Why Culture Matters More Than Strategy with Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of Inficon

Welcome to Emotional Business, the podcast where we explore the human side of leadership and tech. I'm Olga Skipper, Executive Coach and Advisor for Startup Leaders. In the season we are talking about what's changing in business, in leadership, and ourselves. Because leading in 2026, it's a whole new game. Let's get into that. Today I'm joined by Olga Mavir, the CEO of Infekon, a global tech company operating across continents, industries, and rapidly shifting geopolitical realities. In this conversation, we explore what it really takes to lead a global organization today. How to stay in line with the cross-borders, how to make decisions in uncertainty, and why Oliver believes that culture matters more than strategy. We'll talk about his leadership journey, the lessons he's learned as a global CEO, and how he faints about building a culture that truly sustains performance in a long run. Hi, Oliver. I'm excited to talk to you about the global leadership that you embody for me, but before we jump in, maybe there are two or three things that you feel like the listeners need to know about you in order to understand our conversation. First of all, thanks for having me. It's great to talk to you, Olga. Always a great exchange. Yeah, about me, maybe easiest is one, two minutes, summary where I'm from, where I went, and where I'm now. So, more recently from a small village up in the Alps, I think there's more cows than people. That really earthed me. I like to straight talk. I like real stuff, not fluff. And then from there I went to study computer science. I had a passion for that a while, already as a kid, and then went into different places as a consultant. It was in the startup, it was then a leader of smaller and bigger business units across Europe, across a couple of industries, and then also for nearly 10 years I was in the US and came finally back for this job about three years ago. I'm quite excited about getting this opportunity. I was dreaming about it for a while and had that goal, but it also needed to be the right time and the right environment for me to really enjoy myself and I really do, in spite of maybe the difficulties that particularly this year have in store for us, but it is anyway often more about the bigger picture when you really zoom out, than maybe difficulties that you might have on a tactical level. I was actually talking about you just so on yesterday where I was describing how thoughtful you went into this role and it's been like three years now, right? At the same time, the world changed dramatically within the period where you're leading the company. How did that feel for you? Yeah, there's only one description for it. It felt like a roller coaster and I think it starts out anyway, like a roller coaster, even if there wasn't so much change out there in the world because you'd really good-adduced. Running a business unit, I did that for 10, 15 years before that, but it has a couple of other things that come into the mix that sounds or feels insignificant at first, but then it's just a little bit of a bigger responsibility when you think about where you need to go and what you need to change a bit more high pressure. Of course, there was also a number of things I needed to learn the first six, 12 months and I'm still learning naturally, but that was intense. Also, the world changed dramatically. We came out of COVID full steam. There was such a hype, especially in semiconductor, but also in our other tech sectors, and we couldn't ship fast enough and scale up our production, and couldn't innovate fast enough on all of it, and that was all 23 like that. Going from some kind of process, China is a Pacific, Europe, US, and then of course, most recently the escalation of the trade war. We always had it, but there was a whole new level what happened in April, so that really triggered a lot of additional moves, a lot more hands-off and just do and break things to go and move fast. But yeah, there's also many things that stayed the same or, let's say, proved to make sense in spite of all the adversities, the headwinds, and the fast change. Why would you say are the top three things that made sense? Yeah, but we already also talked about before I went into this role, was about building up a strong team and growing as a leader, working on culture. These are things they really haven't changed. I think the intensity have changed, and I guess there was a bigger step up in speed and change, and hence in the need for agility, but the core of it has proven to be more valuable that what we thought before. You said once to me, and you actually don't remember that you said that to me, that you will always choose culture of a strategy when it comes to spending time or spending resources on. Can you tell a little bit more about this? Yeah, I guess in my reality, this is 100% a clear choice, so maybe to explain to you all a little bit and how I think see things from the infecone perspective. Look, every company, every leader has a different history, so it's always subjective to a degree. We are very decentralized company that isn't so big. We are about 1700 people, and they are spread out on the North and Hemisphere, basically in every tech class there is, from Japan to California and everything in between. So there's about 20 businesses in it, we are about 700 million revenue, so there's 20 businesses in there and each one has their own leadership, team, they have their own ecosystem of customers, of innovation partners, of suppliers, manufacturing, and inocenters, and they know me to make it work for themselves. So for me, I can be the best CEO by not making a single decision. That's the definition of success for me. Why? Because then I have a team that make good decisions themselves, they're enabled, they're empowered, they navigate adversities, and my job is really as pure as it can be, a coach to them and help them succeed. Of course, sometimes I have to go and step in and make changes to the system, meaning to the teams, to the organizational parts, maybe also dive deep into the strategy of those, but in the end, it's much about making sure that all of these 15, 20 businesses are successful. So the combining feature of this is really that I try to build strong teams that have strong collaboration, that have a strong culture, and that also can collaborate not only within these businesses, but across because they all have synergies with each other. They all feed off of each other in a way together or bounce ideas back and have also some constructive competition, you can have competition where people just want to do great stuff and then when other people do something