Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“
Spotlight-Episode #1 | Fabian Kienbaum: Future Skills for Family Businesses – How Leadership Will Succeed Tomorrow
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Spotlight episode 1
Fabian Kienbaum: Future Skills for Family Businesses – How Leadership Will Succeed Tomorrow
Fabian Kienbaum, Transformation consultant and leadership expert
Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Episode description
Leadership – not only in family businesses – is at a turning point: digital transformation, shortage of skilled workers, and cultural change challenge companies to rethink their future viability. But what does this concretely mean for the role of entrepreneurs and leaders? Which future skills are needed to be capable of action today and remain future-proof tomorrow?
In the first Spotlight special episode of “Alles Neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum”, host & Maschinenraum Managing Director Tobias Rappers talks with Fabian Kienbaum, transformation consultant and family entrepreneur, about the five central areas of competence that leadership must already learn today: from digital foresight to cognitive and emotional skills to entrepreneurial purpose.
With practical examples, voices from family entrepreneurs featured in previous episodes of “Alles Neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum”, and clear action recommendations, this special episode explores how leaders can lay the foundations for tomorrow today and what family businesses can do to remain future-sustainable for the next generation.
In Spotlight, we delve deeper into the topics that move family businesses – directly from the practice of Maschinenraum. As an ecosystem of around 80 medium-sized companies, it pools experiences and questions that are relevant in everyday business: from the shortage of skilled workers to digital transformation to cultural change. These very observations from practice form the starting point for in-depth conversations with host Tobias Rappers and experts who put them into context and make solutions tangible. This creates episodes that are close to the challenges companies face and show that the future emerges where we look more closely and take action together. That is exactly where Spotlight belongs.
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Fabian Kienbaum
Fabian Kienbaum is managing partner at Kienbaum. He advises family businesses on succession planning and is the author of numerous articles on leadership and new work. In 2017, Fabian Kienbaum was named one of the “Young Elite – Top 40 under 40” in the entrepreneur category by the business magazine Capital. In 2023, he was elected to the executive committee of the association “Die Familienunternehmer”. Personalmagazin named him one of the leading 40 HR minds in 2023 and 2025.
About the Spotlight Episodes
In Spotlight, we delve deeper into the topics that move family businesses – directly from the practice of Maschinenraum. As an ecosystem of around 80 medium-sized companies, it pools experiences and questions that are relevant in everyday business: from the shortage of skilled workers to digital transformation to cultural change. These very observations from practice form the starting point for in-depth conversations with host Tobias Rappers and experts who put them into context and make solutions tangible. This creates episodes that are close to the challenges companies face and show that the future emerges where we look more closely and take action together. That is exactly where Spotlight belongs.
In our regular episodes, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Katja Michel, 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!
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