#887 (De-)Centralization

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: ten years to procure a single helmet, eight years to find the perfect backpack — what does that say about the price of centralizing power? In Room #887 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme “Pioneering Spirit with brAIn,” the group digs into a hip-surgery statistic that changes meaning depending on what you compare it to, Germany’s Bundeswehr procurement office, an eight-month invoice dispute with no human to call, and whether the WHO should ever hold the power to declare a state of emergency. Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…

Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.

A wonderful good morning to you all. Yes, after yesterday’s topic of globalization and deglobalization, we continue today with centralization and decentralization, under our overarching theme Pioneering Spirit with brAIn, and today we’re going to look at the advantages and disadvantages that arise from centralization and decentralization. And here we can pick up all kinds of different aspects. First, maybe as an approximation, what actually is centralization or decentralization? What’s meant by that? I’ve brought a definition from the Wirtschaftslexikon 24. With decentralization, similar sub-tasks are transferred to different organizational units. Centralization, on the other hand, also called centralization, is the bundling of similar sub-tasks into one organizational unit according to certain criteria. So basically it’s about certain tasks either being taken over by smaller units, organizational units, or being bundled together upward, so to speak, and carried out from a central location. And what’s meant by organization in this context isn’t a company, but rather with all the topics we’ve looked at here, in relation to, for example, that certain things could be carried out centrally from a single hand, for example for Germany. If we centralize it further upward, maybe the EU could take that over. Or if we centralized it even further, maybe there could even be a global central body that fulfills or watches certain tasks. As examples in this context, just to bring in a few ideas or impulses, we could pick up the discussions happening around the WHO, World Health Organization, or maybe you could think in the direction of AI, artificial intelligence, would it make sense here, possibly EU-wide or even more broadly, to have a central body that also defines and sets certain framework criteria and also monitors that. We could also pick up as an example digital central bank money, so electronic money issued by a central bank, and with a central bank the question also arises, is that then just for one country, is it for the EU, or is it maybe even global, to take on tasks in this context too. And then we also have the example of the electronic patient record, for example, or the electronic health record, whatever you want to call it, these are all discussions currently taking place that have also already come up in our rooms in recent days as terms in various contexts of rooms we’ve opened up. There are certainly more examples here. You’re welcome to bring in more examples too. This is just a first impulse to make clear what we want to look at today under this term centralization, decentralization, in order to think about advantages and disadvantages too. At this point, maybe also a reminder that in the coming days we’ll also have a room on the World Health Organization, WHO. That means I’d just like to ask that today we make sure not to go too deep into WHO specifically. Of course we can touch on the topics, but let’s reserve that for the separate room, because I think there’s quite a bit to look at in depth there too. Right, and with that I’d like to warmly invite you to join and get into the exchange, so we can open the reflection space together and see in the exchange where it all leads us today. And yes, another reminder that the room is recorded the whole time and accordingly published afterward too. So anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. And we have three small room rules. First and last name, a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, and at least one sentence in your bio, simply to make sure these are genuinely intended contributions. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, or can’t speak right now, is warmly invited to share thoughts, questions, etc. in the chat, so we can pick those up in between too, whenever it fits.

A wonderful good morning, dear Marc, what do you say about that?

