After more than 20 years living and working in China, Polish-born Stan Zurkiewicz now finds himself back in Europe, leading DEKRA Group – one of the largest TIC (Testing, Inspection, Certification) companies in the world. By his own admission, he was an unconventional choice for the role; but, what plans does this CEIBS alum have for DEKRA as it stands at the threshold of a new dawn of digitalisation?

A career made in China

“I’ve been in China since 2002. My wife is from here, my children were born here, and I’ve spent an overwhelming majority of my working life here. So, when I was offered a chance to join DEKRA’s management board in Germany, I admit that I hesitated briefly. Returning to Europe had never been part of my plan. However, I quickly realised that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – to be part of something unique and lead a great company at a pivotal moment in its history,” Stan explains.

Almost immediately after graduating from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Stan was on a plane to China. During the past two decades, he has worked across various roles and industries, settling into the TIC space and joining DEKRA in 2009.

Starting out managing the Guangzhou branch of the company, Stan climbed the leadership ladder to become Chief Regional Officer for East Asia, then Group COO, before finally moving to the CEO position in mid-April this year. Through this journey, Stan has gone from managing a team of a few dozen people to leading the world’s fourth largest TIC company. Today, he’s responsible for an organisation with over 47,000 employees across 50 different countries, with an annual turnover of over €3.5 billion.

Boosted confidence breeds bolder decisions – Joining CEIBS

In Stan’s mind, his career has not been a steady, predetermined march to the top. He is always ready to embrace various opportunities to push himself and broaden his business mindset, enabling him to learn and gain the necessary capabilities to move beyond his comfort zone.

“In 2009, when I was working for a smaller TIC company, I knew instinctively that it was time to push myself with an entirely new set of challenges. I wanted to broaden my understanding of business in ways that meant looking outside my own industry. That’s what led me to CEIBS. Even back then, it had the reputation of being one of the best business schools in China, one that brought together the best and brightest people from all over the world. I knew this was something I wanted to be a part of, and the actual experience exceeded my already high expectations,” he says.

Upon joining the CEIBS Global EMBA programme, Stan quickly fell into the rhythm of learning all he could from the exceptional talent that made up his classmates and professors. From the intellectual rigours of the classroom to the gruelling physical demands of preparing for the annual Gobi Desert trek (Stan participated in the school’s seventh edition of the event), he was put through his paces in every sense.

“The experience was truly transformational. It’s been over a decade since I graduated, but I remember the lessons keenly and I know it was a pivotal time in my life and career. I was blown away by the quality of the professors and my peers. Everything they brought into the learning journey helped elevate my thinking and my long-term capabilities as a leader. Two years in this kind of learning environment, surrounded by such exceptional people, gave me a huge confidence boost. I left the programme with not only the necessary knowledge but also the right mindset to make a difference in my industry. That’s the most invaluable thing that CEIBS has given me,” Stan recalls.

Digitalising DEKRA – A vision for the future of TIC

DEKRA was founded in Berlin, back in 1925. Now headquartered in Stuttgart, the company – and its newly appointed CEO – are eyeing its fast-approaching centenary. It currently dominates the automotive TIC sector, and is the world’s largest non-listed TIC company. However, Stan has been appointed to the top executive position at a crucial time for DEKRA. Specifically, the company wants to do more than expand – it aims to revolutionise the way it delivers its services.

“The whole service delivery model in the TIC industry has been very stable for decades, practically a century. Largely, we’ve experienced incremental growth and changes in the way we do business. Today, I feel that we’re on the cusp of profound industry-wide disruption. Everything we’re seeing points towards the acceleration of digital trends that will allow us to completely overhaul the way we interact with our customers and deliver our services,” Stan explains.

While specific technological solutions may differ depending on the situation and customer type, Stan sees the wholesale digital transformation of TIC activities as not just inevitable but also entirely necessary. Spurred on by the unfolding challenges of the pandemic and pressures of operating in a fast-paced and increasingly volatile global business environment, he aims to lead DEKRA to a digitised future that sets them apart from the competition.