great, they also want to go show what they can do. And so that's a good dynamic. So for me, a large part is really building up people, talents, teams and build the culture around it. And hence, what the exact strategies is specifically now that the speed even further accelerated, that is not so relevant. You need to have people who have all the competence at the empowerment and then they will have to make adjustments to it every day actually. I'm even quite positive when people make decisions and then tell me after, because if that's the right decision and they need it to do that way and the trust still exists, that's the best way. They don't run it up and down the flag pool. I'll add a little bit of color to that. So the listener is actually to understand the quote of good, the missing information that we have you and I. In fact, on in this organization, you not only said, I want to be a coach to the team, but you also enabled others that work with you directly and also leading the other teams to be really coaches to their team. That was one of the big shifts that I saw you doing. It was incredible because empowering those people not only to be those direct and visit how we're going to do that leaders, but leaders that again, also coach and empower their own teams. This is a part of the culture that you're instilling actually. But on the other hand, bringing the structural coaching to the team, meaning that you have someone in an organization thinking through like how can we support that also from professional coaching perspective, not only the leaders of coach, but a professional coaching perspective in order for those people again to assess the situation, assess the region they're in, understand where I need to go and then bring it further into the teams. So But the listeners were not only talking about that older were going to coaching and worked with a lot of different amazing people, but also what you're doing, you're making sure that this quote unquote culture, we're not talking about the, I don't know, ping pong tables and we're not talking about lunches, et cetera. What we're actually talking about is how you instilling the thinking and the mind models within the people that they know their role as leaders as coaches within organizations. And they know within their locations that we're talking about, they are also empowered by you to have that stand and to have that mindset. Am I right? Yeah, no thanks for giving that context. We so entrenched with it that we sometimes maybe go to get this context. Everybody knows that you don't need to print pretty posters. What works for me as an indicator, and that's just an example of how measure culture works is when people print it out themselves on a sheet of paper and hang it up because they find it important on the desks or in their meeting rooms. But really it's about making it come alive and we study company cultures like nerds, like we are tech nerds. If you only do two things, world applause. Everything else for us can be good enough. And the two things are, is coaching people development, title density and culture cluster and the other one is tech. We need to be number one in innovation. That's how our whole business works and that's how we keep our standing in the industry. So what we do is we of course use a lot of external coaches but we have internal coaches, we have currently around 50 to 60. For me every leader needs to be a coach. If they are not a coach, then the people leader, then why would they need to lead people? The task manager is this is sure component but it's a small component and it's on the lower levels. As soon as you get more up from mid management to senior managers, you need a very strong coaching capability, understanding teams what do they need, what do talents need and what to do with them through their growth path. So you have trained them up and that's a continuous population of people that there's new cohorts being trained once a year and so people face out of this but most leaders are coaches and what do they do whenever they have a meeting, a summit, an off-site or even a weekly meeting or a one-to-one, then needs to be always a component in their culture. And this is not prescription. They need to be convinced themselves to do it and the way I measure it is listen. Actually, if you know the big company, it's 1700 people, I can talk to people, I anyway spend a lot of time understanding people, when you understand people you build trust, you build empathy and then you can let them run the law. So understanding people is key and when these conversations are here, how much people spend time on culture and self-development and on team development. So as an example, of course, template this as a leadership team, my off-site of which I have about five to six a year are typically more than half on culture and people development. The strategy there is budgeting there is tactical problems, there is dramas, there is escalations, there's all that stuff but we are trying to always keep that to priority and there's a component in there of hey, where people stock varies not enough coaching coverage, what do coaches need and there's always pioneers among the coaches, that's how we call them, they find out new frameworks, new interesting stuff we could do and they just start doing it and as soon as they bubbles up, the leadership team also wants to learn it and then they can help facilitate the jumping from one cell to the others and that's how it should develop you. As soon as people think it makes sense, they will adopt it. That could be many different things, it can be self-like inside profiles, it can be very specific stuff like agile in RIT, that could be scrum or it could be scrum-bound or whatever it might be, it can be lean start of design thinking, there's always enough to learn, there's always two more to evolve and we have also a couple of core concepts that we have workshopped and re-workshop and reviewed and stick with us all the time. One is called ownership, this is a lot about self-management, self-realization and the reflection of yourself, how you react to the world, be in the doormod, not in the victim mode, that's one of these components, we have maybe five to eight of those, different complexity levels and they come on come again and all these coaches, they get enabled to be able to run small and big workshops, that's half an hour, that's three hours sometimes on these topics because it never stops, every team is never done, so we continuously work on this and these workshops you can hear, people have good workshops, people have multiple workshops, I join many different summits around the globe and also in the summits there's always a piece in there and we have conversations and I always