Stagnation and wasting time form Daniel's kryptonite, which is why he consistently stays away from it. He doesn't follow deadlocked processes, but takes the path that is goal-oriented and efficient. A passion burns within him for developing things further, optimizing them and adding value.

When he started his military service with the German Armed Forces, it was absolutely out of the question for him to do the standard service for high school graduates with future office jobs. He wanted to leave his comfort zone, try something new and experience something - thus he served as a paratrooper.  

Today, 20 years after his last parachute jump for the German Armed Forces, he has made a name for himself as a project manager. Daniel has been a key contributor to international projects in India, Portugal, Mexico, Syria, South Africa, China and South Korea, among others.

Due to his extensive professional and private experiences abroad and his interest in new approaches, he is an expert in the field of international project management as well as team leadership. He is an "analyst" and a "doer".

He always finds something that can be improved - especially through discussions with the teams and his own evaluations derived from them. From these discussions, he develops visions that help the team and himself to maintain a common direction even after a given issue/problem has been solved.

The assignments on large construction sites in Syria, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Portugal and especially the time in India have given Daniel the opportunity to work with different characters and cultures at different hierarchical levels. The conversations with the driver on the construction site, the site manager and up to the CxO function were an enrichment to understand the cooperation in such complex constellations. In business, it's always about the matter, but not about the person. Every contact is an experience from which you can learn.

"You can negotiate hard all day and still have dinner together in the evening because no one has lost face."

Insights: A market environment is only as flexible and agile as its respective customers. Thus, a market with predominantly government customers tends to be slow and new technologies require a lot of time, patience and persuasion. Whereas a market with more private customers can develop very quickly and offers opportunities to work on new developments with these customers.

Daniel is always enthusiastic about different types of business and enjoys getting involved in new topics. Thus, the construction of large power plants in Portugal and Syria, photovoltaic power plants in South Africa and Israel were just as interesting as the construction of smaller transformer stations in the Indian back country or the integration of an international mid-sized company into a corporation, all the way to contract negotiations in South Korea for baggage handling systems.

Daniel also likes to compare his management style to that of a football coach. It is his responsibility to prepare his team, establish tactics, set up strategies and develop backup plans. As soon as the game - the project - is underway, he stands on the sideline and can only intervene in the process to a limited extent. This is when he finds out whether or how well he has set up his team. Accordingly, he feels jointly responsible for the team's result. And after the game is before the game, so it is up to him to rework, adjust and prepare for the next game or project.

Many misunderstandings are based on assumptions and thus unspoken expectations. Therefore, Daniel strives to check his own assumptions and theories in direct dialogue in order to avoid such misunderstandings. This requires a high degree of self-reflection and the realisation that it is okay to be wrong.

Through his experience in Six Sigma and LEAN management, he possesses not only the mental competence for continuous improvement, but also a wide range of tools and methods for analysing and presenting processes and developing measures. To this day, he is particularly helped by his ability to question a problem (Why is the problem? How does it manifest itself?), to find out the "customer" for a particular process and to analyse its benefits.

He has a highly developed talent for analysing and questioning complex issues and proceeds according to the principle "from the big to the small". Only when the big picture makes sense and the overall context is understood does he move to the next level. Even when it then goes into the details, the big picture - be it an idea or a definition of a goal - serves as a "north star" or guiding point.