Good morning to the group, good morning dear Yasemin. I like your approach that you always tackle the topics scientifically, thoroughly and factually. And I’ll try this topic anyway, so I’ve made the experience for myself, the older I get, no matter what topic we’re talking about, they’re incredibly complex. And I’d like to go back to storytelling again. We talked yesterday about how storytelling is a totally great thing. For whom? Well, for the one telling the story. So first for the one telling the story. And on our topic now, decentralization or centralization, I tried to think differently, not about what the advantages are, but what the disadvantages are. So I’m now deliberately using a hospital example, storytelling. There’s a study, not made up by me, that says long-term survival rates are better in certified centers. According to a study. And now I get to the topic of hips. We all have a hip. There are arguments about the topic of centralizing hospitals. Is it better to centralize hospitals, specialize them? The more often a hospital performs surgery, for example on hips, the less often a patient needs to be operated on again within a year. Then Marc thinks, that’s great. If I’m going to have surgery, please just once. In clinics where an operation was performed fewer than 50 times, which speaks for large clinics, the revision rate is supposedly 82 percent higher compared to hospitals that don’t do that, that aren’t specialized. So I definitely don’t want to go to a normal hospital for a hip surgery, I go to a hospital that does hips. And what I found interesting, that’s why I came to this, I found this discussion in a medical journal, where certain chambers and certain interest groups argued. And the art of storytelling, as I just did, is simply that our whole topic, everything we talk about, is so complex that I simply leave out certain positions, don’t even mention them to you, and steer you in a direction that serves me. The counter-argument to this study, to my argumentation, is that someone said, dear Marc, what are you comparing there? Where did you get the numbers from? And then it turns out that in these centers, people going for a hip surgery, there’s a technical term for it, it’s not a sudden surgery, it’s prepared, I voluntarily decide to have this surgery, then the survival chances are better and so on. That’s compared with a normal hospital, where it hasn’t gone so well, where there are bad cases. If you look deeper into the numbers, they say, in this normal hospital there might also be more 70- to 80-year-old people, who don’t plan a hip surgery, they fall out of bed. And you have to act immediately. If I compare a normal planned surgery with an emergency surgery, I get completely different numbers and results and can present it completely differently too. And just from this topic I became aware that I can’t list advantages of centralized or decentralized out of emotion, because if I don’t understand the complexities, or if I don’t question them, I simply can’t judge factually, without emotions.

Yes, great. Thank you, thank you so much. And here we’re also at this aspect to some extent of statistics and numbers, data, that we’ve talked about before too, which are also often used. And in the way, in inverted commas, that you need them, precisely to create the story, to achieve what you want to give to the reader, to the consumer, in inverted commas. And accordingly it makes sense to really look at this more closely too, and above all to look at it from different perspectives too. So always, not just drawing on the numbers, in inverted commas, but also approaching it with different questions, for example, to open up more doors too, to think about this. My husband showed me a message yesterday I believe, that in Germany the decision has apparently been made to conduct spot checks at border crossings, for example on entry and exit, to make sure that people from abroad who shouldn’t have access, legally, legally speaking shouldn’t have access, don’t somehow get across the border. So there seem to be problems there obviously, and it’s also interesting the way the news is worded, so to speak, at this point, because the question also arises for me, well, spot checks, but what kind of effort does that involve? Does it even make sense? How many would you catch with spot checks? So what’s actually behind that? Question mark. That’s one thing I followed, and something else quite recent and fresh is that now, for example, when entering and exiting Turkey by car, our faces are supposed to be scanned and so on. And of course that’s all presented very positively too, in inverted commas. But here too it’s worth considering, what does that actually mean? Do I even want that? And this question wouldn’t just apply to Turkey, but we probably already have this with entry and exit for other countries too, where this is already being done. And the question is, what does that mean, and how could data, for example, then be used accordingly. And we’ll have a room where we’ll talk specifically about power in general too, and that will certainly find a bigger space there than today with the topic of centralization/decentralization. But precisely the combination of all this data being collected, with the thought that certain things are always supposed to be centralized again and again, of course creates additional dangers too, that simply didn’t exist in the past, because on one hand we couldn’t collect so much data at all, and on the other hand, if we now go in the direction of centralization, the higher the level of centralization, the more challenging it becomes with regard to the aspect of power and abuse of power at this point, and that’s certainly worth looking at and evaluating from these points of view too, regardless of what advantages and disadvantages it brings in detail with regard to the specific topic itself. So I find that totally exciting. Would you like to continue on that, Marc?

Yes, I have a second example I read up on, and it’s also an example that’s currently very acute in the media. So from a gut feeling, I spontaneously thought yesterday, decentralization and centralization as an entrepreneur is first of all super important, because if I centralize, I have greater power, that means I get better purchasing prices, I have greater economic power, that’s actually self-evident for me, if I have a group of companies that are different, but we purchase together, I have much stronger power, I can push prices down and so on. And then I inevitably ended up at an institution in Germany with 11,000 employees at 116 locations, and I’m talking about the Bundeswehr’s procurement office, and I had to smile. Actually it’s not funny when you see, well, all the advantages they have, they joined together, they want to procure good equipment and so on. And it took, for example, ten years to procure a service helmet. Ten years. These 11,000 employees need ten years to procure a service helmet. And they searched for eight years for the perfect backpack and then found out, we can’t find it, we can’t reach a consensus. What they eventually did was just buy some backpack that more or less met the requirements, because they simply needed one. And then I also came across an answer to that, that the office itself isn’t to blame per se, so you can’t say, okay, if you have this insight, dear Marc, then we have to abolish the office, but it’s also because the processes, it’s because of the processes, are so big and so complex that if you don’t understand the laws, that there are also European requirements and directives and review procedures and so on, a simple answer is sometimes really too simple, because the problems are so complex that you can’t just say in a pub with a beer, I’ve got it, I’ll do it better.

