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Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“
Episode #62 | Eva Kempf & Matthias Kellersohn from Henkelhausen: Good Guy, Bad Guy? How the management duo is positioning the hidden champion
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Episode description
Henkelhausen maintains and distributes diesel engines for excavators and forestry vehicles, and builds switch cabinets and emergency power generators for hospitals. The family-owned company is based in Krefeld, employs around 300 people, and has an annual turnover of around €100 million. Since its founding in 1936, it has undergone several changes of ownership. In 1998, it was bought by entrepreneur Lutz Göbel, former head of the association “Die Familienunternehmer” and now president of the German Federal Government's Normenkontrollrat.
The fortunes of the family business are now guided by his daughter Eva Kempf and the second managing director Matthias Kellersohn. The two are guests on the podcast “Alles Neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum”.
“We do a lot of things in a more modern way today; the whole management philosophy is different than it used to be,” says Kempf. One of the first issues she tackled was introducing the informal “you” form of address. Regarding the current debate on part-time models, the entrepreneur says, “We are doing well by offering part-time models.” Some workers who need this flexibility might otherwise be lost altogether. “But you certainly have to create incentives for people to want full-time employment,” says Kempf.
Her co-managing director Matthias Kellersohn explains how he came to join Henkelhausen. He happened to see Kempf and her father in an online interview on the topic of family succession, in which they mentioned that they were looking for a second managing director – and then wrote a LinkedIn message. He also talks about Germany as a location: “I believe that things here are not as bad as some people like to say, but that we still have significant potential for innovation,” says the manager.
Why Eva Valentina Kempf & Matthias Kellersohn rely on the “good cop, bad cop” principle in their dual leadership, how the two are making a hidden champion more modern, digital, and approachable, and why they see transformation in a family business as a marathon rather than a sprint – they talk about all this in the podcast “Alles Neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum” with Tobias Rappers, managing director of Maschinenraum, and Capital editor Katja Michel.
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Eva Valentina Kempf and Matthias Kellersohn
Eva Valentina Kempf has an international academic and professional background, having worked at WHU and London Business School, as well as in management consulting, start-ups, and family businesses. In 2019, she decided to join the family business, initially in the area of strategy and digitalization, and has been managing partner since 2021.
Matthias Kellersohn has been running the company in tandem with Eva Valentina Kempf since October 2021. Before joining Henkelhausen, the mechanical engineer worked for more than 15 years in the automotive industry in various roles in production, development, project management, and strategy.
About the podcast
How can the origin and future of Mittelstand companies be courageously united? What are the challenges facing family businesses and what experiences do they gather in digital transformation? These questions are answered by “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“, the interview podcast for German Mittelstand*. Once a month, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Nils Kreimeier, Senior Editor of the business magazine Capital, talk to thought leaders and makers from the heart of the German economy and focus on the personalities and their motivation. *The podcast is in German.
For more episodes of “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“ please click here!
