TOTO WOLFF: HOW HE KEEPS MERCEDES ON TOP
Under Toto Wolff’s stewardship Mercedes has enjoyed unprecedented success. Not bad considering he’d never run an organisation of this size before… In this exclusive interview he reveals the working culture behind the team’s success, the extent of his own commitment to the cause, and why he doesn’t like talking about ‘management style’
There is something intrinsically contradictory in what we’re doing, here in Toto Wolff’s private office on the Sunday of the Japanese Grand Prix. Mercedes is about to clinch its sixth consecutive constructors’ world championship, and does so a few hours after we’re done talking. A couple of races later, Lewis Hamilton will put the seal on his own deal – taking this team’s tally to an extraordinary and unprecedented six consecutive F1 championship doubles, making it undefeated since 2014.
We want to talk to the figurehead of this mighty operation, to understand his alchemy; to learn how he is able to inspire so many hundreds of people to greatness, to be better than they were before, year after year after year. But, as it is for all great leaders, this is not really about him. Toto simply sets the template, finds ways to unleash the potential of his workforce by understanding them and giving them the tools they need to succeed.
It sounds simple. But of course, this is far from easy. So many get swept away in the cult of personality, believe their own hype and ultimately fail because of it. Not Toto. As we’re about to learn, he works hard – to make this less about him and more about inspiring his people to keep Mercedes on top of
Formula 1’s pile. His is a work many years in the making, and still unfinished.
F1 Racing: We want to explore the human element behind the structure, the organisation behind the machine. How did you build up, from the remnants of Brawn GP, with Mercedes support, this winning machine over time?
Toto Wolff: In Formula 1 there is rarely a silver bullet, or one-time wonders. Maybe apart from 2009. And even that had a backstory with a 2008 preparation and the 2008 budgets that were given – and a genius engineer back in Japan who found out about the double diffuser. But since then it’s really been about understanding the organisation, understanding its weaknesses and its strengths, developing the individuals – giving them a framework that allows them to perform. Understand which resources you need, which is something that was not done before.
F1R: What do you mean, precisely?
TW: You need to understand where within your infrastructure, and within your resources – financial resources, human resources, technical capability
– you’re lacking. And if you’re not brutally honest with yourself, and understand where the gaps are, you will never have an organisation that will be able to fight at the front in a sustainable way. This is what we did at the end of 2012. I only joined in January 2013, but in September 2012 I was given three months – without having decided yet whether to join – by the board to give a personal opinion, without having a deep insight, of what I thought was going wrong.
F1R: Did you find it an advantage to be looking at it dispassionately from the outside, or a disadvantage in the sense you didn’t have the deep knowledge?
TW: I was at Williams, so I wasn’t really given the detail. The start of the journey was to understand what the expectations of Daimler were with their team, and the expectations were to win championships – on resource that was about equal to what I had at Williams, and our expectation was to come in fourth or fifth!
F1R: So you instantly had a reference, to say ‘OK, you need to upscale this’?
TW: I think there was a lack of expectation management, and a dysfunctional understanding of what the objectives of the team were. That’s maybe due to historic context. When the team was bought, it was bought under certain premises that the team could be run in a profitable way – that the Resource Restriction Agreement would kick in and allow for that,
and I think the management struggled to go back to Daimler and say ‘well, it’s actually different’. Therefore, my role was much easier, because I came in and I was able to be very direct. I had no past with the team.
F1R: Talking about your style in particular, where have you learned your own managerial skills?
TW: I think first of all, when you start to talk about style you’ve lost the plot. I’ve never before run an organisation of this size. My background is finance, and for 20 years I was running a small investment company with 20 employees – but with the primary business of funding interesting companies, hiring and developing the right management, giving them a framework in order to develop the companies. In the course of these 20 years I’ve looked at more than 1000 companies and their people, because at the end of the day every single company is [about] the people.
F1R: How did you apply that knowledge, experience and learning to the Mercedes organisation, to then improve it?
TW: Like I said to you, it’s about understanding the weaknesses and strengths in the organisation, and how that overlays with regulations – what is needed in order to perform? Where are the others better? And then assess the individuals, on the senior level, see whether they are in the right roles, see whether they are being given the necessary amount of resource – that doesn’t only mean financial resource – and then empower them.
F1R: Can you be specific in terms of work you did that unlocked the extra potential of the organisation – people you put in certain positions, or particular projects you undertook?
TW: I don’t want to talk too much about that. What I can tell you is that when I joined, within a few months we were given 20% more budget. That message didn’t reach the board before [that the team was underfunded].
“When you start to talk about management style you’ve lost the plot because at the end of the day every single company is [about] the people”
Many of the people that have been the backbone of this success over the past six years, they were already on board. In 2012 many good people were there since the early days, since the BAR days. Many good people were hired in 2011 and 2012 that are still the leaders today. And then we set up a very dedicated talent development programme. It is all around the individual and their performance. That starts from the right academic background, the right experience, support, deployment within the organisation; are you in the right role for your personality? And then it’s many marginal gains that will add up. It is the sum of the parts. And the sum of the parts in any company is its people. We are a safe place, we are a place people enjoy working in, where they are being looked after, they are being developed, empowered. We are a highpressure environment, but with positive stress.
F1R: How do you structure things when you have so many people and you need to optimise all of them for the whole? You can’t obviously be in charge of 1500 or 2000 or however many people individually, it comes down to the tiers you have below that. How do you deal with that situation in terms of management underneath you – trusting those below you in the structure to get the most out of the people they’re in charge of?