Yes great, thank you, thank you so much. And that shows on one hand, you just mentioned processes and complexity, it can also be an aspect that it goes in the direction of bureaucracy, and precisely because you also mentioned the European requirements, rights, etc., the next question would be whether certain centralization processes, for example, wouldn’t also need adjustments with regard to legal aspects and so on, to even be able to steer things centrally in a meaningful way, because if, for example, something is done globally at a higher level, but there are different framework conditions everywhere in the individual countries, for example, that could contradict each other. So all of that would need to be considered and thought through at this point too, and might even require, at one point or another, aligning things in sync and making adjustments accordingly, to even be able to realize this in this way, and would need to be checked in detail for the various topics involved, what’s actually necessary there. So that it’s not just, in inverted commas, the thought of centralization, for example, in this case, but also means at the same time that certain tasks perhaps need to be fulfilled first, and that centralization as a thought might seem positive at first, but might not be so easy to implement in practice either. And then we have the aspect of decentralization again here as a counterpart. We already had this yesterday too with the aspect of globalization/deglobalization. That means, the moment centralization happens, certain disadvantages arise from that too, and the question is, isn’t that a dependency again? Actually we want to get out of this dependency to some extent, and isn’t it important then to also think again in the direction of decentralization here, to be able to act self-determined and autonomously, for example? And what advantages and disadvantages arise from that, so to speak? Right, and in that sense I’d like to warmly invite the others to join too, and bring in their impulses, thoughts on the topic, maybe even more examples too, so we can really consider diverse factors, influencing factors, open up perspectives, and see where the room develops accordingly. And Marc, do you have thoughts on this aspect of decentralization too?

I’ve brought another example, and for me an important aspect to consider when we talk about centralization or decentralization is first whether it’s for an institution or a company that’s nationally oriented or internationally oriented. I’ve had this experience, I have a friend in the automotive sector. If I were a product manager in Germany, and we’re internationally oriented, I have to do that, export, Germany is an export nation. And in Germany, a good example for you, we had China yesterday, no Chinese person drives a station wagon. I can’t tell you why, but in China you simply don’t drive a station wagon. That’s a horror, it doesn’t exist there. But if I now look at the German market, and specifically the German market, the station wagon also has a slight negative connotation, because it was a family car, because we went into it and so on, but it’s still an important car. And if I’m now in charge of development, so if I’m the head of development for a car division, let’s go back a few years into the past, and I’m supposed to orient my company internationally, and I say, well, with the experience I’ve made here, we’ll do everything centrally. If the station wagon is a topic in Germany, then we’ll push it through internationally. And if I’m not decentralized there, if I don’t have a marketing office on site in China that talks to the people and so on, then that can go really wrong, then I lose. The same thing happens in fashion. Just because I have success in Germany with a fashion collection doesn’t mean I’ll have success abroad. I’ve experienced that too. There are also legal framework regulations. I was once at a company that sold children’s clothing, and then it turns out there are such small things, that you weren’t allowed to sell hooded sweatshirts with a drawstring in Great Britain and in London, because a child could get caught in it, could strangle themselves, you have to know that first. Otherwise you develop completely wrong collections and wrong products for an international market.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much, and especially when we look at the aspect on a smaller scale too, we experience very often that certain things, for example in companies, are centrally controlled or centralized. And, for example, I find the classic example on a small scale is the hotlines we all know. So when we call somewhere because we have some concern, and then there’s not a specific contact person available, but a central number through which various customer advisors are available, to give information or help further. I don’t know who’s familiar with this. The challenge is often, and here we’re back at processes and complexity, in inverted commas, that when you have a concern, it can happen that it’s resolved relatively quickly and clarified, so you’re satisfied. And sometimes, when it gets a bit more complex, you really have to call five times and keep following up, and each time you have to start explaining the problem from the beginning again, you come back to the same point, that the info maybe gets passed on or whatever, and nothing happens, and in the best case you get flooded with some reminder letters or whatever from the company, and have to become active yourself somehow to move forward. That means, on a small scale too, these are centrally controlled processes and so on, and they bring advantages and disadvantages on both levels accordingly. On the other hand, if there’s always a specialized employee for all purposes, in inverted commas, thought of on a small scale too, who acts as a contact person, who’s there for the customer when needed, that’s of course a special closeness, in inverted commas, that can create not just customer satisfaction but also customer loyalty, for example, but often also means, for example, that it might cost more, that it requires more employees and so on. And accordingly this is always a balancing act companies find themselves in, for example, where they ultimately have to think about how to deal with that. And so I find it really exciting to look at this on a small scale too, and maybe recall for ourselves what examples we have in this context from our own experiences with central control or with a specialized employee, so to speak, in the sense of decentralization transferred, experienced in a figurative sense too, in the past. Marc, would you like to continue on that?

