The document discusses upcoming events for members of the International Controller Association in the first half of 2013, including controller congresses in Poland, Germany, Serbia, and Spain. It also provides a history of the development of the International Controller Association in Poland over the past nine years, during which it has grown from one local work group to eleven work groups across the country. The document profiles Dr. Walter Schmidt, a member of the ICV board, focusing on his background and role in the organization.

1. International
Controller Association
In this issue:
 What makes the Controller (more)
successful?
 Nine years of the International
Controller Association in Poland
ICV Bulletin | March 2013  Dr. Walter Schmidt
Dear Readers! EVENTS FOR ICV MEMBERS
IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE YEAR
Can you see the signs of spring in your coun-
tries? In Poland we have more and more 7th International Controller Congress
sun and there are first snowdrops “Higher efficiency—new tasks for a Controller”
blooming! They are the heralds of all Poznan (Poland), April 18-19, 2013
ICV events planned for the first half of
the year. The only one ICV international congress conducted in
English organized in Europe. Very high technical exper-
In this issue as always we invite you to inter- tise each year, competent speakers and the quality of
esting conferences that ICV organizes or organization gave the Congress permanent place in the
supports. Among them: two official big con- diaries of all controllers and financial executives for
gresses of the ICV — the traditional 38th Con- whom it is very important to enhance their skills.
troller Congress in Munich, Germany and the
7th International Controller Congress in Poznan, 38th Controller Congress
Poland. More about possibilities to meet other “Leistung durch Controlling steigern:
controlling specialists on the next pages. die neue Agenda für Controller”
Munich (Germany), April 22-23, 2013
Then the history of Poland - the first non-German
speaking country in the International Controller Associa- The main controlling event of the Association. The Con-
tion. After nine years of its presence in the ICV Poland trollerPrize of the International Controller Association will
has now eleven Work Groups. The plan for 2013 it to be awarded on the Congress on April 22, 2013.
develop the Association in our country — to gather more
individual and company members and to intensive coop-
eration with universities with controlling programmes. 1st ICV Controller Convention
And of course to organize the Congress — we would like “Controller as a business partner”
to kindly invite you to participate in it! How do controllers Belgrade (Serbia), May 17, 2013
want to build the success of their businesses? How do
they respond to the opportunities and threats that they Central controlling event in Serbia
investigate? What do they do to be able to say “Our effi- The objective of the Convention is:
ciency is growing despite the crisis?“ We will try to an-  Practical learning
swer all these questions at the Congress “Higher effi-  Socializing with 150 controllers
ciency—new tasks for a Controller” (April 18-19, 2013).  Networking
This month we present the next person from the ICV
Board with a bit of humor. Meet Dr. Walter Schmidt — a 5th Catalan Congress
man with philosophical nature. Accounting and Management
Barcelona (Spain), June 6-7, 2013
Much pleasure while reading!
A meeting of teachers, academics, members of busi-
I hope the spring will bring you much energy and motiva- nesses and the Government with the following objec-
tion to develop your careers! tives:
 Presentation of innovations in accounting and manage-
Yours ment
Dr. Adrianna Lewandowska  Promoting exchange of ideas and experiences be-
tween academic world and world of business
ICV Board Member  Dissemination of current research results
www.controllerverein.com Controlling - Creating Future
Publisher: International Controller Association ICV | Poznań Office

2. ICV Bulletin | March 2013
What makes the Controller (more) successful?
The Dream Car Report of the Idea Workshop in the International Controller Association 2012
By Andreas Aschenbrücker, Péter Horváth and Uwe Michel
It was 1974 when Albrecht Deyhle illustrated the famous “bounded rationality”. The consequence of
drawing the Controller - manager dialogue. The Controlling is bounded rationality is the fundamental inability of peo-
first of all a behavioural control, therefore most important is ple to make optimal decisions. Therefore Simon claims
what happens “under the table”. If we look at it in practice, that people do not look for the optimal solution but
we see that the cooperation between Controller and man- search for the most satisfying one. This decision-
ager has a focus on rational things, that is the ones that lie making behaviour is described by him as 'satisfying'. As
“on the table”. If we are “rational”, we don’t realize how the soon as the option reaches one's level of aspiration
or the aspiration level of the company, it is selected and
behaviour that happens “under the table” influences the Con-
the search for the other possibilities is closed, even if
trolling.
better “models” were possible.
