Karin Radström is turning the core Mercedes-Benz Trucks brand upside down

Vienna Some professionals are still amazed. Important investments at Daimler Truck always had to be approved by top management. Sophisticated Powerpoint presentations, short thematic presentations and expert recommendations were customary. Only then did the board raise or lower their thumbs.

For the past two years, things have usually been different at the world’s largest manufacturer of trucks and buses. That’s up to Karin Radström, head of the core brand Mercedes-Benz Trucks. “I’ll play the ball back,” the manager told Handelsblatt. “As a rule, these specialists know best what the right approach is.” You just have to enable them to take responsibility themselves.

Radstrom stands for a new leadership style in Swabia. She relies on teamwork and cool cost control. The mix seems to work. When the former Scania engineer docked at the beginning of 2021 as the first woman on the Daimler Truck Board of Management, the European and Latin American business wrote that she was responsible for a loss of 232 million euros.

billions expected