Juergen Maier CBE, Co-Founder, vocL

In this episode, Engage's CEO Phil Wedgwood talks to Juergen Maier CBE, Co-Founder of business social platform vocL, Vice Chair of The Northern Powerhouse Partnership, and formerly CEO of Siemens UK.

Phil and Juergen discuss the ideas driving vocL and how Engage have provided the platform to enable it.

Transcript

00;00;05;29 - 00;00;28;24
Phil
Juergen, welcome to our studios. Pleasure to have you here. It's a real honor to meet with you and to hear about all of your experiences that you're bringing to the table today, particularly of interest for our audiences. Because you're you've worked with us and you actually run a company that's building a community, which is really exciting and

00;00;28;24 - 00;00;35;16
Phil
very of the moments I feel in the broader sense. Would you like to give us a bit of an introduction to yourself and and what you're doing at the moment?

00;00;35;24 - 00;00;52;28
Phil
Sure, Phil, and what a pleasure it is to be here. It's just always brilliant. You come to Manchester and you've got no idea that in these buildings, in the city center there, there are tech companies doing just amazing things like you are at and gage solutions.

00;00;52;28 - 00;01;09;19
Juergen
So it's just brilliant to be here. And and also, what a pleasure it's been to work with with you and your team on on building our our platform, our app, which where we're calling vocal. And as you say very much is a is a community.

00;01;09;19 - 00;01;27;29
Juergen
This is business people coming together with a view to seeing if we can give business voices allowed a say in helping create a fairer and a better society. And what better place to do that than on a platform that you're helping build?

00;01;28;25 - 00;01;45;28
Phil
Well, that's very kind. Yes. And I suppose when people will know of you, you used to be the CEO of Siemens UK and you're, gosh, probably underplaying your leading industrialists and many other things. You talk a lot about the fourth Industrial Revolution as part of that.

00;01;46;07 - 00;01;59;24
Phil
And so you obviously understand technology and the impact it can have on companies and now on sort of creating community platforms. So how did you get from being Siemens to here? Talk us a bit about that transition.

00;02;00;14 - 00;02;20;09
Juergen
But I just feel a bit weird, I suppose, doesn't it? But yeah, I've always been passionate about manufacturing and engineering and and especially with a view to to that creating not just great new green technologies, but also creating real prosperity and creating brilliant jobs.

00;02;20;09 - 00;02;47;25
Juergen
So when I was at Siemens, I was just massively proud of the factories we had and of the new factories we we built. But something that I also learned is that to communicate with with your people in your organization and to communicate externally from your organization was a skill that was, well, it was just required to be

00;02;47;25 - 00;03;00;16
Juergen
chief executive. And actually, you know, I I learned to be an engineer and and I learned to to to set up manufacturing businesses. So this is a skill that that I had to learn and I had to develop and.

00;03;00;27 - 00;03;25;15
Juergen
And so when I actually retired from Siemens, I wanted to do something that was to do with communications, better communications, helping future leaders communicate better and communicate in a way in which we where we tell the world what we as business do, which is we create value, we create huge societal benefits.

00;03;25;25 - 00;03;31;15
Juergen
And and yeah, and that's why I'm passionate now about comms and and and society.

00;03;31;29 - 00;03;47;11
Phil
I love it and I can see that transition and also that passion. It's really there. I mean, you talk about businesses generally as well and having more of a voice and having a strong leadership potential. And how that can impact, I suppose, the greater good, even the government as well.

00;03;47;11 - 00;03;55;02
Phil
And there's a lot of there's a lot of potential for that at the moment, especially how how broad is the is the remit for vocal?

00;03;56;16 - 00;04;12;18
Juergen
Well, all of those and and I hope that I'm vocal the the dialog, the conversations, some of the content that we will create will be on on topics where business can take much broader leadership than than just for their own business.

00;04;12;18 - 00;04;34;28
Juergen
You know, so obviously at Siemens, I would have shown a lot of leadership for manufacturing and engineering and technology. But why shouldn't somebody at Siemens also take leadership for for mental health or for inclusion in the workplace? Or indeed, how are we going to be work in working in the future post-COVID world?

00;04;35;04 - 00;04;50;27
Juergen
How are we going to make sure we have a society where there there is really good values and good governance and all those sorts of things and businesses got so much to offer? And I just want us to have an explosion of these sorts of positive conversations.

