There are few people who can be missed at first sight. Guenter was certainly not to be missed. Standing at over 6' 4" - he certainly had a commanding presence; the friendly Ober Frankonian voice.. the at once friendly - 'hey I've known you for ages' kinda friendly salesmanship.. and off course - Guenter's gift of gab.. you've got to know to believe. I am very happy to have known the man from close quarters and its been a great pleasure and honor to have been his friend and mentee..
Guenter recently passed away. Just before Christmas 2013. As he would have liked it - the man worked until death. Sometimes.. Its better to leave with a feeling that the promise was yet to be complete than leave with a feeling of living beyond expiry date!
Flashback - It was the second day of Embedded in 2012 (for the uninitiated Embedded World is a conference held in Nuremberg - one of the biggest electronic design exhibitions worldwide). I vividly remember my former colleague Knut Kittel introduce the mountain of a man.. He seemed to have the knack to beat the hell out of us at Cypress being a one man sales army for our nearest competitor (for sake of brevity - I leave out business details). Had a coffee.. some friendly words.. exchange of business cards and I made a mental note to keep in touch. As fate would have it - more opportunities ensued and by twist of fate, details of which are not needed for the purpose of this article - Cypress soon hired him as our local rep.
One of the things which you normally would call ' EODB' (Ease Of Doing Business) - which after all the processes in place at a big organization... you still fail to achieve.. was something the man made it seem easy. If only there was a school to teach young sales professionals the way to grow business; Guenter would have been the Principal of that school. Some of the takeaways from knowing the man has been -
- Develop an attitude of 'Customer first', 'Internal shit next'. Hiding behind processes is easy - but that does not necessarily do good to the organization in the long run.
- Failure of our organizations... People do extraordinary things at work only when they want to, not when they are forced to.
- Something I find ironical. If at all there was someone who worked for the sake of work alone - I would put the guy right at the top of my list. Enjoying the journey - as long as it lasts... its not easy.
R.I.P Guenter. I would always remember the lessons I learnt and off-course the bier-garten tips for life. Prost!
Ciao till next time...Harsha
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