TW: In every large organisation it becomes impossible that the guys at the top manage the whole organisation. You just need to set the tone, define your values, the objectives, and make sure these are being cascaded within the organisation – and [that] every single layer of management completely understands what the target of the company is and what its values are. That is not something you can just put on a Powerpoint and then expect everybody to behave accordingly, that is an exercise over many years. And you need to live it.
F1R: Which is why you’re here, at races, all the time…
TW: Absolutely. You either do it properly or you don’t. If you are the team principal that means part of the role is at the race track. [Apart from Brazil this year] I haven’t missed a single F1 race since 2012, since I started with Williams, as an executive director. It’s tiring and it’s difficult to come back on Monday and have a normal office job. I’m the chief executive also, so I need to look after the commercial side as well, and finance, and overall reporting and responsibility towards Daimler – but I can see around here that the best ones, they give it 100%. You can’t expect to give 90% and hope to be competitive.
F1R: How do you approach the Monday after a race – when you win you obviously need to keep people pushing and not relaxing too much into success? And how do you deal with defeat, galvanise the troops when things aren’t going your way?
TW: Losing is extremely painful and I’m almost not capable of talking normally because I’m so annoyed. But equally, emotions are OK but they mustn’t stress you out. The days of losing or underperforming are so painful that the learning curve is enormous from these days – as long as you can make the organisation cope with failure, and understand that failure is an opportunity.
F1R: It seems you have a culture of no scapegoating. Other teams, you can see people getting hung out to dry when things go wrong. But many times we’ve seen James Vowles, for example, come on the radio and say ‘Sorry Lewis, we’ve lost this race for you’, or ‘I’ve lost this race for you’. He’s able to do that without fear he’s going to be lynched for owning his mistake. How do you foster that culture?
TW: It takes years to create a safe environment. If you’re a high-performance organisation there is automatic stress, and it’s human nature to try to identify who is at fault – because it helps release pressure. It’s easier to say ‘it’s your fault!’. Acknowledging that psychology works on you is the first step towards changing. But when you’ve been with each other for a while, you understand the personalities and you’re capable of being brutally honest with each other, and transparent, and that creates an environment where people will say ‘I made a mistake’. But again, this is something that takes many years and needs proof. If you have an environment based on ‘hire and fire’, because somebody needs to be blamed, you’re never going to be able to create that [trust]. It is an exercise that never ends, because the tough moments will always come back. The intensity of defeat, the pain of defeat is so big, that we just don’t want to go there. That’s what keeps us pushing on.
F1R: Taking ego out of it is incredibly important as well...
TW: Everybody has a certain amount of ego, but you need
“The days of losing or underperforming are so painful that the learning curve is enormous from these days – as long as you can make the organisation cope with failure, and understand that failure is an opportunity”
to be capable of putting that behind, acknowledge that sometimes it is running away from you, and put yourself on the leash again. Egomaniacs will never be successful in a sustainable way, over a long period. A sentence that I like, and I think sums it up pretty well, is ‘leadership is not about you, it’s about them’. I try to remind myself every day – but I’m also lucky that I have a private, personal and professional environment where I get reminded of that very often. If it’s not happening in the office then I come home and it’s [my wife] Susie who puts me back on the ground, regularly.
F1R: Speaking about ego, drivers are probably the biggest egomaniacs in F1, so how do you go about managing them? You’ve been through stressful times with Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton through this period of success, so that must have taken up a lot of your managerial capacity…
TW: More in the past! I think you just need to acknowledge the personality, have respect for the differences of the individual, accept they have objectives – that sometimes might differ to the ones from the team – and be able to approach these differences with curiosity rather than combat: Why is he having that view? And I think by doing that, you’re much less judgemental, and you are able to put the objective first, always.
F1R: You lost Niki Lauda earlier this year and he was an integral partner in your leadership of this team, so how different has it been managing Mercedes without your partner-in-crime?
TW: He was my brother-in-crime, and on our journey my best friend. And that is the part most missed, because the off-time we spent together in the evenings, or travelling, was regeneration for me – was fun; he was a very good sounding board, sparring partner, somebody with lots of experience, and this is what’s missing, for me personally. For the team, his sheer presence was of enormous power. The way he exercised pressure was important. A very important human being that we lost.
F1R: What’s next for you? You’ve had this huge run of success, and F1 is reaching a crossroads, after 2020, so do you see your long-term future as continuing to run this team, or have you got eyes on taking this experience and applying it to F1 itself – surely that’s the next step?
TW: I think a lot about what to do – about my current role and my future. What I take most enjoyment in is the relationships. I enjoy working with Ola Källenius [Daimler chairman] in the same way I’ve enjoyed working with Dieter Zetsche [Daimler chair from 2006-2019]. They have empowered me and given me a great framework in the same way I try to give a great framework to people in the team. That is an important factor. I enjoy working with all the individuals, and interacting with them. And I could name you many people that I truly enjoy working with that I feel inspired by. I feel blessed that there is extremely intelligent and wise people that work within our organisation that I can learn from. And equally, give back from what I think I can contribute.
The moment you think about something else, you are dropping the ball, or there is the risk of dropping the ball – and I don’t want to drop the ball. That’s why I’m a shareholder of the Mercedes Formula 1 team; I take great pride in being in such a role, and I will not let myself be distracted with what I will do in the future. At a certain stage I need to make up my mind, Mercedes too, but until then there are races to win and championships to win.
“A sentence that I like, and I think sums it up pretty well, is ‘leadership is not about you, it’s about them’. I try to remind myself every day – but I’m also lucky that I have a private, personal and professional environment where I get reminded of that very often”