The leadership transition at JUEKE is a major milestone, with Steffen Hovestadt, Max Jürgens, and Dominik Fockenbrock stepping in as CEOs while guided by their predecessors. In his editorial, Hovestadt highlights the careful planning, structured leadership, and collaboration that made this possible.
Established in 1990, JUEKE has become a successful system supplier for medical technology, biotechnology and photonics with a workforce of 140 – thanks to the work of the two shareholders and CEOs – Heinz Jürgens and my father, Martin Hovestadt. On 1 November 2024, a major milestone occurred in the company’s history when Max Jürgens, Dominik Fockenbrock and I took over the management of the company.
As the son of a CEO, I was always very interested in my father’s work, and I became fascinated with JUEKE’s technology. We inevitably talked about the possibility of me taking over from him one day, and in preparation, I studied a BSc, and then an MSc in Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Dortmund, which included an internship at Mercedes-Benz.
After university, I worked as a development engineer for Qioptiq, a designer and manufacturer of photonic systems for the semiconductor industry. These jobs gave me valuable experience for my future position but also helped me to further consolidate my plan to work for a smaller company like JUEKE.
So, in 2019, I sat down with Max, our fathers and Dominik Fockenbrock, the former Head of R&D, to start planning for Max and me to eventually become CEOs of the company.
In a nutshell, the plan was that from November 2024, the company would have three CEOs: me, Max and Dominik. Our fathers would stay connected to the company as shareholders and in an advisory capacity for strategic projects, but not as CEOs.
Responsibility for the various departments would be split among the three CEOs: I would be responsible of Production and Production planning; Dominik for Development and QM; and Max for Administration, Procurement & HR.
Since becoming CEO, one of the challenges has been the pressure to make the right decisions in critical situations. Fortunately, we can also rely on the wealth of experience and expertise of our department managers, who have been with the company for many years.
It is also a great advantage that we are three CEOs with the same responsibility, who can discuss strategic decisions or problems from different perspectives based on the overarching goals of the entire company. As for soft skills, it’s very important to be inspiring, which can only be done by example – working hard and being engaged with all aspects of the company. Another quality is empathy, for instance, being appreciative of the work an employee has done before asking them to do another task.
My main advice for others thinking of going through the same process is early planning, which can be a lengthy process. In our case, planning took a long time because we wanted everyone i.e., employees, senior management, customers, external shareholders to be involved and kept informed of the proposed changes. Additionally, inheritance can create legal issues with contracts and shareholders, so it’s very important to be aware of future scenarios and make provisions for them.
It’s also important to establish a clear decision making and leadership process. In our case, our fathers built the company up from the scratch – they knew and decided everything. Due to the growth of the company and the increasing complexity, we couldn’t continue with this approach, so we hired an external trainer to help us and the management team grow together and develop a common vision of how we wanted to lead the company in the future, which was really valuable for all of us.