00;04;51;07 - 00;04;56;28
Phil
That's fantastic. And we've built this platform with you over the last gosh, how many months now? Quite a few months, which.

00;04;56;28 - 00;04;57;25
Juergen
I think it's almost a year.

00;04;58;07 - 00;05;12;19
Phil
Yeah, gosh. And as. Been really good because obviously we started our journey very much in the colleagues space, and then we realized that the same technology could empower those external audiences, and you just touched on that. So we we make customer apps for people.

00;05;12;25 - 00;05;24;16
Phil
And then we thought we transcend that even more. And it was quite timely because I think we talked around that time and we said, Well, yeah, we can do that. We can make a community app and there's things that we've had to dial up to facilitate that.

00;05;24;24 - 00;05;33;00
Phil
And so we've kind of gone on that journey together, which has been great, but I can really see the exciting way at that point. I think it's Tuesday that you're launching the platform.

00;05;33;01 - 00;05;56;02
Juergen
We are indeed, we're planning to to launch next week where we are launching next week. And yeah, we're very excited and we'll have to see, you know, how many business people are going to to share the same passion to want to communicate in a way in which society better understands business and business is better understood for creating

00;05;56;02 - 00;06;15;22
Juergen
value for for society? And you know, and your your platform, your app is so powerful. When, when, when, when I first had the idea with my co-founder Henrietta to do this, we didn't quite know how we would communicate, actually, you know, and we were more thinking of, Oh well, we'll do conferences.

00;06;15;22 - 00;06;37;03
Juergen
And, you know, we were in a more traditional way of communicating and the conversations with you led us to, you know, a much more digital way of doing that and the creation of of the app. And of course, given that we want to engage, especially with the next generation who are, you know, absolutely on social media and

00;06;37;03 - 00;06;47;23
Juergen
doing this every day of the week, we think that the combination of that, of that vision of communication, but having an app, a digital platform to do it on, I think is going to be very powerful.

00;06;48;07 - 00;07;03;23
Phil
Yeah, well, I agree and hope so too, I suppose. Quick question, obviously is around. Why not utilize the mainstream social media capability that is there, that that often is used in these type of things? What was the view of thinking?

00;07;03;23 - 00;07;06;17
Phil
No, actually, no. We really want to have our own platform.

00;07;06;23 - 00;07;18;26
Juergen
Yeah, there's a very important point there, and that is that what we wanted to create is is a safe space and a private space. You know, and I'm a Twitter and I'm out there doing my tweets and things.

00;07;18;26 - 00;07;36;13
Juergen
But you know, there is a lot of anger and and you can very quickly both make a mistake on Twitter. And also, even if you haven't made a mistake, you can quickly be put off by, you know, some of the real negativity that you end up facing.

00;07;36;18 - 00;07;52;27
Juergen
And what we want to do here is to create something else, which is, you know, you don't get negativity, you get encouragement and it's positive. And it's a peer group of business people supporting each other to develop their communication skills into the public domain.

00;07;52;27 - 00;08;06;09
Juergen
And then once, of course, we've we've created content and we're happy with some of the communication we've got. Absolutely. We will take some of our vocal conversations and content, and we will push that out to mainstream social social media.

00;08;06;10 - 00;08;13;18
Juergen
So but it's not safe for more private space that we wanted to create with the help of your of your app.

00;08;14;02 - 00;08;33;16
Phil
That's great. And I totally get it. I mean, gosh, when you look at some of the statistics, Twitter can be very negative. A place can't. I mean, particularly, you have a lot of experience in that. And sometimes I think good can be as bad as, oh, we only got 60, 70% negativity around a topic or an audience

00;08;33;16 - 00;08;38;14
Phil
. And when that's good, you know, that's pretty bad, isn't it? It's not. It's not a great bar to.

00;08;38;26 - 00;08;55;11
Juergen
Oh, no, it's terrible. And I mean, the first time I ever went on question time, the best advice I got was, you know, don't look at Twitter after your periods because you will probably never go on again. Now, of course, I took that advice for for a day or two, but then I did.

00;08;55;24 - 00;08;58;03
Phil
Yeah. You can't help yourself, you having a little self.

00;08;58;05 - 00;09;11;29
Juergen
And yeah, I mean, the negativity, you know, the rudeness from some people, you know, it's not from everybody. There is some encouragement as well. But you know, and and that's something that we'd like to have an influence on.