“One of my main ambitions is for DEKRA to deliver the best customer experience amongst global testing, inspection and certification organisations. Embracing digital technologies is how we get there. There is so much potential to tap into. From AI to voice recognition to remote service delivery, we can make the whole TIC experience significantly easier, quicker and more accessible to our customers,” he says.

Stan is also the first non-German board member and CEO in DEKRA’s entire 97-year history. This, together with his 20-year working history in China (hence, far from Europe and the ‘European’ way of doing things) and his relatively young age of 42, makes him an unconventional choice for the position. In this case, being unconventional was exactly what made him attractive to DEKRA’s supervisory board. With its ambitions of delivering a digital-centric, carbon-neutral operational setup by its centenary in 2025, this dramatically different direction for the company required a different kind of leader.

“My appointment is indicative of the kind of company we are trying to become. We want to grow from an ‘international’ company to a truly ‘global’ company. We’re trying to expand our presence in Asia and the Americas. My educational background in the UK, US, and China, and living and working in Asia has given me a more global way of looking at things. I also partly attribute that to my CEIBS experience. I’m hardly an outsider, since I’ve been with DEKRA for over a decade, but I do want to bring this global perspective to the fore,” he explains.

Staying adaptable in an uncertain world

We asked Stan what he thinks his biggest challenges will be as CEO of DEKRA. Understandably, he has a long list – and none of the challenges on it are small! However, he believes that perhaps more than anything, it is the times themselves that present the most significant challenge to any leader looking to do more than survive in today’s globalised business environment.

“It has become commonplace to describe the ‘new normal’ of business as being increasingly volatile. Risks that nobody would have put at the top of their list of worries a few years ago are now front and centre on the risk analysis agenda. Who would have thought we’d be witnessing war in Europe during a global pandemic and climate crisis? The times are extremely changeable, which means that we, as leaders, need to be adaptable. We need to be able to change our thinking, our outlook and our approach to business with confidence and intelligence,” Stan says.

Driving the kind of change that he envisions for the company comes with a great deal of difficulty and risk. From change management to the cost and disruption of new technological deployments, it is a sizeable and multifaceted challenge. Fortunately, Stan doesn’t plan to do it alone. A central part of his leadership philosophy is to attract the most capable people to the right roles, recognise their talents and give them everything they need to excel.

“A major part of my success story, my relative success, whatever you want to frame it, is that I seek out and motivate extremely capable individuals and pull them together into truly high-performance teams. Those people, who want to go the extra mile for the organisation, put the collective interest ahead of their own. So, I will focus on the customer experience on the one hand and cultivate this kind of talent with the other. I believe that if these two elements come together at the same time, everything else will fall into place,” he explains.

Classmates, sparring partners, lifetime friends – The value of Global EMBA

This philosophy of utilising the best people for the task at hand extends beyond his own organisation. Stan remains an avid advocate of tapping the CEIBS Global EMBA network for advice and support, frequently reaching out to classmates and other alumni to consult on various business challenges and situations. More than 10 years on from his graduation with distinction as an outstanding Global EMBA graduate, Stan’s ties to CEIBS remain strong. For him, this is one of the enduring attractions of undertaking an EMBA and joining an alumni community of the kind CEIBS has built.

“The value of Global EMBA is the learning journey. Not just the personal leadership journey, but also the resources that you have at your disposal post-graduation and perhaps, most importantly, the enduring friendships. Your classmates, your professors, they can be friends for life. They can also be invaluable sources of advice and inspiration. They can be your sparring partners in business. This really isn’t something you can find easily within your own organisation. Having talented business leaders and expert academics ready to lend a fresh perspective can provide enormous value throughout your career. This continues to be the case for me,” Stan says.

We wish Stan the very best of luck in his new position as CEO of DEKRA and look forward to hearing more about the company’s digital transformation journey in the months and years ahead.