Both represent Brunner as a company with their name and with their personality. And both shape the company’s profile towards clients and partners by their thoughts and by their actions. A talk with company founder Rolf Brunner and his son and Co-Managing Director Dr. Marc Brunner.

Catchword Responsibility: What do you think, how strongly is a person conditioned by having grown up as the child of an entrepreneur, especially in a family-owned company? Do you think that this automatically leads to a different set of values, a different sense of responsibility?

Marc Brunner: As the child of an entrepreneur there is a connection to entrepreneurial questions from very early on. Successes and problems are being talked about at home at the dinner table. This seriousness with which one has to face entrepreneurial challenges, is to the manner born. Since we lived right on the company’s premises during the founding period, there was already a close spatial connection to the company for us children. And it was nice that basically my parents were always around even though they had so much work to do, and were ready to listen to us even during stressful times.

Rolf Brunner: Children of entrepreneurs realize very early what it means to take on responsibility. To be an entrepreneur is connected with austerity on the one side, e.g. there were no regulated working hours, no weekends. On the other hand you also have larger leeway in shaping the private and business spheres. 

If you had to take a choice, which of these four characteristics would you value higher and why: energy, respect, loyalty, team spirit.  

MB: All four are important in order to be successful. And all four are often present in family-owned companies. There, the individual and his or her individual history still count. There is a deeper connection between employee and the company, resulting in mutual respect and mutual loyalty. Team spirit develops, which bonds people together and which also helps weather occasional storms.

RB: Absolutely correct. Also energy, the creative urge, is important, especially during the founding phase – and also during critical times, when you have to prevail over the adversities of the market and the environment. In the final analysis this is also where the innovations come from which every company needs in order to survive.
To be an entrepreneur means most of all to be able to see the bigger connections, to perceive the whole. And to have the personal stamina and psychological resilience to be able to process the great number of topics that are put on your desk every day. Day-to-day business for an entrepreneur means that you sometimes have to take very far-reaching decisions at very short notice, regardless of what mood you happen to be in at that given day.

Mr Rolf Brunner, you are said to be a man of great energy – is that a characteristic that can be handed on? Or do you have to have it in your blood??  

RB: Energy, drive and the willingness to take on responsibility are characteristics that you have in your blood. You need to have clear guidelines in leading your employees, e.g. the motto: “We face up to our mistakes.” No matter if it’s an internal issue or a customer reclamation.

You often talk about a pronounced customer orientation – is it sometimes difficult not to lose your own values from sight? 

RB: Customer orientation is our paramount goal because we are firmly convinced that it is the only way how the company can have long-term success. When you lose sight of your customers, you will end up losing all. This philosophy runs through our company like a leitmotif.
For us, partnership is very important. In order to be credible what counts is first of all the success we achieve together with our sales partners. To count an order as a success includes a lot: delivery on time and without reclamations, and processes that are perfect – according to the customer’s point of view, mind you. You have to work hard to be credible, by keeping your word and living up to your promises.

To which point are you prepared to proceed? Or do your customers even expect you to act on the basis of these values? Are these values a criterion for customers to decide in favor of Brunner? 

MB: We go a long way in order to offer the best possible service to our customers. Especially when the issue is special editions, i.e. customer-individual solutions. No other company in our industry can fulfill the specific demands of its customers as quickly and flexibly as we do.
Of course, there are also limits, and sometimes we overshoot our target – e.g. when we as the Directors still accept extremely tight deadlines set by our customers although our third party vendors say, that’s not really possible – but when you really want to do something, and when you’re really committed, you can achieve more than you originally thought possible. And when the customer is happy at the end of the day, everybody has won.
As a midsize company, it is precisely this flexibility and speed that are our strong points, and we have to do everything in order to keep this spirit alive even when we keep on growing further.

Studies show that employees working for German family-owned businesses compared to other companies expect most of all three things: short decision-making processes, more own responsibility and a good work atmosphere. How much own responsibility do your employees act upon? 

RB: This is also the case for Brunner. We are extremely fast when it comes to taking decisions. And as entrepreneurs we know the processes in our company, and we know how to control them accordingly.

MB: Surely, there are still possibilities for optimization even with us. With a view on succession, I would like to see a stronger sense of own responsibility with certain employees and managers. It is true that we are currently undergoing a time of cultural change, but this takes some time. Old behavioral patterns can only be changed slowly and with a steady emphasis by the leading team.

Dr. Marc Brunner, for more than 30 years, your father, Rolf Brunner, has built up and managed the company. You yourself have now been active for seven years in management, your siblings are just joining you, in sales and controlling. What should you be particularly aware of when handing on the company to the next generation so that the working together and the working succession are indeed a success? From your position in the second generation, what would you recommend?

MB: Corporate succession is a complex, multi-layered process. I think what you need most of all is the mutual trust and confidence among the generations. The founders need to have confidence in the abilities and the values of their successors. And the successors need to trust the long-term readiness of their predecessors to settle the corporate and property issues that automatically result from a corporate succession in a manner that makes good business sense.
I would recommend successors to be patient even though I myself am sometimes impatient and things don’t move on quickly enough for me. As a successor you have to understand that it is not easy for a founder to separate himself from his life’s work on all levels.

RB: We started relatively early to work on our succession. My wife and me have always had the wish that all three children would at one point take on responsibility within the company. By Tina and Philip joining us now, the next important phase of this process has just started, and it seems that the way we regulated our succession will work out fine.

Dr. Marc Brunner, what was your motivation to join the family business? Since when do you know that you wanted to work here? 

MB: The production facility was my playground. When I was only five years old, I used to grab my father’s hand and walk with him through the premises and say that at some time in the future I wanted to become “the boss”. That’s why I also was very goal-oriented in my training and studies, and I focused on the succession in our company.

How about your brother Philip and your sister Tina?

MB: My brother and my sister are younger than me and they’ve actively joined the company only this year. Tina previously worked in a pharmaceutical company in controlling and has decided to now take on the succession of our mother.
Philip has always been a very sociable and open personality – an ideal qualification to be successful in sales. I think it has always been clear for him as well that he would take on responsibility within our company.
I’m really looking forward to their support, and since our parents want to stay active in the company for a few more years, we have the great opportunity to shape the succession step-by-step.

When you were a child, what career did you want to pursue – and which elements have you been able to really put into practice today?

MB: Like I said: it has always been my wish to become an entrepreneur. What I particularly enjoy in this lifelong challenge is the possibility to create something that will last – an organization, sustainable products, a brand that people desire. And to do this together with other people who have the same goal. For me as a manager there’s nothing more beautiful than to see how an employee grows with his tasks and excels beyond his own aspirations. Those are the best moments in our turbulent entrepreneurial day-to-day business.

Do you have a wish for the future of your company?

MB: I wish for all of us, our family, our employees and our partners, that we will continue to take the right decisions – in order to remain successful in an ever more complex and ever more quickly changing environment. In order to do this, it is important to have a clear compass of values so that you can steer a clear course even in stormy times.