I joined Nexus Group as its new CEO in 2015. The company had been growing through acquisitions for some time.
When I took over, Nexus Group owned several different technologies, some of which overlapped and some of which competed.
The acquisitions had also blended different corporate cultures, and the integration of these cultures was, to say the least, poor. Because of the wide technology span, there was a situation where more or less all products were struggling to be relevant and up to date for market needs.
As part of that span, Nexus group was a security company that offered security solutions for both the analog and digital worlds. It manufactured secure cards, it developed its own card reader, it had an authentication solution, it had a PKI platform, just to name a few of its extremely rich offerings.
The company had 300 employees in 11 countries. Because of the breadth of the offering, the employees chose to sell the offering that suited their local organization. They could also choose not to sell other parts of the offering that they felt were not appropriate.
You probably realize that this added a lot of complexity, while the synergies between technologies and people were limited.
Join me this fall and I’ll share a few stories about how we turned this company into a more focused winner.
Below a picture from on of my many visits to Germany. It shows the picture of Bernd Dieckmann who over the years became a good friend of mine. Together we dealt with many difficult issues – always with full mutual trust.
The value of focus