The Management Board of the International Controlling As-
sociation (ICV) and the idea workshop recognised that there The idea of bounded rationality was picked up by Daniel
is a need to work out the practicable knowledge and then to Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1974) and they proved that
put it into practice. Important stimuli for the decision to inves- human decisions differ from the Homo Economicus theory.
tigate behavioural aspects of the Controlling were delivered Instead, people use cognitive heuristics, for example the
by new insights from psychology. They show that our ration- availability heuristic, in order to reduce the complexity of a
ality is frequently influenced by distortion: This article is a decision. The availability heuristic describes the phenome-
summary of the Dream Car Report "What makes the control- non where decisions are made on the basis of the currently
available information. People decide to buy a particular sort
ler (more) successful: It all depends on the behaviour!" from
of coffee because it is known or they saw it on TV. The con-
the idea workshop in ICV. […]
sequence of the reduction of complexity are cognitive distor-
tions (so called ”biases”) in human behaviour, deviations
The article is divided into four parts. Just after the introduc- from ideal of rational decisions. These arise because deci-
tion, it explains what is understood under behaviour and sions can not be made on the basis of knowing all options
what is the role of rationality and the use of different ways of and their benefits. Or maybe you know all the kinds of cof-
thinking and the cognitive heterogeneity the cooperation fee in the supermarket and you can classify their
between manager and Controller. The answer to the ques- taste and assess their value?
tion how do the manager and Controller make the decisions
will depend on different understandings of rationality. The
analytic model of homo economicus was strongly criticized in The only German Nobel laureate for economics, Reinhard
Selten, points out that sub-optimal decisions are an integral
the last decades. The thesis on unlimited rationality of peo-
part of the concept of bounded rationality. A rational ideal of
ple's decisions has been replaced by the assumption
different decision is no exception, but a rule. The ABC
of limited rationality. Therefore we need to ask the question Group Gerd Gigerenzer and the staff of the Berlin Max
of what does a Controller have to regard under the assump- Planck Institute for Human Development develop a model
tion of limited rationality. We will also show under what cir- of human decision-making behaviour, which in addi-
cumstances using simpler forms of decision-making leads to tion to cognitive restrictions considers also human striving
more satisfying solutions than analytical methods. For each for “satisfying” (see Gigerenzer et al. 1999).
part of the article we would like to present recommendations
for more successful and behaviour-oriented controlling.
Read the whole Controller Magazin Article in English: http://
www.controllerverein.com/index.php?
The homo economicus is dead!
PHPSESSID=qoff5n1huoshv30085ug7kgca2&id=168066
The decisions made by Managers, Controllers and generally
people are influenced by cognitive limitations (ability deficits)
and motivational factors (willing deficits). The way of making
decisions depends very strongly on how we understand ra- Autors:
tionality. In Economics, we understand rationality as the
Dipl.-Kfm. Dipl.-Sportwiss. Andreas Aschenbrücker
„strive” o the long-term success of the company and the ap-
propriate assignment of the available resources, i.e. resource
Researcher IPRI, Coordinator of the Idea Workshop of the
-benefit ratio. The concept of decision-oriented Controlling
ICV
assumes that people's rationality is unlimited. Rational be-
aaschenbruecker@ipri-institute.com
haviour means this sense, that people know how to use all
the different options and always calculate which decision is
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Péter Horváth
the best. The Controller must give the Manager all the most
relevant information, so that the Manager can take the opti-
Managing Director IPRI, Chairman of the Supervisory bo-
mal decision.
ard Horváth AG, Co-Head of the Idea Workshop ICV
phorvath@horvath-partners.com
The Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon (1955,1956 and
1959) presented as the first thesis that people's capability
Dr. Uwe Michel
of making rational decisions i s not unlimited. The rea-
sons he mentions, are the of the brain and the com-
Member of the board Horváth AG, Co-Head of the Idea
plex, uncertain future. They both prevent having the
Workshop ICV
knowledge of all the options and of their respec-
umichel@horvath-partners.com
tive benefits. Simon introduced a term for it:
© International Controller Association ICV | Poznań Office

3. ICV Bulletin | March 2013
Nine years of the International Controller
Association in Poland
Beginning of March is always time of meetings of the Polish work groups’
Leaders. This year they met in Poznan to discuss the strategy of Polish
work groups and the organization of the Office in Poland for 2013. There are
plans to win more company members and to intensify cooperation with uni-
versities. But it was also a possibility to recollect the past — building
eleven Polish work groups and organizing meetings for controllers who
would like to develop their skills.
