António Conde, Körber site: Constance, Germany
When I started my career, I was trained to think like a businessman.
The company I worked for before joining Körber was an incredible place to learn:
fast, disciplined, highly results-driven.
Decisions were clear. Everything was measured.
Profit. Efficiency. Results.
If something worked, you scaled it.
If something didn’t, you cut it.
At that time, this way of thinking felt completely natural to me.
Not long after I joined Körber, I was asked to take responsibility for a company we had acquired.
The numbers were challenging.
When I looked at the financials, my instinctive reaction was immediate:
take action.
That was the numbers-driven businessman in me speaking.
Around that time, I attended the Körber Leadership Meeting.
One of the talks was about long-term relationships. About responsibility.
About building something that lasts.
And I remember sitting there thinking:
This is a completely different way of looking at business.
Not the next quarter.
Not the next balance sheet.
But the bigger picture.
The speaker said something that stayed with me:
Sometimes the real question is not “How do we stop the loss today?”
The real question is “What could this company become, tomorrow?”
That sentence stayed with me long after the talk ended.
When I came back from the event, I looked at the company again.
Same numbers.
But this time I asked a different question.
What capabilities are actually here?
What knowledge is rooted in this team?
What could this company become if we were willing to think further ahead?
And suddenly the picture looked different.
