Andreas and Daniel Sennheiser – the brothers who are co-CEOs of German audio company Sennheiser – could neatly be designated as ‘the scientist’ and the ‘artist’. Whereas Daniel, 52, has the world view of a design expert with a creative streak, Andreas, 51, offers a high-level, engineering perspective. A few years ago, they thought about segregating their leadership roles, but concluded that their different personalities could help them to make better decisions together.
Andreas says: “When we knew we would become co-CEOs in our late 20s, my brother and I sat down to create a family charter to define our roles. We asked, ‘Should we divide our responsibilities based on our areas of expertise?’ Then we decided it’s a greater benefit for everybody if we don’t segregate duties. It’s better to have a redundant system, where we both look at important things jointly.
“Sometimes we just split duties, but we definitely do take the really forward-looking decisions jointly, such as refocusing our entire operation into the pro business and selling off the consumer division, or building a company strategy built on user insights and innovation. With our different minds and education, we have very diverse views on the future and so we get better results.”
FINDING COMPROMISES
The brothers disagree from time to time, but they don’t fight on a personal level like capricious rock stars. Their partnership is built on fraternal love and respect for each other’s values. When they have opposing views, they keep on talking until they reach a conclusion, or a compromise. Daniel says: “The talks can go on for some time. But if one of us feels really deeply, the other one might say ‘okay, you feel stronger about this, so I’ll follow you on it’. Or we’ll keep coming back to it until we find a compromise, which in our view is a better result. But it’s a great and also a humbling experience to work together with your brother whom you trust fully.”
Daniel and Andreas were born in Switzerland, but moved to a village near Hanover, in Germany, when they were small children. They grew up hearing family discussions at the meal table about Sennheiser, which their grandfather Dr Fritz Sennheiser founded as the Wennebostel Laboratory, in Wedemark, near Hanover, in 1945, shortly after the war.
Despite their immersion in the exciting world of the family company – which this year is celebrating its 80th anniversary – it seemed unlikely they would ever lead the company together. As a young man, Daniel had no intention of working for Sennheiser. To satisfy his visual flair, he studied at the ArtCenter College of Design, in Pasadena, California, from 1993-1996, then immediately founded the Digani computer animation agency. Daniel went on to work for other design agencies before becoming associate director of Proctor & Gamble, in Geneva.
By this circuitous route, after 12 years in the design world, Daniel realised he had something to offer the family company and in 2008 joined Sennheiser, now under the leadership of his father Jörg, at a director level. “I thought I could provide a design perspective, as well as a customer view and a user experience view, all of which are needed for a company that is heavily engineering driven,” Daniel explains.
For Andreas, the path towards leading Sennheiser was more straightforward. Passionate about both music and technology, from an early age he saw Sennheiser as a “playground for my passions”. But, following a PhD in engineering, he also took a detour for a few years and worked for the Liechtenstein-based Hilti Power Tool company, which manufactures construction gear. Eventually, he joined Sennheiser a couple of years after Daniel in 2010, also at the director level.
The pair took over from their father as co-CEOs in 2013 and, despite their diverse skillsets, share similar views about leadership. Daniel has learned two critical lessons that he tries to convey to the workforce. “The first is ‘only do what you can do’. There are many people in the company who are younger, better educated, faster and smarter, but there are certain things I can do better than others, and I should focus on those. And everybody in the company should find out what they are.”
The second lesson, Daniel says, is that employees need freedom from constraints to innovate. This belief carries an echo of his grandfather Fritz’s oft-quoted phrase that “engineers need room for crazy ideas”. Daniel explains: “I always say ‘don’t ask for permission. Ask for forgiveness’. In other words, be prepared to take risks. No one will tell us what to do as CEOs and I don’t want to tell employees what to do. Ideally, we have an organisation of highly motivated experts.”
Andreas agrees with Daniel’s principles, but he also emphasises the directional and visionary impact that leadership has to have. “To feel comfortable trying ‘sideways’ ideas, people need to know what the limits are and what is the sandbox we want everyone to play in,” he explains. “So it’s important for Daniel and I to give a direction for the company. People are not truly motivated by perks, but by moving jointly towards a purpose for the company.”