The history of the ICV in Poland goes back to October 2004 z o.o. — Santander Consumer Bank S.A. and Poznan Uni-
when the first meeting took place. It was Dr. Herwig Friedag versity of Economics). The plan for 2013 is to gather more
— then the Head of the Work Group Berlin-Brandenburg, company members, also among universities offering control-
now the Head of the Public Relations Committee — who ling programmes. The controlling programmes of studies will
enthused Dr. Adrianna Lewandowska with his passion for be checked and then certified by the ICV so that they were
the ICV. The interest in the topic “Balanced Scorecard in harmonious with the ICV philosophy.
modern managed enterprises” showed how high is the need
for knowledge and experience exchange among Polish con-
trollers and CFOs. Poland was the first non-German speak-
ing country in the Association. And Poznan became the
capital of Polish controlling. Other work groups were built
soon after the first successful workshop (at first Zielona
Gora and Wroclaw and then other cities in the whole coun-
try: Szczecin, Warszawa, Gdansk, Torun, Lodz, Lublin, Kra-
kow and Katowice). Many highly qualified employees in Po-
land started discovering new and very target-oriented tasks:
how to think strategically, how to act respectively and also
how to report on the proceedings. This way the controlling
philosophy spread. Today an increasing number of control-
lers exists, strengthening corporate management.
Lublin 2008
A lot has changes for these nine years. After many new
controlling centres were established, we still have our main
event of the year in Poznan — this year the International
Controller Congress takes place for the seventh time. Dr
Adrianna Lewandowska is no longer the Head of the WG
Poznan or a Polish National Delegate—she’s now a Board
Member. There are new work groups and new WG-Leaders.
We have new ICV members—these from leading Polish and
international companies and from small businesses. Experi-
enced one and those who are just beginning their career as
controllers. But it’s still one ICV—creating future.
Wroclaw 2006
There is a high variety regarding the form of the meetings.
Some of the work groups prefer one-day meetings and
some are keen on away meetings lasting two days. For nine
years there were many topics and many trainers — from
inside and outside the ICV, also from abroad (Dr. Herwig
Friedag and Dr. Walter Schmidt). Polish members were
interested in topics like “Role and responsibility of a control-
ler in a corporation”, “NeuroManagement”., “One page only
for reporting”, “Modern Budgeting”, “Time - Driven Activity
Based Costing”, “Time management”, “Projects’ budgets”,
“Excel in the job of a controller” etc. The evening integration
is an indispensable part of the workshops.
The Association in Poland is developing—not only does it
have new individual members and regular participants of the
workshops and the International Controller Congress, but
also new company members (after Volkswagen Poznan Sp. CIA 2012, In volatile times—Controller as a Business Partner
© International Controller Association ICV | Poznań Office

4. ICV Bulletin | March 2013
© International Controller Association ICV | Poznań Office

5. ICV Bulletin | March 2013
In this issue the next caricature of the series presen-
ting the Members of the ICV Board with tongue in
cheek. In this issue we have Dr. Walter Schmidt’s
turn.
Your Bulletin Team —in the hope that the Board has sen-
se of humor...
All he loves is philosophy,
dispute, his family...
and the ICV
"Philosopher" in the Board of the International Controller
Association, a graduated chemist and a doctorate in eco-
nomics , a specialist in strategy development and imple-
mentation, author of several publications, founder of the
ICV Work Group England and… a rock man… May I
present Dr. Walter Schmidt!
He is the "philosopher" in the Board of the International
Controller Association: Dr. Walter Schmidt from Berlin.
Besides his “love for the dispute”, he is an open minded
and friendly person who stirs up the sympathy of the peo-
ple around him. A graduated chemist and a doctorate in
economics worked initially as a planning engineer, then
in the 80s as a strategical and conceptual engineer in the
oil industry. In 1990 he became a consultant and the
managing Director in an investment advisory company in
Berlin. Since 2003 he is a specialist in strategy develop-
ment and implementation, for the development of man-
agement accounting systems and the dynamic busi-
„Who has the will for success can achieve it!”
Dr. Schmidt’s motto
ness models as well as for the assessment and recogni- lectures. Dr. Schmidt was most recently founder of the Work
tion of potential (intangible assets) and he is also the Group England and is now preparing a first regional work
owner of „ask – angewandte strategie und kommunika- group in Italy.
tion“.
Who gets to know Walter Schmidt closer can experience some
Dr. Schmidt is known among the experts through his nu- interesting surprise. Who would suspect that as a young man
merous publications of professional books and articles he used to play rock music and mastered several musical in-
about business management topics (Strategy, Balanced struments? His preferences heard old music from the 16th cen-
Scorecard, Controlling). Together with the Berlin consult- tury. The "pleasure-man", who became the proud grandfather
ant Dr. Herwig R. Friedag he wrote several business these days, loves holidays with his long- standing wife in south
Bestseller for Balanced Scorecard. Schmidt and Friedag of France and on the Baltic coast. Each year he makes also
are also working together since 1996 as a consultant monastic vacations. The book-lover keeps physically fit with
team. daily half-hour morning exercise and an annual bike ride
through new regions.
