Featured Video: Interview with Joe Kline, President & CEO of Baldwin

In January 2020, Joe Kline was appointed the new President and CEO of Baldwin Technology. In this interview, we meet up for reflections and learn what lies ahead.

Joe Kline shares his summary of the first half of 2020 including excitement, adversity and learning. He also speaks of the important focus - during the COVID-19 pandemic - to keep the Baldwin team safe, be connected to customers, and take charge to lead the business towards growth.

Christina Björkander: In January, Joe Kline was appointed the new President and CEO of Baldwin Technology, so today we meet up for some reflections and learn what lies ahead. So, let us start with some reflections. If you could think of three words that would summarize these past months for you, what would those be?

Joe Kline: Well, I think that's pretty easy. That would be: Excitement, Adversity and Learning.

Christina Björkander: And what made you choose these three words?

Joe Kline: You know, of course, the excitement comes from joining a new company and the opportunity that that presents and learning and experiencing new markets. Certainly, anytime you're doing something new that, of course, is always exciting and that's the case for me. On the adversity side, of course none of us could have predicted back in January that we would face this global pandemic, and so certainly, it's been a time of adversity. I'm just incredibly proud of how our team has responded to that. And then I'd say the last piece is really a byproduct of those two things which is learning. When you're doing something new – that's learning. When you face adversity – that's learning. I'm just really excited and proud to be associated with a team that's helped me learn new products and new markets. But also I'm really excited to be part of a team that's embraced some of the new ideas that I brought to the business as well.

Christina Björkander: If you could go back in time, what advice would you have given yourself back in January?

Joe Kline: If I had to do it over again, I would have spent more time externally with customers pre-COVID-19. Certainly, you can still spend time with customers via web conferences but it’s not the same as meeting people face to face. If I had to do it over again, I would have done more of that on the front-end.

Christina Björkander: And when you started, COVID-19 had already affected Asia, but not the rest of the world to the extent that we see today. Looking at Baldwin, how has this pandemic affected us?

Joe Kline: Like a lot of businesses, the impact's been pretty significant. Certainly, we've felt it in our revenue and order rates in the business; although, I would say that as we exited our calendar year Q2, we did start to see some recovery which was certainly encouraging for sure. There were three things that we put our attention and focus to. Number one was the safety and well-being of our team. We still have a lot of people working from home in the business, but I'm especially thankful to those that are out traveling and engaging with customers on-site. Our field service technicians and those that work in our manufacturing facilities to continue to support our customer base. The other priority in the business was being engaged with our customers and so we asked our commercial team to really pivot and work hard to stay engaged with our customers through that time period.

We wanted to make sure that our customers knew that we were there to support them. As business started to return to normal that we were well-positioned to help support those businesses as they re-ramped back up and looked to make future investments back into their business. We really used this time to take a look at our markets and our strategy in those markets. It was an opportunity to learn how we can better position the business for growth by strengthening our competitive position in those markets. I'd say, that's probably been one of the fortunate things of an unfortunate situation. But I definitely think that the time and energy that we've been able to spend on that really does help position the business to grow as we move forward.

Christina Björkander: How have you personally led the teams to make the right decisions?

Joe Kline: I think that “leading” really involves a lot of listening and perspective. That's how you learn and that's how you frame up how to make the right decisions. It’s benefiting from the perspective of others. I've tried to listen a lot to our team and make sure that we're doing the right things for our team, our customers, and our communities which are all really important especially in a time like this.

Christina Björkander: And where would you say Baldwin is right now?

Joe Kline: One of the things that I think is a real opportunity for our business is to become more intentional in our markets. More intentional with our product development efforts in those markets and more intentional with our customer engagement strategy. I think about the opportunity that adversity presents – it's learning, it's making the business stronger. I think that if we can excel at both – being very responsive to opportunities that are presented to us and being more intentional in some markets, with product development and customer engagement – we're going to position the business for growth which I'm really excited about.

Christina Björkander: Thank you, and if we would meet up six months from now, where would Baldwin be then?

Joe Kline: We're going to be much better positioned for growth because we have a deeper understanding of our markets, we have a deeper understanding of our competitive position in those markets. And all of the hard work that our entire team has done to support customers through this challenging time, will position us well to support our customers as they think about what's next for their businesses.

Christina Björkander: Thank you so much for sharing these insights with us today.

Joe Kline: Thank you, Christina.

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