{"id":5441,"date":"2026-08-17T15:39:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T15:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5441"},"modified":"2026-08-17T15:39:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T15:39:20","slug":"siemens-ceo-keeps-his-inbox-below-100-with-2-letter-replies-and-has-no-recurring-meetings-with-direct-reports-i-dont-need-to-entertain-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5441","title":{"rendered":"Siemens CEO keeps his inbox below 100 with 2-letter replies\u2014and has no recurring meetings with direct reports: \u2018I don\u2019t need to entertain people\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>\u201cI try to keep my inbox below 100. If you have more than 100 emails in your inbox, you lose the overview of what\u2019s actually on your plate,\u201d Busch told <em>Business Insider<\/em>. \u201cI accomplish this by answering messages quickly and using a few words.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5439\">China, the EU, and Singapore are pushing back against the White House\u2019s new \u2018Great Transshipment Scam\u2019 report<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Oftentimes, those few words are simply \u201cOK\u201d or \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI make it simple and fast. My team is trained to communicate this way. If I need to write something longer, I dictate my response while walking through the office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That same emphasis on efficiency extends to how the 61-year-old manages his time with his direct reports. Rather than scheduling recurring one-on-one meetings, the leader of the $256 billion German engineering company\u2014No. 143 on the Fortune Global 500\u2014keeps his door open and lets his executives come to him when they need to.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause I value efficiency, I don\u2019t have recurring meetings with my direct reports. I tell them, \u2018You come to me whenever you need me,\u2019\u201d Busch said. \u201cIt could be five times a week or once a month. I don\u2019t need to entertain people, and they don\u2019t need to entertain me.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>From physicist to CEO of Germany\u2019s largest publicly-traded company\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p>Busch joined Siemens in 1994 and spent nearly three decades climbing the ranks before becoming CEO in 2021. During his tenure at the helm, Siemens\u2019 stock has more than doubled, and the engineering giant is now the largest company in Germany and third-largest in Europe by market capitalization.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>But Busch said the biggest influences on how he leads didn\u2019t come from traditional leadership backgrounds like obtaining an MBA from business school. Instead, he holds a Ph.D in physics, and his first role at Siemens was researching energy technologies including fuel cells, offshore wind, photovoltaics and high-temperature superconducting transmission lines.<\/p>\n<p>That scientific training has been core to how he approaches the complexity of running a global company, he said.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cAs a CEO, you\u2019re always making decisions with incomplete and ambiguous information. Physics taught me how to de-layer a problem, separating the core issues from the less important ones,\u201d Busch told <em>BI<\/em>. \u201cOnce you isolate the core variables, you have a much better chance of making the right decision.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Fortune<\/em> reached out to Siemens for further comment.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Meetings are increasingly a thorn in the side of CEOs\u2014with Jensen Huang and Jamie Dimon cutting them back<\/h2>\n<p>Busch isn\u2019t the only CEO pushing back against the traditional meeting-heavy corporate calendar.<\/p>\n<p>Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said he similarly eliminated one-on-one meetings with his dozens of direct reports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t do one-on-one\u2019s with any of them,\u201d Huang said at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research summit in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5437\">Florida gerrymandering puts Debbie Wasserman Schultz in awkward position of running to represent 42% Black district<\/a><\/p>\n<p>His rationale is rooted in transparency: there shouldn\u2019t be much he tells an individual executive that he wouldn\u2019t want the rest of the company to know, he said.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIn that way, our company was designed for agility,\u201d Huang added. \u201cFor information to flow as quickly as possible. For people to be empowered by what they are able to do, not what they know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan has also warned that executives can mistake a packed calendar for productivity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you first start, it\u2019s easy to confuse busyness and going to meetings with leadership,\u201d Jordan said on a panel of CEOs at the <em>New York Times<\/em> DealBook Summit last year. \u201c\u2026Because what we all find, I\u2019m sure, is there\u2019s no time to \u2018work,\u2019 and you confuse going to meetings with the work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jordan has since made it a goal to keep his calendar clear every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon, giving himself time to focus on work outside of meetings.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s so that you can work on things you need to work on. You can think about what\u2019s important right now. You can call people you need to talk to,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>But few CEOs have been more vocal about their disdain for bad meetings than JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. In his 2024 letter to shareholders, Dimon offered a blunt prescription for what he sees as a major drag on corporate productivity: \u201cKill meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>He reiterated the point at <em>Fortune\u2019s<\/em> Most Powerful Women summit last fall, arguing that employees should give meetings their full attention rather than multitask.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNone of this nodding off, none of this reading my mail,\u201d Dimon said. \u201cIf you have an iPad in front of me and it looks like you\u2019re reading your email or getting notifications, I tell you to close the damn thing. It\u2019s disrespectful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5435\">The pandemic loan was for a tire shop. Prosecutors say it helped elect a mayor<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CEO of $256 billion Siemens, Roland Busch, replies to emails with just \u2018OK\u2019 or \u2018No.\u2019 Anything longer, and the boomer will voice note his team on the move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-productivity"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Siemens CEO keeps his inbox below 100 with 2-letter replies\u2014and has no recurring meetings with direct reports: \u2018I don\u2019t need to entertain people\u2019 - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5441\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Siemens CEO keeps his inbox below 100 with 2-letter replies\u2014and has no recurring meetings with direct reports: \u2018I don\u2019t need to entertain people\u2019 - 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