Dr. Walter Schmidt is a founding member of the Idea
Workshop in the Association. Since 2002 he was the I take the pleasure to work with Dr. Walter Schmidt already
Head of the Regional ICV Work Group Berlin - Branden- more than 10 years. I had the opportunity to get to know him
burg. Finally he became a member of the Board and thus better through many private conversations and the trips that we
a contact person for the work groups in the region North made together. And I hope, that the now 62-year-old philoso-
and East Germany as well as for leading experts in pher will soon write the exciting story of his life and his ances-
“Controlling and IFRS”, ”Controlling and quality”, tors.
“Communication Controlling” and “Working Capital Man-
agement”. With great dedication he pushes ahead with Hans-Peter Sander
the internationalization of the ICV. Many controllers in ICV Press Manager
non-German-speaking countries - particularly in Poland
and the Baltic states - know him for numerous visits and
© International Controller Association ICV | Poznań Office

6. ICV Bulletin | March 2013
ICV Mission Statement
The ICV-Office in Munich
changed its address!
The ICV is the biggest controller
The new address is: organization in Europe being a non
-commercially oriented associa-
Münchner Str. 8
tion .
D-82237 Wörthsee
Only until April 21, 2013 (day of the Germany
general meeting) will Dr. Herwig
Friedag be the Head of the Public
ICV Key Objectives
Tel.+49-(0)8153-88 974-20
Relations Committee. Fax: +49-(0)8153-88 974-31
The ICV as an active
He has actively worked in the Com- international network
mittee for 20 years, mostly as its
enhances the function
Head. As Siegfried Gänßlen says:
"With his long years work Herwig of practically applied
Friedag sacrificed his lifeblood and controlling and the role
engagement to the ICV PR- of the controller
projects. He (…) raised the „digital
in the responsibility
world“ of the ICV to the next level.
Until today there is no successor for successful
arrangement, but the Board will try company management.
to find a solution by the general
meeting”.
All work groups in non-German speaking countries
Bosna and Hercegovina Poland
Slavko Simić Gdańsk Warszawa
bono@blic.net Robert Panufnik Karol Sikora
r.panufnik@vector.com.pl karol.sikora@icv.pl
Bulgaria
Denko Yamboliev Wrocław
Katowice
denko@excite.com Anna Jarkulisz Honorata Ulatowska
anna.jarkulisz@arcelormittal.com honorata.ulatowska@icv.pl
Croatia
Jasmina Očko Kraków Zielona Góra
jasmina.ocko@kognosko.hr Dorota Gołąb-Bełtowicz Małgorzata Lepak
dbeltowicz@bonifratrzy.krakow.pl malgorzata.lepak@icv.pl
Great Britain
Milena Heim Romania
Lublin
milena.heim@gmx.net Paweł Rafalski Cristina Hodea
pawel.rafalski@solet..pl cristina.hodea@gmail.com
Estonia
Toomas Haldma Łódź Russia
toomas.haldma@ut.ee Karolina Zielińska Valentin Usenkov
karolina.zielinska@icv.pl zhoom@mail.ru
Lithuania
Edita Gimžauskienė Poznań Serbia
edita.gimzauskiene@ktu.lt Dariusz Gulczyński Bojan Šćepanović
dariusz.gulczynski@icv.pl mcb@eunet.rs
Hungary
Budapest 1 Szczecin Slovenia
Ervin Nemesdy Aleksander Socha Dragica Erčulj
nemesdy@mce.hu aleksander.socha@ramirent.pl dragica.erculj@crmt.com
Budapest 2 Toruń Spain
Andreas Kovacs Andrzej Derkowski Ulrich Müller Bosom
akovacs@mcskft.hu andrzej.derkowski@neuca.pl ulrich.mueller.bosom@gmail.com
Imprint Editing International Controller Association
Publisher and Copyrights: Brigitte Dienstl-Arnegger ICV Office Poland
Dr. Herwig Friedag Ul.Fredry 7/1
International Controller Association
61-809 Poznań PL
Public Relations Committee Dr. Adrianna Lewandowska
Phone/Fax +48 61 853 20 10
Hans-Peter Sander Mail: anna.wlodarczyk@icv.pl
Anna Włodarczyk