He Runs a $251 Billion Company and Responds to Emails with Just 2 Letters: ‘I Value Efficiency’

Writing a elaborate email to Siemens CEO Roland Busch? Expect a two-letter consequence back: “OK” aliases “No.”

“I effort to support my inbox beneath 100. If you person much than 100 emails successful your inbox, you suffer the overview of what’s really connected your plate,” Busch precocious told Business Insider. “I execute this by answering messages quickly and utilizing a fewer words.”

Busch gets astir 200 emails per time and skips elaborate responses successful favour of efficiency. That intends that his emails are “simple and fast.”

“My squad is trained to pass this way,” he told the outlet. “If I request to constitute thing longer, I dictate my consequence while stepping done the office.”

The 61-year-old CEO carries the aforesaid connection of ratio successful the measurement he structures his clip pinch his nonstop reports. Instead of scheduling recurring one-on-one meetings pinch nonstop reports connected his calendar, Busch has an open-door policy. 

“Because I worth efficiency, I don’t person recurring meetings pinch my nonstop reports,” Busch said. “I show them, ‘You travel to maine whenever you request me.’ It could beryllium 5 times a week aliases erstwhile a month. I don’t request to entertain people, and they don’t request to entertain me.”

Busch’s beginnings successful physics

Busch has spent much than 3 decades astatine Siemens. He joined the German engineering institution successful 1994 and worked his measurement done its activity ranks earlier becoming CEO successful 2021. Since then, Siemens’ shares person more than doubled, helping make it Germany’s most valuable company and 1 of Europe’s largest by marketplace capitalization. 

Busch didn’t spell to business school. Instead, he has a Ph.D. successful physics, and he began his Siemens profession successful research, moving connected power technologies for illustration star powerfulness and offshore wind. 

That technological grounding still informs the measurement he runs a world company.

“As a CEO, you’re ever making decisions pinch incomplete and ambiguous information,” Busch told Business Insider. “Physics taught maine really to de-layer a problem, separating the halfway issues from the little important ones. Once you isolate the halfway variables, you person a overmuch amended chance of making the correct decision.”

Another CEO is cutting backmost connected meetings pinch nonstop reports

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang besides skips one-on-ones pinch his dozens of nonstop reports, according to an section of the Lex Fridman Podcast from earlier this year.

Huang told the podcast that he has around 60 leaders reporting straight to him, alternatively of the modular 5 to 7 nonstop reports. The building eliminates layers of level that tin slow down decision-making, flattening retired Nvidia’s organizational chart.

“I don’t person one-on-ones pinch them because it’s impossible,” Huang said connected the podcast. “We coming a problem, and each of america onslaught it.”

Writing a elaborate email to Siemens CEO Roland Busch? Expect a two-letter consequence back: “OK” aliases “No.”

“I effort to support my inbox beneath 100. If you person much than 100 emails successful your inbox, you suffer the overview of what’s really connected your plate,” Busch precocious told Business Insider. “I execute this by answering messages quickly and utilizing a fewer words.”

Busch gets astir 200 emails per time and skips elaborate responses successful favour of efficiency. That intends that his emails are “simple and fast.”