Yes, unfortunately I’d like to continue on that. I won’t say the name now, but through these big corporations, I’m dependent, if I urgently need goods from China, I’m dependent on a few big companies that bring goods to Germany by plane, so I can inspect them. And last year it took me eight months to be able to pay an invoice. It almost turned into a legal case, because I sent a baseball cap to the Far East as a comparison sample, and the company that transported it made a weight error, and instead of paying 80 euros for this transport, I was supposed to pay, because they turned 180 grams into 1.8 kilos, and I got an invoice for 2000 euros, which I wasn’t willing to pay. There was correspondence that dragged on for eight months, where they insisted on payment of the invoice. I sent a message to the company saying, look at it, measure it, you’ll see, it’s an error. I’ll pay my invoice immediately. This can’t be. Please call somewhere in accounting so we can clarify this. I’ll pay it today. If I’d had the chance to talk to an employee, we would have clarified it. There’s no way to talk to an employee. It only goes through email, and if you, it only goes through a hotline, which by the way never picks up. The hotline always ends up referring you to the website, which didn’t help me either. So it took eight months to be able to pay an invoice. And the bad thing for me about it is, I can live with it, these are people, that I have no alternative, because for me only three companies are currently relevant to get goods from China to Germany by plane at all. I have to make do with these three companies and have no alternative as a customer.

Yes, a nice example that fits. Thank you, thank you so much. And Jürgen has joined. I’m curious what Jürgen says about the topic. A wonderful good morning, dear Jürgen.

Good morning, dear Yasemin. Good morning, dear Marc, and everyone in the room. I’d really planned not to say anything today, because in awareness of, or based on my experiences with this, you actually triggered me with the point, what experiences have you had. Based on my experiences, it was an essential area of work for me over the last two and a half decades, I have to say honestly. In hindsight, even though I was in this sub-area, in the position, or the question of classifying centralization, decentralization, the complexity is really insanely large. I was originally triggered by a position of yours, dear Yasemin, when you brought up the topic of power and, as I understood it too, didn’t want to see it as a topic today, or only redundantly as a topic. And now I don’t want to go on at length about a complexity I’m well aware of, but I’ll address two points now, also referring to the example Marc brought at the start. Namely, we talk, or let me say deliberately, people also talk in many publications, that’s my accumulated experience I’ve taken with me, actually always about centralization and decentralization. The decision, when it’s made, whether we take that for a company now or at the level of the WHO. That’s a status, and this status results within the framework of a process. So this centralization or decentralization, and the decision to do something in some direction, has a predecessor and a successor in classical process theory. And a really essential predecessor, dear Marc, that you mentioned, is often negated, and that’s storytelling. A centralization and a decentralization, in my view, absolutely must be prepared. Why? Because it’s a rigid form, and now I’m referring to companies, it’s a rigid form of intervention in behavior and daily routine and processes that are familiar to many employees too. I think it’s clear to everyone that in most cases hardly anyone is left unaffected by it. And this needs to be prepared. A client who contacted me with the background of changing control, that was my core competence, changing control, essentially always commissioned me with the question that an organizational change must precede it. Because if I control something, I have to tell a car, for example, tell a construct, you have to move left or right. And that has consequences for all the associated units, from the seat in the car to the chassis. The entire car is affected. That’s the first thing. And the second point, with regard to power, without going further into power now, dear Yasemin and dear Marc, this intervention in the form of a centralization and decentralization needs power from someone who a) decides it and b) also does it. And this is mostly also done, out of the well-known, conscious human preservation motivations, rather not change anything than risk having to move through change. This power needs to be given from the outset, that’s for me, just like storytelling, an anticipatory precondition, that I ask, you want to change your organization, who has the power to push through this change, and now the last point, the consequences from that, have we even discussed the consequences from that, being able to represent them too. That’s why, it’s an insanely, you already said it too, an insanely complex topic. And I think you can only, like cherry-picking, pick something out and say, let’s establish an understanding, what do we understand by centralization and decentralization? And now let’s look, for example, at the effects for an individual employee who’s already been at a company for 20 years, compared to someone who was just hired. That’s, for me, a really essential topic, for example. Thank you for listening so long.

