Name: Stephan Wiehe

Title: Senior Product Owner Germany and Benelux

Organisation: Oracle NetSuite

20 years Finance professional and manager positions in international companies, than ERP Consulting and Product Management

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Stephan's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Bridging expectations of stakeholders and management/functional team.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

As a young MBA it started with small teams of 2 up to 20 Finance professionals in different countries. I started as young manager and grew to an accepted leader over time through practise (hope my reports would confirm). Without direct reports today the only asset is personality.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

Day starts with some physical exercises and breakfast, from 9 am meetings with my (scrum) teams, in the later afternoon divisional meetings. In the meantime review and specification of local requirements to be added to our ERP and point of contact for customers and our organization.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

Vulnerability sets the pace, so be proactive and supportive. The team wins, not the individual.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Henry Mintzberg - Managing: Leadership requires communication and alertness rather than spreadsheets and detailled rules and plans.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Lead by example.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

People follow inspiration and vision rather than budgets and tight rules.