Biography
Patrik Ziman grew up in Slovakia and has spent the last eighteen years moving where the work was, six countries across Central Europe, Russia, Germany and now China. He is Senior Vice President and CFO for Greater China at Boehringer Ingelheim, the German family-owned pharmaceutical company founded back in 1885, which still runs on a longer time horizon than most of the industry.
What I liked about talking to Patrik is that he does the big relocations as a family, not as a solo career move. He moved his wife and two daughters with him, the youngest was one when they went to Moscow, and he is honest about what that costs and what it gives the kids. He is the kind of finance leader who can talk you through a launch strategy and then, in the same breath, tell you how he thinks about raising children who have lived in several countries before they turned ten.
These days he sits across the table from both European headquarters and the Chinese market, which gives him a view most people only get one side of. He sees how decisions get made in Europe and how fast they need to get made in China, and he is not shy about saying where the gap is.
Areas of expertise
- Corporate finance & the CFO role
- Greater China market strategy
- Pharmaceutical industry
- Cross-cultural leadership
- Product launch strategy
- Succession & developing talent
What the conversation covered
We talked about his line that in China you launch at 80% and fix the rest live, while in Europe people wait for 120% and lose the window. From there we got into the difference between being busy and being efficient, how he makes decisions when the information is never complete, and why he spends real time developing the people who could one day replace him instead of guarding the seat.
He also gets practical: the three skills he thinks actually move a finance career forward, what a CFO is really looking for when he hires someone, and the honest version of raising kids abroad, the part that is good for them and the part that is hard.