CEO Hartmut Mehdorn - Airport Berlin Brandenburg  

              

Overview Hartmut Mehdorn
Hartmut Mehdorn is a German mechanical engineer as well as a German industrial manager. He was born in July 1942 in Warschau. He finished his degree as a mechanical engineer at the University TU Berlin and subsequently, he worked in different positions for the Aircraft Industry before he became the CEO for the airport Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH in 2013.

In his private life, Hartmut Mehdorn is married to the frenchwoman Hélène Vuillequez. He has two adult sons as well as an adult daughter. He is an admirer of the French culture and lifestyle. His hobbies are sailing and golf, philately, the forging of metal and the winegrowing. On the basis of his last hobby, he owns a vineyard in Southern France.

The difficult project “Airport Berlin-Brandenburg”
The airport Berlin Brandenburg is an international commercial airport in Southern Berlin and has been building since September 2006 and should have been finished 6 years later, in June 2012. Because of serious variety technical issues, the opening date could not be observed and was multiple rescheduled. At the moment, the implementing can not be foreseen, but it is said the implementing is expected in 2017. Besides the opening date, the costs increased rapidly from 1,7 mil Euro (2004) to 5,4 mil Euro to the end of 2014.

The reason, Mehdorn became the CEO for the airport Berlin-Brandenburg are his high qualifications, his work experience as well as his marked skills to lead and complete such a huge problematical project. It was assumed that he is the right man for the department of the CEO.

Mehdorns present management style
Currently and because of the big problems at the airport, Mehdorn is criticized not the right CEO for the project. It is heavily criticized, especially by the supervisory committee, his management methods are outdated and he breaks the basic rules of good communication. 

It is said Hartmut Mehdorn is quite reserved with important utterances and he does not communicate the different problems honestly. The supervisory committee says without truthful and straightforward communication it is not possible to have a reliable collaboration. It is important that Mehdorn implements a corporate culture and it is wanted that he shows a more reserved behavior, because his job is to finish this project very fast, nothing else and because of that he get support from the supervisory committee. 

In the past, Mehdorn described his management style with his own words and said: "You can not rehabilitate a company with your hands wrapped in cotton wool, I never wanted to be a diplomat".

Therefore, Mehdorn is a very commanding person, he knows his tasks exactly and obviously, he does not have much confidence in foreign people, so he makes most decisions by himself. Based on his successes in the past as a CEO and with his autocratic leadership style, Mehdorn is used to being in the right and as a result he is quite tenacious, ambitious and does not give the control to someone else.

Mehdorn wants to finish this project stubbornly with all his energy. This is his big strength and that is the reason he became the CEO, but he does not regard that the time has changed. Now, his democratic leadership style is obsolete, the society wants to have a democratic style.

For the future, Mehdorn has to realize that he has to change his behavior, has to talk with his team members and has to speak clearly about facts, rules and tasks and as well as he has to trust his project team and has to create a pleasant and truthful atmosphere in his team.