Yes, great, thank you, thank you so much, dear Jürgen, and I’m totally with you. And especially because you also mentioned at the end being able to represent the consequences, here too you see a really massive complexity, in inverted commas. Because especially when we think, for example, of centralization across countries, then, for example, there can also be decisions or wrong decisions too, that come with costs arising, and so on. And that in turn has to be “settled” again, so to speak, in inverted commas, by various parties. And who bears the consequences then? Is it, for example, then the individual countries again, or is there a centrally controlled budget that’s made available for that, and so on. So here you can really open up so, so many doors again and think and discuss in this direction. Marc, would you like to continue here too?

Yes, that’s also a topic that affects everyone. I don’t know why, something just occurred to me about centralization. For me an outrageous topic. Why is school education, why is that even possible in Germany? I can explain why it’s possible, but why are all the states responsible for schools with us? Why isn’t there a team sitting there saying, we define what a high school diploma includes, what you have to do for it, those are the performance requirements. And anyone from North Rhine-Westphalia knows they’ll have great difficulty doing their diploma in Bavaria. They’d first have to repeat a year, because they can’t keep up with the material there at all. And either education is defined as, you say, that’s the highest degree we’ve had, the highest degree of education, or the diploma, that requires these requirements, these are STEM subjects, you have to be able to do this and that and that. But that you have to know less in Hamburg than in Bavaria or NRW or in the West or in the East, I simply don’t understand that. And of course the requirements might be higher or lower, but that would also be a point for me about an organization that I simply don’t understand like that. There will be reasons for that, maybe power reasons too, maybe there’s also, however that is, the offices need to keep themselves relevant and don’t want to give up power, but I don’t find it logical.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And that’s of course a nice topic to pick up at this point. And yes, so here you see day-to-day, basically, challenges that arise from this construct too, so that people keep talking about whether that even makes sense, and whether it wouldn’t be better if even more were actually centrally controlled. Nevertheless, I’d like to open up another related example, namely, we already picked this up before too, the so-called Bologna Process. Because here certain things were actually standardized, for example to have comparable degrees afterward. That means, EU-wide, to make sure that if someone has done a bachelor’s or a master’s, the same framework conditions apply, how many credit points and so on and so forth, so that basically you get a kind of standardization in, so that if someone, for example, has done a degree, let’s say in Germany, a bachelor’s degree, and wants to continue with their master’s, let’s say in Spain, it’s quite clear, okay, they have the access authorization, I don’t have to first go into any translations, look closely and whatever, not at all, but because there’s a standardization here and a uniform degree, I can now understand it without much effort, so to speak, whether it’s a pre-diploma or a diploma or whatever, for us it’s called something else. How can this even be embedded and classified now? And can we admit this person, or do they maybe need some additional certificates? But precisely this Bologna Process is a nice example, I think, of what shows that what previously offered relatively great free design possibilities and spaces at universities has now clearly fallen away. That means it’s clearly become much more schooled in terms of framework conditions, in terms of design. And that of course brings disadvantages with it too. So it’s not just positive, in inverted commas, to be evaluated in the sense of standardization and comparability, but at other points, through the freedoms that are no longer there, this “schooling,” in inverted commas, brings disadvantages too, and accordingly needs to be critically questioned again, whether that’s really so sensible at this point, even though the idea of standardization, and why this standardization is done, is quite understandable at first. And accordingly I find that totally exciting, and that’s why you could ask the question here too, whether then, if a school, in inverted commas, or schools have central guidelines, whether it’s really about controlling everything centrally, or which areas might still be individually designed, and whether it’s maybe just a challenge that’s obviously presented here because there are maybe too many freedoms at this point, so maybe setting certain frameworks, in inverted commas, but still not taking away the freedom. And that’s then a balancing act again, in inverted commas, and shows the complexity of the topic again too. Would anyone like to continue on that maybe?

