October 30th, 2012 Götz W. Werner being interviewed by Rolf van Dick

Götz Werner was born in 1944 and after becoming a chemist and holding several positions in his parents’ drugstore, as well as in the large drugstore Idro, in 1973 he founded his first own drugstore named “dm” (German abbreviation for “drugstore”). In 1978 ‘dm’ already had more than 100 stores in Germany, in 2011 there were more than 2,500 stores in eleven European countries. The enterprise has almost 40,000 employees and a sales capital of 7 billion Euro in 2011/12. In 2003 he became professor at the Institute of Entrepreneurship within the Institute for Technology in Karlsruhe (KIT), where he worked until he became Emeritus in 2010. In 2008 he changed position at dm, becoming a member of the supervisory board. He actively supports several social and cultural projects and is in favor of a basic income guarantee. He is one of the 100 richest men in Germany but gave most of his fortune to a charitable foundation, fighting for the basic income and supporting projects. In the interview with Rolf van Dick he talks about his personal leadership style, what good leadership is, about being proactive and confident and about trusting his employees. He talks about change as a requirement for long-term success on an individual and organizational level and about leadership through asking questions.