GROWTH AREAS
The direction of travel for Sennheiser is governed by the brothers’ shared vision of the strongest growth areas. They agree about three thriving sectors. The first is pro audio; the second is business communications; and the third is higher education. The great Sennheiser launch in recent times in the pro audio world, says Andreas, was Spectera, the world’s first wideband, bidirectional digital wireless ecosystem.
He explains: “The analogy is the switch from a push button phone to a smartphone. It’s freely programmable with new features. To bring something so new to market was a 10-year journey starting with overcoming the limitations of thinking the same way for 60 years about wireless transmission, which Sennheiser started in 1957 when we invented the first wireless microphone. And no one has changed the principle of transmission ever since.”
The other important areas of growth are enterprise communication and the higher education sector. In this respect, Daniel stresses the importance of the collaboration bars Sennheiser launched last year. “We think it’s the most feature-rich bar on the market. It has Dante on board and AI features to help you with the video and tiling. It has the Sennheiser signature sound based on multiple microphones and beamforming that we also have in our TCC and TCCM models. Everything you do on a campus you can manage with our control cockpit and we’ve just announced that we will bring this to the cloud now. So all this will also allow remote management of a whole campus.”
To escape from the intensity of daily decision-making, Daniel and Andreas enjoy a monthly ritual which is important for their relationship as brothers, not just as joint leaders. They meet for a full day with no agenda and without smartphones, and go running together. Daniel says: “It’s a common passion. Andreas is obviously much faster at running, which doesn’t really matter. He’s actually faster in his brain too, but that’s okay with me too! I possibly see more of the sidelines and I bring a clear strategic vision, so we’re complimentary.”
Another common passion is playing music. Both men learned instruments as children and continue to jam together and with friends. Andreas mainly plays guitar and Daniel plays guitar and piano. Andreas’ musical loves are classic rock and some classical compositions, whereas Daniel’s tastes veer wildly between styles and genres. “Yes, it drives the algorithms crazy because they can’t put me in a box!” he says.
Naturally, with a Swiss-born mother, they spent a lot of their childhood in the mountains and enjoy skiing. Occasionally, they go on a retreat in the Alps, spending half a day skiing and half a day working. Daniel says: “It frees your mind to think. Skiing is a great meditation exercise, especially when you go at the speed we do. There’s nothing else you can concentrate on. You have to be in the moment or it’s dangerous.”
The brothers feel a sense of responsibility to continue the traditions of the company founded by their grandfather Fritz, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 98, and both have strong memories of him. Andreas recalls his passions for gardening and cooking, including delicious gravy for ‘heavy meals’.
Daniel formed a deeper relationship with his grandfather only in the last two or three years of his long life. “I started spending quite a lot of time with him every week, just talking about how it was when he started the company. It created a connection on an intellectual level I’d never had before with him. He was a humble man. Just before he died, it was clear to him he didn’t understand today’s business world any more.”
FUTURE GOALS
Sennheiser generated sales of €492.3m in fiscal year 2024, a strong result, but a 6.6 percent decline on the previous year. Every year, Sennheiser invests a significant amount of money in the future. In 2004, the company put €48.9m into research and development and the expansion of sustainable business processes. Meanwhile, a further €3.1m was invested in digital transformation and €13.7m in its own production sites in Germany and Romania, including €12.2m in the plant in Wedemark near Hanover.
Andreas says: “Our R&D budget is high at around 10 percent of revenue as we want to maintain the freedom to innovate in areas that require a longer time span and not just focus on immediate results. So, there’s a constant, interdisciplinary and multifaceted world that we are balancing to create value for customers. Whether it’s universities, or the corporate IT world, rock stars and front-of-house people, or somebody in the studio, the focus is on optimising their workflows and making their working and creative lives easier. What’s vital is to work jointly with customers and not just innovate in an ivory tower.”