Yes, Jürgen, gladly.

Yes, that’s the lead-in to this topic that you then elaborated on from Marc, I found it excellent, the topic of education. But it’s also the rule, dear ones, at least in economics, you like to approach a problem by letting this problem’s essential parameters tend either toward infinity or toward zero. That sounds a bit lofty now, but regarding our topic, the last remarks concerning it, I’ll take the opposite position, dear Yasemin, dear Marc, and ask, why do we actually need state education at all? Put that into the decision, into the clear decision-making authority of those responsible, who up to a certain age have, for me, a natural educational-political mandate, namely the parents, to decide on that. I do see, of course, that in light of the social gap, there are certain problem areas. In the sense that one person can afford private tutors, the other can barely afford school books, agreed. But that’s one of the points we haven’t addressed yet. Even in the classical question of centralization and decentralization, these are both extreme points. There are very many, in organizational theory, very many mixed forms of expression of these two sides, either centralized or decentralized. So through various forms of matrix organization, customer-group organization, and so on, I don’t want to bore you with that now. That’s again a characteristic for me with topics we often have, that it’s not just black and white, but in most cases our life is best represented by the gray areas. And if I reference that back to education, let me remind you, our school system, not our education, quite deliberately in terms of terminology too, not education system, our school system has a clear, historically traceable state mandate and objective, and thereby also a motivation. The reason we talk about subjects today goes back to Frederick the Great. I don’t want to elaborate further, but I completely agree with Marc that something needs to change organizationally. Your question, why does school policy have to be up to each state, and why not centralized? I deliberately set the counterpoint now and ask, why doesn’t it stay with each individual? And reduce, and now we come to the mixed form between centralization and decentralization. I centralize very specific positions considered essential by the broad masses as a mandatory offering of the state for all those who can’t afford it. But on a voluntary basis, so I say, and here I pick up your topic, dear Marc, the STEM subjects, I’m completely for having a centrally controlled instance and also ensuring provision, also for people who can’t provide private tutors for their children. In these core areas, which one can certainly discuss, ensuring a minimum knowledge and thereby a step toward their education. But that, dear ones, education, how did we define education? It’s self-determination. It’s self-realization, that it actually lies with myself. And please, I want to decide about that, or those who have to care for me over a certain period and decide about that.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And these mixed forms are definitely sensible from my point of view, and always to look at it context-dependent and consider what’s needed at this point too. You put it so nicely. We’ve established again and again that thinking in extremes, so to speak, in black and white, doesn’t get you far in many places. That’s why these facets in between are needed, and solutions can often be found in between too. With the school system example you already showed that very nicely, and with the school system, we’re not thinking in the direction of centralization at a higher level though. So we’re operating nationally there, not internationally. If we now transfer that to an international context, whether it’s about the WHO or whatever, a central bank responsible for various countries, or at the EU level, things being decided about artificial intelligence or something like that. Is this comparable, feasible from your point of view too, or are there other challenges here too that need to be considered? Jürgen, would you like to go into that a bit more maybe?