00;09;11;29 - 00;09;30;18
Juergen
You know, let's just let's just help one another. Everybody's got a valid view. And OK, look, I mean, if it's a a racist, xenophobic, sexist view, I mean, I've got no time for that as well. I mean, that still doesn't mean that I would make an equally negative remark.

00;09;30;18 - 00;09;48;18
Juergen
I mean, I just block that person and never speak to them again. But, you know, actually, most people are not like that and they don't to have a positive, good normal conversation and have the same objective as you and I, which is that through what we do in business to create a better society, and that's what we

00;09;48;18 - 00;09;49;20
Juergen
want to be. Yeah.

00;09;50;00 - 00;10;02;20
Phil
And I love that because it's a real passion of yours, you can tell. I think that not only giving the current business leadership in the UK a voice, maybe beyond the UK, but also the. Generation, something you're clearly passionate about.

00;10;03;12 - 00;10;19;06
Juergen
Oh, absolutely, and you know, and obviously the next generation come massively equipped, much better equipped than than than than I was. I'm a bit older than you. I think so. But you know, I didn't grow up in this world at all.

00;10;19;06 - 00;10;34;14
Juergen
So I'm really looking forward to working more with the next generation and also helping them a little bit because I think there is a bit of a culture that has developed through social media, which is that everything has to be explained in a soundbite.

00;10;34;25 - 00;10;54;17
Juergen
That's why I like a podcast like this. And actually, there are some things you just can't explain in a soundbite. And therefore, you know again, to develop a platform with you where you can have a slightly longer conversation than you can on Twitter and try to understand a little bit more what's being said?

00;10;54;17 - 00;11;10;26
Juergen
Ask a few more questions before you disagree and and the particular idea or conversation down. So, you know, if our vocal app can can help create some of that and a bit of a a new culture for this type of engagement and communication.

00;11;10;26 - 00;11;12;06
Juergen
Well, that would be fantastic.

00;11;12;12 - 00;11;29;07
Phil
Yeah, it would be great. And I think for us, mobile first is a real passion, a real key thing. I mean, it was interesting last week when there was a lot of talk around Apple's valuation topping 3 trillion, you know, and for me, I kind of wasn't surprised because I mean, I'm a Big Apple fanboy have been since

00;11;29;07 - 00;11;43;18
Phil
day one. I think about every single version of the iPhone that's ever been released. But you know, it's no shock that we are a mobile first society now. And these tools, these social media tools that you mentioned, they're very prevalent and they're ubiquitous.

00;11;43;18 - 00;11;58;04
Phil
That's how we communicate. And I think by love your idea because they can be toxic, they can be damaging. And I love the idea of creating safe havens for communities that share a passion, share an interest. I think that's magical on it.

00;11;58;08 - 00;12;10;21
Phil
I think we're going to see more of that. I think we are definitely going to see more of that. But you know, it is great that mobile is the gateway to that and we can harness that potential, harness that power in such a positive way.

00;12;10;26 - 00;12;20;03
Juergen
Oh, I totally agree with you, by the way. Talking of diversity and different views, you see, so I'm an Android user. Urine? Yes, yes. Yes. And both are.

00;12;20;14 - 00;12;22;03
Phil
I won't hold that against you. Don't worry.

00;12;23;26 - 00;12;40;15
Juergen
So that's very good. And and yes, I mean, I I totally I totally agree. Look, and I'm a I'm a massive user and supporter. I'm not one of these people who said, you know, all this Facebook and Twitter and everything and Google, you know, it's all terrible.

00;12;40;16 - 00;12;58;16
Juergen
I mean, absolutely not. I couldn't imagine how both privately and business wise, I could communicate, keep in contact, do the things I do without all of all of that technology that I've got handy in my, in my little Android, in my Android device.

00;12;59;03 - 00;13;17;16
Juergen
But there is also got to be a constant, a constant drive to improve the ethics, to improve the level of responsibility. And I think, yes, you can do that by regulation. You can try and do that by, you know, forcing big tech companies into different behaviors.

00;13;17;22 - 00;13;29;13
Juergen
But actually, I think a lot of it needs to be sort of community driven. You know, and and again, and this is where companies like yours engage solutions. one day you will be a 3 trillion bound company.

00;13;30;10 - 00;13;31;01
Phil
Well, hopefully.

