HR Leaders How to Protect Culture During Rapid Growth
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Mar 10, 2026 Andre Heinz, Chief People and Culture Officer at Celonis, is a seasoned HR leader who scaled people and culture through hypergrowth. He discusses protecting cultural DNA during rapid expansion. He covers building scalable systems while keeping startup agility. He talks about maintaining a high talent bar, thinking years ahead, and using AI and learning to future-proof people strategy.
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Growth Has No Mercy
- Growth has no mercy: problems left unaddressed multiply as headcount doubles.
- Andre Heinz says HR must wear bifocals — solve day-to-day ops while designing solutions that work 2–3 years ahead.
From 60k To 600 For Impact
- Andre moved from leading HR at Siemens Healthineers (60,000 people) to join Celonis when it had ~600 employees.
- He chose impact over status to help build a company from scratch despite the 100x size difference.
Pick Which Human Needs You Serve
- Decide which human needs your company will deliberately serve and which you won't.
- Celonis chose purpose, growth, and belonging over promising stability, and aligned benefits (e.g., equity-for-babies) to those choices.