MAXIMILIAN GROH, PhD

Procurement Product, Bid & Project Manager at Thales Group · Zurich, Switzerland

I lead procurement strategy, bid management, and complex programme delivery in defence and technology. Previously at ThyssenKrupp, where I managed portfolios across BMW and Mercedes programmes.

I write about procurement leadership, strategic decision-making, and AI — from the inside, not from the advisory sideline.

I work with strategy and leadership in situations where decisions matter — not in theory, but in practice.

Over the years, I have learned that most real problems are not caused by lack of intelligence, data, or frameworks. They arise when responsibility becomes personal, when uncertainty cannot be postponed, and when people are expected to decide without reliable guarantees.

This is the space I know best.

Professional background

I hold a PhD in Marketing and Strategy (doctoral thesis: Strategic assessment of product policy in the marketing of e-commerce companies), training that sharpened my analytical thinking and deepened my understanding of how elegant concepts behave once tested in real life — often imperfectly.

At Thales Group, I manage procurement for complex defence and technology programmes — from bid strategy through contract execution. This means navigating long procurement cycles, multi-stakeholder environments, and decisions where the cost of getting it wrong compounds over years.

During my time at ThyssenKrupp, I developed the “Headwinds” risk forecasting system — a supplier risk methodology that generated over EUR multi-million in documented savings by identifying cost risks before they materialised. That experience shaped how I think about procurement: not as a cost function, but as a strategic capability.

Before Thyssenkrupp, I spent time at Apple in sales leadership, managing large teams.

Over the years, I’ve blended academic rigor with leadership development, advisory work, and executive practice, developing a perspective grounded in applied strategy rather than textbook solutions. At different points, this also included teaching in a business school environment — an experience that sharpened my ability to explain complex ideas clearly and to see where theory resonates with practice, and where it quietly breaks down.

What connects these experiences is not a specific industry or role, but a recurring pattern: intelligent people struggling with decisions they already understand conceptually.

Teaching & academic work

I served as Adjunct Lecturer at ESB Business School (Reutlingen University), where I taught strategy and marketing at the graduate level. I’ve held teaching certifications from Harvard Business Impact Education and the European University Institute, and completed the Baden-Württemberg higher education teaching certificate in 2022.

Teaching refines how I write. It forces clarity. If you can’t explain a procurement concept to a room of MBA students who have never negotiated a supplier contract, you don’t understand it well enough.

How I think and work

I am not fascinated by best practices for their own sake. I’m interested in judgment — how decisions are actually made long before they are rationalised or justified.

Too often, we focus on frameworks instead of the assumptions, habits, emotions, and organisational signals that quietly shape outcomes.

People describe my approach as calm, precise, and constructively demanding. I don’t slow conversations to delay action — I slow them to make sure the right questions get asked.

I am drawn to situations where:

clarity is expected but unavailable,
leadership feels heavier than it looks from the outside,
and responsibility cannot be delegated or hidden behind process.

What people usually come to me for

People typically seek my perspective when something feels off, but it’s hard to articulate why.

That might look like:

strategic decisions that seem right on paper but fragile in practice,
leadership roles that have grown heavier over time,
teams that are capable yet stuck,
brands or organisations that are formally aligned but slowly drifting.

My role isn’t to hand you answers. It’s to help you see what’s really happening — and make decisions you can stand behind when certainty isn’t available.

On recommendations and trust

I don’t believe trust is built through impressive credentials or catchy claims. It’s built through consistency, candid observation, and the willingness to stay with difficult questions rather than dodge them.

Most recommendations I receive highlight a similar quality: the ability to combine strategic thinking with psychological realism — and to speak honestly without creating defensiveness. That matters to me more than titles or awards.

Licenses & certifications

Project Management Professional (PMP)® — Project Management Institute (PMI) (Issued: Jun 2016 • Expires: Jun 2028) — Credential ID: 1939099
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB) — TÜV NORD GROUP (Issued: Apr 2016 ) — Credential ID: DE-A1146
Baden-Württemberg-Zertifikat für Hochschuldidaktik — Geschäftsstelle der Studienkommission für Hochschuldidaktik an Hochschulen für Angewandte Wissenschaften in Baden-Württemberg (Issued: Aug 2022)
Teaching with Cases: Engage, Energise, and Challenge Your Students — Harvard Business Impact Education (Issued: Aug 2022)
Teaching in Higher Education — European University Institute (Issued: Jul 2019)
PADI Divemaster — PADI (Issued: Oct 2024) — Credential ID: 551900

What I write about

This blog is where I think out loud — grounded in practice, not theory. Topics I return to:

Procurement leadership — what it means to lead a function that is measured by savings but judged by influence
Risk and decision-making — how experienced leaders decide when data is incomplete and stakes are high
AI in procurement — what actually works, what’s hype, and what mid-career professionals need to know
Career transitions — moving from technical expert to leader, and what that costs and creates

Every article draws on situations I’ve been in or observed firsthand. I don’t write about procurement from a whiteboard. I write about it from the negotiation table, the programme review, and the moments where frameworks stop working and judgment takes over.

Everything I write — including this — is shaped by experience: by successes and mistakes, by revision and reflection. I don’t approach leadership or strategy from a position of detachment.

If there’s a common thread in my work, it is this: Good decisions rarely come from certainty. They come from clarity about what you are responsible for — and what you are not.

That perspective continues to guide how I work, and how I live.