Yes, gladly, dear Yasemin. I wouldn’t have spanned the frame that broadly now, globally, but related to our example, us in Germany, and Germany seen as part of the EU. The EU too is basically nothing other than a politically arbitrary merger of national individual interests, let me say. And the cherry-picking I spoke of earlier was the underlying reason for that, namely to prevent wars in this regional context by bringing together the competencies, or the control over the essential war material, namely steel, in the then Coal and Steel Community, and thereby basically linking France and Germany politically arm in arm. And in the long-term effect this resulted in something where I say, well, no normal person today can imagine picking up a rifle again and shooting at French people, or Italians. Positive, indeed. But to come back to your question. The essential obstacle, or the essential point of concern, whether related to the EU, where we can actually trace this day-to-day, or with the question of WHO centralization, the centralization is that the effect of this organizational measure affects attitudes, motivations, cultures, and sensitivities of the most diverse kinds. That’s a really essential point for me, that also, with our EU’s decision-making capacity, brings us again and again, I think I don’t need to tell anyone that, you just need to look at the newspaper, brings us again and again nearly to the edge of despair. But the background is exactly that, that with this expansion and the attempt to centralize and channel decisions through majority power. Left and right, if I may use that image, I strike down very essential traditional attitudes, also creeds, left and right, and try to streamline. And that’s why I still hold, and at every level too, dear Yasemin, I make no difference there. That’s why I find this necessary deliberation and this mental engagement with the extreme effects so important, that I ask, what happens if I give this centralization worldwide into the hands of the WHO. And that’s why, I think, you never get around the topic of power, because basically it’s about power. And mind you, not just negatively, but also positively, because I need someone who has the power to enforce this too. And in summary, dear Yasemin, I can’t answer this question for you. In my view, it depends on the individual case, and it depends on how many affected parties there are and how many losers I create, and thereby possibly endanger the construct again through resistance. I can’t give a general rule for that. I don’t know. Sorry.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much. Marc, would you like to continue here too?

Yes, exactly this answer, dear Jürgen, is what I wish for in discussions, in talk shows, from politicians, that someone says, I assess the situation this way or that way, I can’t give a final opinion. And I’m sure we’ll discuss this at some point, hopefully, in this room too, about centralization or not, that an essential system that distinguishes us from China is that in Germany a lot is designed to be re-elected after four years, while in China everything is essentially decentralized. There, everything is essentially designed around where we’ll stand in 15 years. That makes a big difference too. Without judgment, I like living in Germany, want to stay too, and don’t want to leave this country either. But this honesty with which Jürgen just answered, I find great. And this questioning and asking and education, and Yasemin, I didn’t know that, you mentioned the WHO, I haven’t dealt with the topic more closely yet, but it does scare me if at some point an organization has the power, here in Germany, and it does, if I understood it correctly, please correct me, to declare a state of emergency, to say, do we have an epidemic now, what happens then, what gets closed or not closed, because as an entrepreneur that affects me then. I have to submit to the regulations then. That can lead to closing my business, that can lead to existential fears and so on. And I found that quite, quite frightening, that at the push of a button maybe at some point the plug gets pulled on me.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And because we’re opening reflection spaces, it’s not about answering everything conclusively, so to speak. And in many places, and we’ve already opened that up too, it’s actually always context-dependent, so to speak, so that no general answer can be given, for example, as to whether centralization is per se good or bad, or decentralization is per se good or bad, but we may always look context-dependently, make context-dependent weighings, and look context-dependently what the prerequisites are, what that means in consequence, and what disadvantages would arise from it, and not just think in extremes, as already said, but also look at mixed constellations, so to speak, to find the best, sensible solution, in inverted commas, for the specific case being considered. So this room doesn’t claim to deliver answers here, but to stimulate thinking, so to speak, to sort thoughts for oneself, and above all to possibly touch on topic areas that we personally maybe haven’t pursued yet. Marc, you just mentioned the WHO, and that’s why we’ll also have a special room on that, because I think that’s really a big topic too, where there’s various things to pick up and shed light on. And I’ll allow myself the remark at this point with the perspective on politics, in inverted commas. What I find difficult right now, and also concerning, is that many decisions, that basically affect all of us as the German people, happen behind the scenes, in inverted commas, or without much fanfare, in inverted commas, so you find it in the media if you know about it and search and research it, but basically a lot happens in the background right now, so to speak, that you don’t notice at all, because it’s not picked up so much in the media. And regardless of whether we’re talking about the WHO now or other decisions currently being made, or draft law amendments, proposals being made, and so on. And I find that very concerning, because then, the question is, do we agree with that, in inverted commas, or have we given up power here, in inverted commas, so to speak, the moment we put a checkmark at the election. And everything that comes after, we now have to accept, in inverted commas. And that would certainly be another room too, to discuss that. Just a remark on the side. And it’s all the more important, ultimately, to have spaces and opportunities to maybe see, in exchange, one thing or another that we didn’t have so much in view, in inverted commas, or to be able to deal with these topics more deeply afterward, because we’ve at least heard something about it on the side. Right, and with that I’d like to move into the closing round for today, and then also announce the room for tomorrow. What are your aspects you’d like to pick up again or highlight from today’s room, dear Marc?