learn every time as well, also from the most trivial workshops around ownership, you think they're trivial but there's always something where you say okay here's more what I could do better, so a very long answer I guess to give some color but thanks for drilling into this. There are two parts that I want to unpack here as well, one is we're just described how you guys are doing that but this how needs to be really connected to the why and to where, like where are you going and why you're going there and we haven't talked about that but I'll just describe the second part in a minute and then we'll drill it back, so one is like there is a clear direction and a vision and this would be interesting for me to unpack a little bit, then this is how we do it within the organization and this is just DNA and how we think about that and everyone is participating also within this coaching culture that you are setting up in the organization but then there is also the component of the outcome, right? So I wonder how do you make sure that the vision and the where you're going is quoted with clear but also attached to this coaching mentality because without direction all the tools that you describe they're actually more or less fun when sometimes useless fun but also how do you make sure that it's attached to the outcome of the organization? Yeah, now it gets definitely a bit nerdy or hitpy I guess. We have workshop one particular area member around how do we define us as a company and then we were thinking a few times to redefine a vision, do we want to define a mission and do we define strategy and budget and how do we do it? And strategy always adapts a bit the process probably every year, I mean typically do a three-year strategy and that's pretty specific and this market we do that we do this innovation, service like that and so on people and expansion and whatnot and then a budget he also somewhat do a lot of high-level framework it's not that relevant in our industry because it really is very volatile so you need to understand the scaffolding and the mechanics of it and also our leaders need to understand it but benchmarking throughout the year of the budget is not something that is too relevant but we can get back to that later but you asked about the front part of it so vision and mission so far we have not defined one on purpose we just didn't see the point. So a specifically mission we just felt it's so silly that we're not gonna use that vision we have a direction we want to go but then we'll be really found out over and over again in this discussion is that it's more about a DNA and and I think and that is in a sense very trivial but we connect it and it goes back to what I just said earlier we're really here and long to be world-class in these two things in this people and culture and technology and innovation and there's things in there in this identity like curiosity and growth mindset and passion and care for each other internally and also care for the outside in terms of what community contributions you make and of course also sustainability and so on so we have defined it around that and feel very good about that in the end often specifically the leader part of our company they really join because of this more paid with larger teams somewhere else but they're still joining because they would like to shape a culture that is really free from all form and all kind of dogma that other places have and we just shape our own and everything can be questioned and rebuilt and in the end the culture should be a place where you get energy meaning your team should always be an energy station specifically this year but in the team you're just most pragmatic most solution oriented and really care for each other one of our concept is for each other to work for each other which goes beyond with each other or next to each other and it definitely is better than against each other but you see four levels there and we go for that for each other where you do stuff for the company even though it's maybe sometimes at the detriment for your own team or your own department or your own business unit so that is of course I ambition it doesn't always work but this is the kind kind of way that we want to be internal so you truly get energy from it. And that's also why people join that maybe find bigger jobs in other places. And we need to be so good at it that these people don't leave. It's not going to be mad. That's our benchmark that we want to try to achieve. So this much to the ambition of course we live in the real world and many things happen in the real world. Let me play a little bit of a devil's advocate here. You are trade-ins are a great so the company is really good. So there is a financial goal behind it as well. And you also have a board that's supervising you etc. So how to make sure that this culture aspect is also understood by people that might be looking only at the financial result. Yeah, it's a very good question. And there we do have a special setup and that no everybody has. And I have to say I'm very appreciative of that setup because we do have investors that think very long term and that share this culture ambition. This culture ambition by the way doesn't mean we sit around on our hands quite the opposite. I think the determination of people and the passion has so much drive. My job is mainly slowing people down and tell them let's not cramp everything into the next quarter and the next year. But that's the position I want to be in and I say this is a very impatient person. But if you build such strong team that have such an intrinsic drive they also achieve great things. So in the end these investors and our shareholders in general will also see strong results and that in the past we have clearly been compounding on the market. Meaning we have been growing above the market even though we are market leaders. So how do we do that? We try to always expand our applications. There's a lot of curiosity. There's a lot of freedom of people go try out stuff and fail at it, move on. And there are so many fantastic ideas. Be it market development, new geographies, new market segment, new application, new R&D method. So there's such an enormous drive out of it but it is not driven, it's bottom up and it's basically chaos. I'd say we have some structures and some processes but my goal is always to just have enough to not totally drop into chaos. Not more, not a little bit more. And that's also tough because you always get into this controlling kind of feeling, we need targets, we need to measure. No you don't because whether you benchmark in measuring you need to just have people doing their very best in their environment and then you will get the best and that's all you need. It's a very