00;13;32;01 - 00;13;36;00
Juergen
And hopefully an app like light vocal can can help.

00;13;36;01 - 00;13;49;27
Phil
Yeah, I thought it was fascinating because it clocked last week that 3 trillion the UK's GDP's 2.7, I think trillion. So and then I thought, Well, gosh, who invented the phone, right? Because we still call them phones and they're not really, are they?

00;13;49;27 - 00;14;04;00
Phil
I mean, I think if you look at the usage now, your Android phone is anything but now is it? I mean, you have one of these swanky folding ones now I have to say. So that's very nice. But I think, you know, when you look at it, it is kind of no surprise, but it's kind of really

00;14;04;00 - 00;14;18;16
Phil
bizarre that the country that invented the phone, if you go back to and this is linked to your manufacturing days, I guess, is that Alexander Graham Bell, who's a Scot, fellow innovative Scots, you know, he invented the phone, the country that invented the phone.

00;14;18;16 - 00;14;31;10
Phil
Okay, I'm not going to get into the whole Scottish English U.K. thing, but that is now worth more than the GDP of the whole country that invented it. I mean, it's just unbelievable. How did we get there? You know, it's phenomenal.

00;14;31;10 - 00;14;45;19
Juergen
Amazing, isn't it? And actually what a lost opportunity that period has been for for the UK, though, because you are right. You know, I remember when I first set out in my career, there were companies like Plessy and GEC.

00;14;45;19 - 00;15;11;24
Juergen
And Yeah, yeah, that's right. And these were amazing communications companies. These companies could have been at the forefront of this communications industrial revolution, but we missed out and we left. It to two others now. That all sounds very negative, but there is a positive here, which is that the the applications that sit on these mobile devices that

00;15;11;24 - 00;15;26;11
Juergen
sit on the networks on the 5G, that is something where I think we have and we have built a great strength and indeed, you know, engage solutions, it's one of those companies prospering out of that. And we sat here in Manchester and in Manchester.

00;15;26;11 - 00;15;45;29
Juergen
There is a, you know, tech revolution of companies creating tech startups, tech telecommunication companies, check platforms. And so, you know, I think this this next wave of tech, we're hopefully going to ride a little bit better than the one we lost in the in the fundamental communications technology.

00;15;46;10 - 00;16;00;26
Phil
Yeah, I would agree with that. But I suppose when you segway slightly, that's that manufacturing, which is your background and I love it, is is that you can't help but think, though, that how many brands are there that the UK used to be such a pioneer across almost everything?

00;16;01;05 - 00;16;11;25
Phil
And how many are left? How many are UK owned? Any more, you know, is where does it end and where? What, how do we how do we stop that from? Keep happening?

00;16;12;02 - 00;16;36;25
Juergen
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, and I think a lot of it was lost when the UK sort of decided that its future was was more services and financial services. That vision wasn't totally wrong, but it forgot the fact that any services have to be high tech services.

00;16;37;07 - 00;16;55;07
Juergen
And what we ended up doing is creating, you know, lots of call centers and and lower value e-commerce type solutions, for example. And what we should have been doing in that transition is to always focus on there being more high tech, high value.

00;16;55;13 - 00;17;16;02
Juergen
And of course, some of those industries are now coming through. You know, gaming would be one that that I would include include in that. And of course, what we completely failed to do was to think what were the future industrial technologies, which of course, today we now know it's offshore wind, it's hydrogen technologies, it's electric vehicles and

00;17;16;05 - 00;17;32;25
Juergen
and all of those things, and we just never created a proper vision for it. And yeah, we are unfortunately suffering from that, especially in northern regions. But hopefully there is now a new opportunity, a new vision. We can we can change course a little bit.

00;17;33;08 - 00;17;44;13
Phil
Yeah. And I think we've seen that just before Christmas. I think it was announced that Manchester is the biggest tech hub outside of London, which is great, obviously a city that's grown hugely even in the last couple of years.

00;17;44;13 - 00;17;59;16
Phil
I think we had more cranes here, didn't we, than any other city in Europe building all of these new offices and apartments. Obviously, during a time when everyone was thinking, Oh, we're not going to be living in cities anymore, so it's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out.

00;17;59;24 - 00;18;12;23
Phil
But I can't help but think that because we're so wedded to our mobile devices and because we're so wedded to the technology that sits on them, you know, companies like Apple, I don't think it's going to be long before that.

