Hi, my name is Tobias. I joined Bain in 2003.
My casework was incredibly broad in the beginning. I did work in telecom, big customer-centric transformations. I worked in industrial goods and services for a major cement company in a big project across 60-plus countries. Now, as a partner, my focus is on industrials, primarily in the machinery space. I lead our post-merger integration practice and our practice that deals with change management, or Results Delivery, as we call it.
"Many people say we have a very entrepreneurial mindset and we think and act like owners. That's really at the core of how Bain is different."
I find myself in larger transformational projects. Recently we worked with two companies merging in the industrial space, and at the end of the day, I think we helped build a better company across the globe. I think I learned as much from the CEO as I learned from my entire career! I work a little bit in private equity as well, in post-acquisition situations, optimizing an asset that a private equity company has acquired. I find that exciting because you really have a chance to influence the trajectory of the company, to fundamentally change the strategic direction and to also move people ahead to really make a step forward. That's what makes me want to go to work in the morning, to have this real impact.
I'll give two examples. One is that people at Bain are always saying, "Look, let's take a step back. If that was our company, if I owned this company, what would I do?" That changes the nature of the discussion. It makes it holistic. It makes you the CEO of the discussion. And it really makes you think about how to move the needle in that company. I think that's at our core. I find that extremely inspiring and important.
Second, we have many colleagues who leave and become successful entrepreneurs themselves. Especially in Germany, we've got some great success stories of major companies that ramped up really fast. One went from zero to fifteen hundred employees in two years. These entrepreneurs are leading edge, they're growing, they're fast, they're digital and they know a lot, so I try to maintain close contact with them, and I learn from them myself.