much an act of thinking in a sense. How can we accelerate? It's about acceleration. Will you always like this? What I mean by that, where you always believe that questioning those things and sending up the culture and people authoritarian leadership is important or there was a turning point somewhere. I have learned a lot along the way and made many mistakes and the warmest amounts and that's also good because that's when you learn, you learn mostly from mistakes. That's how our brain works. But yeah, I started out as a junior leader of course being much more controlling and also was a perfectionist for the longest time. So this is a very dangerous thing. It's the foundation to be successful, some of these traits but then you need to overcome them and only use them and then make sense. But I try to improve it and find unit and I have a very open feedback culture so it says and should be saved for everybody. One thing that we try to live is that we give feedback always immediate and specific so you don't wait. You don't wait today. You definitely don't wait for six months or 12 months review. That's totally ridiculous. You need to immediately say it and that's sometimes painful. So you go and say, I need a minute. This I like and this I did like more of this and thus and then the other side says this feedback I take and this I don't because I see it different. So this needs to constantly happen in that sense. I'm also safe. I have evolved at some great mentors and I had some fantastic failures and some really stressful periods and somehow ended up here. But I got various reinforce beliefs because it really works well and really seem to be attracting a lot of great talent like this and can keep them and build our company further like this. But yeah, there was times when I needed to learn how to build a bench and you can't have a weak bench otherwise the leader you suffer a lot or I was over controlling as I mentioned earlier. I don't understand how to build a great team. I think that it all of these mistakes. I also had the number of leaders where I could really learn from them. I always tried to steal the good ideas. I'm not taking anybody anything away with that. I made a few great leaders that I could steal some good stuff from. Is there anything you still wish to learn on your leadership journey? Yeah, plenty. I have to say the more you dive into it, the more it gets fascinating how to do it. I learned from senior leaders in the company all the time. There's a lot of people I can do a lot of things better than me. Also in people management so there is always cool stuff. Every workshop we do, every coaching session we do always goes both ways. One of the greatest arts is making leaders. That in a sense also immediately means making coaches that's a never ending skill to work towards mastery and never achieve it. Time a nanometer, right? So I did not have education. All I have is a good amount of experience and work on it every day and read some books about it and have some great coaches. So that's how I continue. If you had a chance to ask one question an executive coach, what would it be? Yeah, I always have executive coaches. I always have at least one. I think when you're a senior leader, you need coaches. You need also breaks in between and you need then some 360s sometimes and sometimes you know what you need to work on. You work on it. Yeah, I guess the fundamental question is always how can I grow as a leader and have more impact and that always should lead also to more happiness and a happier team. So there's always that context. But what I also like to do, maybe as a second to this, is I like to understand coaches and that sometimes uncomfortable because I ask questions to the coach and that's not the idea of a coaching session and it can only go that far, of course, otherwise it would be silly also. But I like to understand why people want to be a coach. What is ultimately their motivation? What kind of energy do they take from it? And that helps me a lot and I met many coaches that they have this intrinsic motivation to their own mission in that sense, maybe going back to the integral identity or DNA that they want to just learn and develop and create great talent, help this development journey. That I find fascinating too. Interesting. I don't think coaches have one motivation and maybe you noticed that also working with different coaches, right? Because what I observe and I supervise and sometimes get workshops to coaches, etc. We all come with our own why and the own way of staying in the job. Because I think the problem is not becoming a coach or the challenge is not becoming a coach. The challenge is staying in the coaching profession and I think for a lot of people who stay in the coaching profession, the innate curiosity of how humans are built, shaped, breathing. This is what makes a lot of people because I see them like really good coaches sometimes changing their titles to, oh, I'm a writer or I'm an investigator or I'm an artist, it always comes to this moment that there is a really big curiosity of who is sitting in front of you and if you don't have that you're not staying in the profession. That is so true actually when you say this makes so much sense. Although curiosity is something that can only grow by leaning more into it, right? You develop your empathy, you develop your interest and the more interesting it gets, it's a never-ending thing, a human mind. So you can go and explore 100 different ways, yeah, the whole mission. And you're almost never right. That's another thing. Yeah. It's as similar to my monthly, I have only a few talking points, but when you truly understand the person, you actually need to listen and our brain is made for that to feel a person, how they think. It's not so necessary to write it down maybe just for reflection after, but then when you feel people then you can understand what happens in their heads in this situation or the other. I think that's key. And again, for me, I can really very much relate to this because that's how I try to feel my leaders. Maybe there's a hundred people around, If you're going around the globe that I need to feel well and then I pretty much know what's happening at Inficon. It's not a record. It's not takes definitely no traffic lights It's about feeling them Thank you all over there was a incredible conversation. Thank you very much Olga for this token for having me Thank you. Thank you for listening to emotional business and If this episode sparked something for you, share it with someone who leads or maybe who inspires too If you haven't done it just yet, hit follow and leave a review for us. It helps more people find this conversation I'm Olga Skipper and I'll see you in the next episode