00;18;12;26 - 00;18;23;26
Phil
They hit 4 trillion, you know, when and when will it stop? And and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's just fascinating to see the huge growth of these Big Tech plays.

00;18;24;06 - 00;18;43;05
Juergen
Yeah. Now look, the apples, the googles there, that they will have a, you know, a continued massive role. I guess my passion is a little bit more in, you know, what can we do in a in a city like Greater Manchester with with great tech companies, with great tech skills?

00;18;43;18 - 00;19;07;06
Juergen
And what can we do to to grow our next tech companies here? Yeah. And if in ten years time there's been out of that 2 trillion pound, that's tell you what I'll go for for a few billion, actually. Yeah, and we've got some some new companies that have grown out of the tech ecosystem here in Greater Manchester that

00;19;07;06 - 00;19;18;02
Juergen
have created great new jobs, prosperity and exports for this great city. You know, that's really what what would please me, probably even more than than Apple going from three to 4 trillion?

00;19;18;28 - 00;19;34;20
Phil
Yeah, I would wholeheartedly agree with that. I mean, Manchester always been a city that invents things, hasn't it? And it's great to see that's going to continue. Hopefully, the work you're doing will do nothing but but facilitate that growth, I'm sure, but I think so.

00;19;35;09 - 00;19;41;05
Phil
Vocally launching next week. A super exciting. What do you see it? What does success look like in a year's time?

00;19;42;08 - 00;19;59;15
Juergen
Well, it would be wonderful if through the work of Vocal, we have managed to create some new next generation leaders. And the way I sort of vision it is to think of, you know, who would the five Marcus Rashford's of the business world be?

00;20;00;00 - 00;20;17;06
Juergen
In five years time. And actually, it's quite an interesting question, because if you say, who is the Marcus Rashford of the business world today, you know, actually there's not that many names come to mind. So if we could have helped create five who are, you know, vocal, who are contributing to the national debate on on issues of

00;20;17;06 - 00;20;35;27
Juergen
business but also on on society and now helping create a a fairer and also a calmer conversation, then we're often having at the moment in in some of the sort of crises situations we're trying to to bring our country through.

00;20;36;17 - 00;20;50;03
Phil
Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of frenzy around at the moment and social media just tunes into that really world, isn't it? And sort of magnifies it and creates that sense of immediacy around that. So I think that's probably one of the downsides to it, isn't it?

00;20;50;10 - 00;21;09;12
Phil
And it's fascinating. Just the other week to see Lush, the CEO of Lush, turning them off because he felt that the ironic situation that occurred where the social platforms that he was funding through for his own advertising were actually damaging his target demographic, which is, you know, typically teenage girls and the like.

00;21;09;12 - 00;21;18;04
Phil
So it's really interesting to see the shift away from those platforms in that in that toxic ness that they can often create or be part of.

00;21;18;08 - 00;21;41;10
Juergen
Yeah. Well, hopefully vocal can have a bit of a calming effect, so it will be a social media platform. Yeah, but hopefully with a more responsible community and a society feel to it and have a calming rather than they sort of you just call it a frenzy effect that we sometimes see on some of our other social

00;21;41;10 - 00;21;42;22
Juergen
media platforms. Yeah.

00;21;43;12 - 00;21;58;08
Phil
Well, we look forward to that journey. Look forward to seeing it. I think it's a great idea and honestly well done for pulling it off and being able to get to the stage you've got to because you've attracted some really remarkable people, haven't you, as part of your team and the wider associate group that you've formed.

00;21;58;08 - 00;22;01;11
Phil
So I think it's going to be really exciting to see it.

00;22;01;18 - 00;22;19;01
Juergen
Yeah, no, absolutely. We're working with with some, some some great leaders, people like James Timson, who runs a wonderful business. My former CFO at Siemens Angela Noon. Some brilliant people where we're working with. And of course, you, Phil.

00;22;19;01 - 00;22;30;21
Juergen
So thank you very much to you for having helped us along the journey and having built our our platform for it, and I look forward to the to the ongoing great partnership.

00;22;31;00 - 00;22;38;12
Phil
Brilliant. Well, thanks for coming in today and sharing your stories and your thoughts and wish you all the best with your vocal journey moving forward.

00;22;38;29 - 00;22;40;22
Juergen
Thank you very much. Thanks.

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