Yes, I’d rather not say a closing point, but add something more. Thank you dear Yasemin for the setup. What’s occupying me right now is also that there’s discussion about whether Marc should still be allowed to drive at 70. And I can look at that from two sides. If I can no longer see, no longer hear, no longer react, everyone will raise their arm and say, Marc should give up his driver’s license. But my concern for myself is, if I have to take a new test at 70, I admit that I’ve been driving a long time, but I don’t know all the rules anymore. There are new rules about overtaking, about weight, about braking distance, about theory. Whether I’d manage to pass a theory test for cars at 70 again, I doubt, because maybe concentration decreases, memorization and so on. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I can no longer drive, because that’s an automatism I’ve been doing for years already. And that’s exactly the point you made, dear Yasemin, that incredibly many things happen in the background that you only hear by chance. But if you think it through, what consequences does that have for me at some point? For me the consequence might be that at 70 I’m still athletic, or mobile at 65, but I have to give up my driver’s license because I might not pass the theory test anymore.

Yes, thank you, thank you so much. Yes, that’s also a nice topic. And at this point I can just briefly share what my reaction or my impulse was. Many of us probably won’t be affected by that at all anymore, because if we have self-driving cars everywhere, we won’t need a driver’s license at all anymore. We had Dr. Mario Herger with us, who said the generation is already born that won’t get a driver’s license at all anymore. So the question for me is, even when you look at the data, from when this is supposed to take effect, and so on, I think it won’t affect many people at all anymore. And accordingly I asked myself whether it’s even worth dealing with, because I think a decision was made there without thinking long-term about which direction we’re actually developing in.

Thanks, you’re laughing. Exactly.

Yes, Jürgen.

Yes, I wanted to give one, or actually two inputs on your last remarks. Namely, you asked me, or you asked about personal experiences, a personal experience for me, looking back over all the years in this field, is that there’s more of a certain pull toward centralization. This experience, mind you, is a personal experience from the corporate context, that I kept having to notice that when a decentralization was decided in whatever form, and also lived for a while in the company, there’s an underlying, more or less latent tendency toward centralization, so more toward enforceability, toward short decisions, and basically also toward clear personalization of responsibility, and not toward this splintering across many different heads. That’s an experience I’ve personally had. And one sub-area I’d also like to add, we’ve talked from companies to a global perspective. For me the smallest perspective on the question of centralization and decentralization is myself as a person, meaning maybe something constructed for many, that I say, do I centralize everything I do, how I think, how I behave, solely on myself, or do I decentralize this opinion-forming, these views on various problems in my daily life, onto other people too, and involve them in the decision-making. That’s a question of centralization and decentralization for me too. As always a great hour. Thank you, dear Yasemin, for your moderation and your inputs. Dear Marc, as always great examples taken from life, and a nice day to you all.

Yes, great, thank you, thank you so much. And on the point of the tendency, when you’re decentralized, toward centralization. I personally have made the experience that it always seems to be a back and forth, so always from decentralized to centralized and then back again the wish in the opposite direction, so it can often be observed in companies too that decentralization is then centralized again after a while, or certain things get centralized, to then comply with the wish again to say, no unfortunately that doesn’t work this way, and then go back into decentralization again. That’s quite exciting too, it actually makes employees “change tired,” in inverted commas, because it goes once to the left, then again to the right, and then again to the left. So in the sense of, we’ve had all this before. Now we’re starting over again. And I find this aspect all the more exciting to say, well, maybe it’s always the trap we fall into, going from one extreme to the other extreme again, and not having the mixed forms in view enough. So I’d find this point interesting too. Thank you, thank you so much for that. Yes, so I found the room very, very exciting too. Tomorrow we’ll look at connections and dependencies. I’m really looking forward to that too. That means, we’ve opened up so many different rooms in recent days and weeks, and now to go into a certain consolidation, into a first consolidation. What connections and dependencies can be recognized in an overall view of a global transformation? To look at that and go deeper into it. And I’m looking forward to hopefully welcoming you all again here tomorrow morning at 8am. In that sense, thank you, thank you so much, and see you tomorrow morning.