A Chat with Terex Cranes’ New Leader, Ken Lousberg
September 2, 2015 - Terex Corp. has been busy this summer, first announcing its merger with Konecranes and then naming new leaders throughout the organization. Among these appointments was Ken Lousberg, who is now president of Terex Cranes, Terex Latin America, and Terex China.
Ken Lousberg
Lousberg has been with Terex since it acquired Genie Industries in 2002. He’s held several senior management positions with the company, including vice president of Terex Business System for Cranes and vice president and general manager of Terex Cranes Europe.
At Terex Cranes’ facility in Waverly, Iowa, Lousberg sat down with Crane & Rigging Hot Line just days after his new appointment to discuss his expanded role.
Can you explain Terex’s structure, and where your role fits in?
Our primary organizational structure is around the five segments (Cranes, AWP, Construction, Materials Processing, and Material Handling & Port Solutions). I’m president of Cranes, as well as Utilities, and Services in North America, and the president of Terex China for all products. We’ll hire a country head to do day-to-day business in China, and we already have a person in that role at Terex Brazil in Latin America. Both will report to me.
Terex is in a lot of different product categories that are unique, even to each other. Our primary organizing principle has been around our product segments, and I foresee it staying that way.
What our country leadership does is approach the market and customers consistently. We don’t have a country manager in every country, and we don’t necessarily think about it regionally. If we have business with a lot of different segments within a country, then we’ll have a country leader. The country leader would typically report to one of the segment presidents. The only exception to that was my previous role in China, where I was reporting to Ron DeFeo directly.
Where do you plan to call home?
For the next three or four months, I’ll be traveling all over, meeting and reconnecting with customers and team members. Right now, the most likely place I’ll settle down will be in Europe. The largest part of our team and our largest business is in Europe. I think I can help the communication and get things done from Europe more quickly than somewhere else. It is a good global position.
How is Terex Cranes’ business doing?
I left Terex Cranes for China in the end of 2009, so it’s certainly doing a lot better than then. We have some businesses that are doing better than expected, some that are not doing as well as we thought they would be doing. The change in oil prices tends to hurt our North American business. The Middle East has slowed down a little bit as well. Overall, I think we’re improving everywhere. For me just stepping in, I’m pretty happy with the direction the team is going and how the business is going.
What do you intend to bring to the organization and this role?
This is a job that I’m very excited about. I’ve been in the crane group in some leadership role for the last 10 years…I think I was selected because of my experience with cranes, knowledge of the business, relationships with customers around the world, familiarity with what the problems are, and knowledge of our opportunities.
The more knowledgeable someone is about the business, the better for our customers and our team. Part of it was also my experience with Genie. Genie has an incredibly good reputation for customer service, customer satisfaction, and putting customers first. Our crane team does that as well, but I think we can always improve. Being able to leverage my experience at Genie and previous experience with cranes, Europe, and Asia are some of the reasons why I was asked to do this.
What are some of your goals?
One of my main goals is to keep doing what we are doing but do it faster. I think the crane group has a good plan and a good strategy that is centered on our customers. Without a doubt, I don’t want a change in leadership to spoil that. It’s a competitive world out there, and if there is anything I can bring from my experience to help the team and speed that activity up, I definitely want to do that.
One of the first pieces of information I asked in this role is our Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is how we measure customer satisfaction. It gives us insight into what we need to do for our customers. The more we listen to them and provide what they need, the more confident I am that we can do well in the future. It’s our customers that are going to help us be successful.
Three crane manufacturers named new presidents this year. Do you see philosophies changing in the crane industry?
It will take time to find out. I don’t feel like I’m new. My title is different and I wasn’t president of Terex Cranes before, but I’ve been involved with cranes for a long time. There are new chances with new leadership. You can hear and see things from a different perspective, and I think it is healthy for the crane industry overall.
