365 days as CEO: 5 questions for Wolfgang Stiebellehner

Wolfgang Stiebellehner joined Livit in 2014 after having headed the property management division for eight years with responsibility for Livit’s core business. He succeeded Andreas Ingold as CEO of Livit in October 2022.

Time for a recap.

Wolfgang, you’ve been CEO for 12 months now. What three words would you use to sum up these 12 months? 

Team building, trust, fluctuation.

Now you’ve made us curious. Could you please elaborate on your choices? 

Going from being a peer to being the boss is challenging. The executive board and senior management know each other well and have worked together for years with few changes. It took a while for me to get used to the move from executive to senior management. The reorganisation of a familiar setup requires both team building and mutual trust. 

I chose ‘fluctuation’ third because, thanks to our onboarding project, we have seen the most extensive fluctuation in years, of which I am proud. 

You were in charge of the management division for over eight years, so you knew Livit very well. Has anything changed for you? 

Everything, actually. Many people said, ‘You already know everything, it’ll be easy’. It wasn’t like that! 

Of course, I didn’t have to familiarise myself with a new company, but it was a new task with many new aspects and a range of responsibilities that I hadn’t had to deal with before. The leadership responsibilities were less varied in terms of content. These days, I go back and forth between property management and IT, HR and finance, marketing and construction, etc., every hour. That’s very exciting. At the same time, I try to be as communicative as possible with everyone I work with on a day-to-day basis. 

Speaking of communication: you asked the participants in our talent programme if they could imagine what a CEO does all day.

Yes, and someone replied – hopefully at least partly in jest – ‘going out to lunch with customers’. Luckily, that’s not my main activity. My main focus is on tackling all the exciting challenges that day-to-day business and development projects entail.

You can’t change the world in 12 months, but is there any one achievement you’re particularly proud of?

From the beginning, it was important for me to promote collaboration, because I can’t achieve anything on my own. I am convinced that good collaboration creates added value: for the customer, because they can count on better quality, and for each employee, because knowledge is shared. It improves the culture and cohesion. I think I’ve succeeded in this quite well in many areas. 

Our customers often say they are happy that I insist on continuity. That’s why we on the executive board first focused on the key areas of fluctuation, accessibility, onboarding of new employees and adapted communication tools.

What can we look forward to in the next five years? Which projects are particularly important to you?

My aim is to equip employees with the tools to provide up-to-date support to our customers. That is why we are focusing on high data quality and on coordinating the different systems and processes with each other in the best way possible. 

A second focus is job profiles. Changes in work equipment, coupled with rapidly increasing complexity, require slimmer profiles with a ‘manageable’ variety. Pilot projects in various locations have shown that we receive more applications for low-complexity profiles. We will now carefully incorporate this finding into the organisation and gradually adapt the job profiles to the changing requirements.

Thank you for the insights into your first year as CEO. We look forward to seeing how things develop.