Dirk Eckart - Encourager

Innovative, impatient, future-oriented

Dirk Eckart about his partner Walter Stuber

Describing Walter Stuber on just two pages? An almost impossible feat! I could fill novels with all he and I have experienced. But I will try to limit myself to the essentials.

We first met back in 1994. I applied for a position with him as a scaffolding foreman. Back then, he greeted me with the words: “Eckart, I have been waiting for you for a long time.” At that time, I did not understand what he was trying to tell me.

Time and energy invested

Just two years later, I had a severely herniated disc, and because of this, I could no longer climb up scaffolding. Walter was hell-bent on keeping me. He offered me a position as a site manager and a tempting 500 DM higher salary which, by the way, he took directly from his executive pay. That’s Walter Stuber!

“Walter had faith in me and my abilities!”

Walter had faith in me and my abilities, even then when I was not used to office work at all and crippled the computer plus the printer! He became my teacher, not just with software and hardware! He invested much of his time and explained to me the complex relationships in the business world and taught me how to act economically. In 2001, he even made me his business partner!

An original with a mind of his own

We have been working together for 23 years now and 16 of those as business partners. I appreciate Walter Stuber as an innovative, constantly driven, ever-changing, visionary, future-oriented, never resentful, cellphone crazed, network enthusiastic, nature-loving individual. Some of his characteristics cannot be seen at first glance. For this, you have to get to know him better and thus will learn to like him more.

However, this is also Walter Stuber: He is impatient and demands a lot from his employees, family members, business partners, clients, and so on.

In return, however, he will give you everything he has: time, energy, money or words and knowledge. What he (and sometimes even more than that!) has, he enjoys passing on. Privately, he does not demand a lot. His only passion are books. He loves to buy them and he buys a lot; so it goes without saying that he has quite a few.

Once he has set his sight on something, there is no turning back.

The “promoter”

Walter has my utmost admiration for the fact that he was able to consequently and radically reduce his weight due to health reasons. For this, you need an iron will and stamina. Again, you can see his mentality: Once he has set his sight on something, there is no turning back!

“Eckart, I have been waiting for you for a long time.” I asked myself for many years what Walter Stuber meant with that statement when we first met. Now I know! This man has a “sixth sense,” a “gut feeling” as to whether or not the person standing in front of him has potential worth promoting! For me it is clear, without him, I would not be who I am today!

Why?

The definitive question for success

by Walter Stuber

“We know what we want, and we have got some fantastic ideas!” It is with this mentality that the five of us young entrepreneurs started out in 2001 and wanted to conquer the market with our Gemeinhardt Geruestbau Service GmbH! Unfortunately, the reality was quite different. In the end, three managing Directors left. Of course, Dirk Eckart and I asked ourselves why our original plan did not work out.

Only after we read John Strelecky’s “The Big Five For Life” and booked a corresponding seminar did we find an answer. It became clear to us that we had already committed the biggest mistake right from the start! The original five of us never asked ourselves the question WHY. Why did we found the company, and what was it’s purpose?

What do we want to achieve?

The three partners who left the company’s management had other goals in terms of company size, strategy and the long-term perspective of the company. Earning money was vital to us two remaining shareholders, but we wanted immediately to reinvest what we had earned in the company. After all, at some point, we wanted to hand over a stable, profitable company to our children.

If the goals are not the same, then there is no future in a joint business!

It is all about the reason!

In his book “Start with why”, management consultant Simon Sinek describes, among other things Apple’s success story. It is closely linked to the “why” question. Right from the start, the company had an answer and communicated it to customers: “For us, everything we do is about questioning what already exists. We believe that you have to think differently.” Their philosophy hasn’t changed to this day, and that’s a big part of Apple’s success.

The author continously emphasizes: When the question of “Why” has been answered for a business, making decisions gets easier, employee loyalty is higher and trust becomes “the common currency”. If people in management positions were more aware of asking the question “why” first, they “would spark optimism and innovation would be abundant.”

When the “why” has been clarified, there is nothing to stop effective, successful work!

A common goal inspires

We have found that the question “why” must not only be clarified before a company is founded but also stay in the back of our minds as managing directors! If you want to inspire your employees and motivate them to perform at their best, you must always make your common goal is clear!

J. F. Kennedy, the moon and the power of a vision

by Hermann Scherer, lecturer, and author

Hardly any term is used more by captains of industry than “values” or “visions”. At least the latter was highly controversial, after former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once said: “If you have a vision, you should go to the doctor.” Only later did he correct in a newspaper interview: “It was an impudent answer to a stupid question.”

Many years earlier, humanity became aware of the power of a vision: When John F. Kennedy gave the “Moon Speech” in Houston on September 12, 1962: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.(…) even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.”