"Not to push,
but to pull!"

To change from an ener­gy provider into a com­pa­ny that dis­man­tles power sta­tions. Dis­man­tling our plants so noth­ing is left but green fields yields mate­ri­als that can be fed back into a con­ven­tion­al use cycle. You can do that with around 95 per­cent of a plan­t’s mate­ri­als. Around 2 per­cent are pack­aged in the req­ui­site ways and hand­ed over to the Ger­man gov­ern­ment for inter­me­di­ate and then final stor­age. Of spe­cial note here is that we’re doing two things at once, because while we’re dis­man­tling we also have to keep pro­duc­ing power, like in Lin­gen until the end of 2022 or in Gun­drem­min­gen where we did so until 2021.

For large parts of the work­force every­thing has changed—except their employ­ment con­tracts. We launched this trans­for­ma­tion sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly in 2018. We began by bring­ing around 15 employ­ees on board, from Lower Sax­ony to Bavaria. Then we start­ed the “Wir in Nuclear” (“we in nuclear”) pro­gram with the aim of tak­ing every­one along on the trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney. Right from the start, we also and espe­cial­ly worked on our cor­po­rate cul­ture. Addi­tion­al steps includ­ed insti­tut­ing new process­es, a new con­trol sys­tem, and a new struc­ture to han­dle the dis­man­tling work. We imme­di­ate­ly set up a team whose job it is to sell the mate­ri­als we get from the dis­man­tling process, like con­crete, syn­thet­ics, and metals.

While top man­agers joined in very quick­ly, a num­ber of mid-level man­agers need­ed a clos­er look at our ideas. Some of our col­leagues were not exact­ly over­joyed at the changes, and were con­cerned they would suf­fer loss­es on an indi­vid­ual level. On the other hand, many employ­ees like tech­ni­cal and trade spe­cial­ists shift­ed rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly to the idea of becom­ing a dis­man­tling com­pa­ny. A con­cep­tu­al approach proved to be help­ful. Lead­er­ship per­son­nel has to explain the solid logic behind the change in pre­cise detail. The more the work­force can under­stand and assim­i­late that, the faster the trans­for­ma­tion can pro­ceed. In our case, under­stand­ing was fol­lowed by enthu­si­asm. And the desire to be part of it.

If con­vic­tion and enthu­si­asm are what you’re after, you have to start with your­self. And that includes under­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion, for­mu­lat­ing the goal, and chart­ing a new course—from the per­spec­tive of both the com­pa­ny and the employ­ees. That’s not some­thing you do alone. It’s just as cru­cial to bring direct lead­er­ship on board as it is to take a pro­gram or project approach to reach employ­ees from all cor­ners and lev­els of the hier­ar­chy. You want a coali­tion of con­struc­tive crit­ics and ded­i­cat­ed back­ers! So that’s the way we orga­nized the work, and we cre­at­ed forums for dis­cus­sion and input. When I took on this job in 2017, I was helped by hav­ing begun my career in the nuclear ener­gy sec­tor and spend­ing the first three years learn­ing the craft, so to speak. Knowl­edge of the indus­try also made it eas­i­er to ana­lyze, to per­suade peo­ple, and to com­mu­ni­cate in cred­i­ble ways. I lis­tened, explained, and tried to moti­vate. If you need com­pli­cat­ed argu­ments to explain a new process or struc­ture, it means you haven’t grasped it fully your­self yet. Or con­verse­ly: if it’s clear, it gets sim­ple. And then every­one under­stands it! My aim and my role are to have lead­ers con­vince and moti­vate employ­ees. Not to push them in a cer­tain direc­tion but rather to pull them and bring them to where they are them­selves. Lead­er­ship means lead­ing the way.

We work with clear lan­guage and goals, whether it’s a short‑, medium‑, or long-term con­text. In 2021, we want­ed to dis­man­tle and recy­cle around 3,600 tons of mate­r­i­al, and we man­aged an impres­sive 4,500. In 2022 we’re aim­ing for 6,000 tons. We show the employ­ees our progress on a week­ly basis. And our per­for­mance incen­tives don’t exclude any­one. After two years it’s abun­dant­ly clear that we’re seri­ous, and did­n’t just go “leap­ing onto a band­wag­on.” That’s anoth­er rea­son the employ­ees are pulling togeth­er. But noth­ing is per­fect, of course. Not every­one feels accom­mo­dat­ed all the time, not every­thing runs smooth­ly with­out excep­tion, and we don’t always meet all our goals. There are “gaps to tar­get,” in other words. But we’re spot­ting these dis­crep­an­cies faster and work­ing to solve them.

Yes, total­ly. Here’s one exam­ple: there used to be the headquarters—the main office. It han­dled a lot of the man­age­ment, rules, and direc­tives. This office was far removed from the work­ers at the power sta­tions. Now we’re bet­ter orga­nized. Our indi­vid­ual plants are always the cen­ters of our oper­a­tions, and the orga­ni­za­tion in Essen is set up to pro­vide the sites with exper­tise and sup­port to reach our shared goals. Cross-site groups of experts are in charge of spe­cif­ic issues and make deci­sions that we carry out every­where. Yet each group is also respon­si­ble for a spe­cif­ic port­fo­lio. That’s very valu­able, because for key ques­tions we need the full range of power and know-how from all our people.

One impor­tant fac­tor is the cross-site trans­fer of ideas and exper­tise we just men­tioned. Col­leagues from the Gun­drem­min­gen site observed the dis­man­tling process­es at the Mül­heim-Kär­lich, Bib­lis, and Lin­gen sta­tions. Instead of focus­ing only on one’s own site—as was pre­vi­ous­ly the case—we’ve replaced this typ­i­cal silo think­ing with a “we process.” All the employ­ees are now pur­su­ing one and the same goal. Our own spe­cial­ly insti­tut­ed dis­man­tling acad­e­my is a good tool for impart­ing knowl­edge, as are online-based train­ing pro­grams. We also get all man­ner of use­ful knowl­edge from the mar­ket, like from sup­pli­ers. The dis­man­tling sim­u­la­tor that we devel­oped our­selves is also help­ful in train­ing and qual­i­fy­ing peo­ple for new tasks. Every employ­ee stud­ies our inte­grat­ed dis­man­tling process for two days in the course of a sim­u­la­tion. That also encour­ages peo­ple to come up with new ideas and innovations.

Our trans­for­ma­tion isn’t fin­ished; the real dis­man­tling work is only begin­ning. Togeth­er with the employ­ees we’ve laid a robust foun­da­tion for it. And the trans­for­ma­tion does­n’t stop with our own team. Sup­pli­ers, audi­tors, pub­lic authorities—they’re all inte­grat­ed into a process we’re ulti­mate­ly dri­ving and coor­di­nat­ing. It has run smooth­ly thus far because we’ve com­mu­ni­cat­ed a coher­ent idea clear­ly and made strate­gic lead­er­ship a core part of our cor­po­rate cul­ture. Lead­er­ship per­son­nel has to orga­nize the work such that employ­ees can do what they’re good at. Then you’ll also get good results.