: Gerhard Drexel
: It's all about the spirit Making it to the top with heart and soul
: Edition A
: 9783990017135
: 1
: CHF 16.20
:
: Ausbildung, Beruf, Karriere
: English
: 278
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Gerhard Drexel, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Spar Austria, tells the story of how the company became the number 1 Austrian food retailer after years of catching up to the competition. In doing so, he designs a modern counter-model to the spirit-free, technocratic-sterile leadership style. He shows how, with the right spirit, employees can be motivated on the path to market leadership. In Drexel's model, companies are there for the people again instead of the other way around, and that's exactly what makes them successful.

Gerhard Drexel studied business administration at the universities of St. Gallen and Innsbruck. After years as a consultant at the Malik Management Center St. Gallen, he moved to the board of Spar Austria in 1990. As a long-standing CEO, in 2020 he succeeded in making the company the market leader in the Austrian food trade with spirit and humanity. Gerhard Drexel has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Spar Austria since 2021.

1


The spirit: A decisive factor in competition


1.1
It is the spirit behind success or failure


Friday, 13th – a day I am sure to remember for the rest of my life. It is Friday, March 13, 2020. The Austrian federal government announces a nationwide total lockdown for the first time in history due to the spread of COVID-19. Only few industries – those considered essential, including all grocery stores – are exempt from the lockdown measures. And so, SPAR Austria is part of the critical infrastructure and in my twentieth year as CEO of this wonderful company, I am suddenly faced with the greatest professional challenges in my career.

That Friday, 13th sees one meeting after another. Some of them (still) actually take place in person, while others are already video conferences with fellow members of the board, managing directors, product-range managers, and other management staff. What did I tell all the people I was speaking with in the meetings back then? I encouraged them and told them with deep conviction: “We’ll emerge stronger than we were before this crisis!” Meanwhile, the product-range and product managers were tasked with “[developing] especially at this time of lockdown many attractive new SPAR own-brand products and [bringing] them to market as quickly as possible!”

Back on that Friday, March 13, 2020, not one of us knew whether the lockdown would last several weeks or months, whether there would be more closures throughout the year, whether hundreds or even thousands of our staff at our 1,500 supermarkets and hypermarkets in Austria and another 1,400 grocery stores in neighboring countries would fall ill with COVID-19, whether we would have sufficient employees to maintain food supplies. Neither did we know whether we would be receiving sufficient goods from our suppliers to ensure our shelves were well-stocked.

But we all pulled together and showedempathy when faced with our customers’ and suppliers’ – and especially our employees’ – needs and concerns. What particularly set us apart from all the competition back then was that specialspirit – that legendarySPAR spirit, the founding spirit that motivated and inspired us. What is interesting is that we all refer to that special kind of spirit as the same thing throughout the company: The SPAR spirit – or the Spirit of SPAR – has a deep meaning with us