Management Motivations: Logical progression delivers operational results

Management Motivations is a new series of articles by Quectel’s senior executives that explores their management styles, approaches to the challenges of further developing the company and what drives them to lead and succeed.

Norbert Muhrer, President & CSO

No 2: Logical progression delivers operational results

My management style is to be hands-on, I like to work with people. I want to work through business logic and understand the why and the what so I can make accurate decisions. I believe that seeing issues from other people’s perspective offers a more holistic view and promotes a spirit of cooperation.

My strengths are rather operational, and I like to focus on the here and now.  Early on in my career a skills test put me in the same category as a fighter pilot (not that I am qualified to be one) but I guess that says a lot. As a consequence, my shortcomings are that I’m not really good at long term plans. I have my ideas and I think about the future many times, eg what’s next on our path, and what would and would not suit us well.   However, I need someone to spar with and to challenge me, so I am happy to engage, discuss and devolve to other people.  I also learned early on in my career, and this stuck with me, that one needs to know one’s weak spots and therefore to work with people who are strong in those skills. It is only this way that we get the best results.

My general philosophy is that we’re like a wolf-pack.  The strength is the crowd, the “Quectel family”, the diversity, the eagerness to move forward while relying on individuals and their own talents.  Being hungry to win while celebrating what we have.  Leaders showing the way, rookies eager to learn and follow. I saw this at my former company Cinterion Wireless Modules, where we were agile, motivated and wanted to win with everything we had. And whilst I found large corporations can kill such a spirit, I see it every day at Quectel.

I believe firmly that whatever engagement we as leaders request from our staff, we have to live it by example. If we want staff to be dedicated and work with vigor to win deals we have to show that we do it too. Delegation is part of the management role, but you don’t delegate everything away.

Managers need to get their hands dirty and be in the middle of the action, you can’t be a helicopter manager.  This is very important for Quectel as we are a very young yet highly dynamic company which is growing at an incredibly fast pace.   Our emphasis is on strong teamwork and mutual support, where experience is shared.  We have put in place a team of very skilled international senior management, and they understand that not everything will work like it does at long established companies where they often come from.  But that’s the great part: the experience combined with an incredible will to learn and excel. It is part of managers’ role to accept there may be shortcomings in some of our processes and to work towards developing best practice by sharing their experience.

Our focus on staff and process development, as well as the global nature of the company facilitates innovation.  Our global teams are comprised of talented and dynamic people and their different view of things is highly valuable to us.  I see the background, structure and work environment at Quectel as a definite commercial advantage.

Look out for my next blog in this series:  Putting in place structures for the next wave of success