a company and the greatest ability that leaders have to carry.
How do you foster a culture of continuous learning within your teams?
Information is constant thanks to the World Wide Web and AI and available for everybody. The battle for supremacy in the information world is over. This creates free capacities and at the same time the focus on the essentials for the development of a collaborative performance culture based on individual talent. The hierarchies are flat, the view of the people, their positioning, attitude, talents and competences is freely tangible in the space. Continuous transparent reflection is a key to success in diverse, high-performance teams. Except that your own leadership style is a constant learning curve.
How do you ensure your vision and strategy stay aligned with the needs of your people and customers?
We are in a continuous 360-degree communication mode with employees and customers. The questioning of one’s own strategic ideas as well as the proactive, open, transparent debate with core talents have long been standard in modern leadership. Top down leadership is over. Basic democracy is not desired. A constructive, joint development of ideas and concepts creates a valid basis for a performance implementation within the teams and with the teams.
– Innovation and Growth
What’s the boldest bet you’ve made in business, and what did you learn?
The use of Leica’s optical engineering expertise in Huawei smartphones was a bold, trend-setting and sustainable decision. While the classic camera manufacturers had commented extremely critically on the quality of cameras in smartphones, we at Leica have fulfilled the mission to do justice to the number 1 wish of the worldwide imaging community to finally turn smartphones into full-fledged cameras. With this we have written history. I could be sure that the Leica top engineers support my vision. Without them, this vision would never come to life.
Where do you see the next wave of growth opportunities coming from in your sector?
AI has two main levers of impact: forcing sales activities to increase top lines, and cost down management with simultaneous EBITDA optimization. In other words, sales and finance will be the two target areas for the next go-to-market level of AI technology. With AI, every balance sheet on the topline and the bottomline can be optimized directly, quickly, efficiently and sustainably. In parallel, R&D is being reshaped and partly remodeled.
Who outside of business has most influenced your leadership style?
In fact, I can mention geopolitical and intercultural developments in our society in the last decade. With the World Wide Web, everyone can look at the facets of global life. With social media came the self-expression. Watching these developments was never enough for me. Rather, I have drawn my personal conclusions from these developments and brought them into a new compass of values in order not to lose sight of the interpersonal relationship, but to keep it specifically at the center of our co-existence. This also requires taking responsibility, acting, networking, and being there for each other.
What excites you most about the future of your industry?
Technology is becoming more and more a tool that is available to everyone. The handling of technologies is apparently playfully tested on the Smartphone and becomes a common good for everyone regardless of social classification, level of education, age group or cultural background. Technology is increasingly serving people. Anyone who recognizes this knows that new strategies and ways are needed to identify, locate, and activate talent. People are at the core. Casualness is made obsolete.
What are your three key priorities in the next 12 months?
The successful completion of 3 M&A projects. The content and conceptual design of another decade in my professional career. People who are important to me, privately and professionally, to devote sufficient time and extensive attention.
– AI and Digital Transformation
With AI moving so fast, how do you decide what’s hype versus what’s truly transformative for your business?
AI is the first serious technical achievement since the launch of the internet. The intermediate tech innovations such as blockchain or IoT have found their commercial place, but only with AI do we have a development with an impact on economic, social, political, and cultural life.
What strategic role do you see AI playing in your business over the next 3 to 5 years, and how are you preparing your teams for it?
AI replaces already established standards in administration, marketing, sales, operations, creative work and software development. In the next 3-5 years we will use the AI technologies to organize further standard work, for example in CRM, Legal Counsel AI-based. AI changes all organizational areas, all processes, all procedures. However, AI does not replace human capabilities. In this way, we release the relevant capacities and capabilities for the essential relevance such as the development of ideas, strategies and global teamwork. AI will free us from unnecessary things.
What’s an example where AI already gave your organization an unexpected advantage, or revealed a surprising limitation?
Using AI, we increasingly convert standard processes in CRM into direct customer contacts in order to offer direct solutions from a problem position and derive concrete new business opportunities. AI clears the calendar and the way for this.
How are you addressing potential AI-related risks and challenges in your organization?
Dealing with risks is an established method in the technology industry to analyze opportunities and make them feasible. This fact is also given with AI. In this sense, it is important to transparently share experiences, concerns, risks and findings in order to find new solutions together and to actively help colleagues. AI is not to be classified as disruptive, but rather a new chapter in the evolution of technology since the introduction of PCs.
What barriers have you faced in adopting AI internally, and how did you overcome them?
AI often first gained a foothold in marketing. Top decision-makers have often limited it to marketing at the beginning. But as with all other revolutionary technological achievements, a leadership should approach new technologies in a motivated and open way so that the cascade in the organizations works and the deriving developments can be activated at all levels and in all areas of the company. Above all, AI should inspire the financial departments, as significant cost savings can be achieved quickly, efficiently and permanently.
Are you seeing AI redefine the roles or skills you need at the leadership level?
Clearly. AI leads to significant organizational adjustments based on changed tasks, AI redefines roles and responsibilities. This is not a first-time effect caused by the technology industry. But AI comes with an unprecedented force, power, speed and requires consistent action. If you hesitate, you lose the connection. Those who lose the connection are consistently made obsolete by the industry-pervasive effect of AI. You could say: Go AI or go home.