I love change – and my job!
Tatjana Utz-Erhardt is a real power woman, as evidenced by the fact that she (the family of six) is able to reconcile family and career. Many years ago, before the major changes in the world of work, she was the first female member of the Management Board of the Schwarz Group (Lidl/Kaufland) to be able to work from home. The fact that good organisation and strategic skills are a good basis for success is also reflected in the 46-year-old’s professional career. After graduating with a degree in business administration, she was able to choose a job from numerous offers and today, after 27 years of professional experience and exciting positions such as COO of Genuss & Harmonie Holding GmbH, she is a Senior Advisor in the Transformation & Sustainability Squad at H&Z Unternehmensberatung AG. Constantly acquiring new skills is an absolute necessity for Utz-Erhardt. She passed the Oxford Leading Sustainability Programme certification course in July 2022 with an above-average result. In January 2022, she also successfully passed the examination to become a qualified member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Börse AG. In this interview, she tells us how she came to work on the Supervisory Board.
1. what is your motivation for working on the Supervisory Board?
I know my strengths very well and also know how supervisory boards work and the challenges they face. A few years ago, I realised that I could generate real added value if I got involved as a member of the Supervisory Board. My strength lies in analysis, strategy and transformation. When I come into a company, I very quickly – intuitively and through my experience – recognise the strengths and weaknesses “in the system”. I feel at home in the insurance and retail sectors, but I also know many other industries through my work at consulting companies. That is why I am not restricted to a specific sector for my work as a Supervisory Board member. In addition to my broad knowledge of the industry, I am also good at taking people with me into new areas and new tasks. This is particularly important for transformation processes. People naturally have respect for new things. Allaying this concern or fear through empathy and convincing arguments is a key strength that I can and would like to bring to my work on the Supervisory Board.
2. what was your motivation to be certified as a qualified Supervisory Board member?
I wanted to be perfectly equipped for this responsible job and, thanks to the great work of Gabriele Bornemann, I got much more than just a certificate. The course at the Management Alliance is the best training programme I have ever completed in my life. In addition to the theory, our team of 9 people worked a lot on practical cases and interacted with each other. That was exactly what I needed. Another aspect is the opportunity to expand my network through this certification.
3. what do you think are currently the biggest challenges in the work of the Supervisory Board?
Change is normal and nothing new. But never before have companies, and therefore also the supervisory body, the supervisory board, been confronted with such short change cycles as today. This requires a high degree of flexibility in the strategic approach. Constantly adjusting, constantly analysing and transferring into the strategy. For me, sustainability represents all of this. Sustainability stands for the necessity and at the same time the opportunity of change and affects all areas – digitalisation, optimisation of supply chains as well as the major change processes in the world of work. Sustainable success means ensuring the future viability of a company. The Supervisory Board contributes to this as part of its primary task of monitoring, advising and shaping, as do the Executive Board and all employees of a company.
4 What do you consider to be the most important success factors in the work of the Supervisory Board?
Controlling and advising at the same time – that’s a balancing act and at the same time an indicator of whether a supervisory board is doing a good job or not. If this is successful, a supervisory board can generate great added value for the company. Supervisory board members should also be good team players, after all, the most diverse personalities come together in this body, and these are experienced, independent leaders. I’m really looking forward to the mix of my first Supervisory Board mandate!
A good supervisory board is a good listener and an equally good questioner. This is also where I see my strength – I am very much looking forward to stimulating the decisive issues by asking specific questions.