KNOWLEDGE & LEARNINGS
A BROAD SKILLSET RANGING FROM BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT TO PROCESS OPTIMIZATION
Business Development
Strategy & Tactics
Operational Excellence
IT & Tech Savvy
Leadership
Communication
Globalization
Negotiation
Board Membership
Quality & Lean
Coaching
Project Management
A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING
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BELOW YOU FIND MORE DETAILS OF "WHAT I KNOW"
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Business Development
Driving revenue by seeing and understanding potentials
Business development activities extend across different departments, including sales, marketing, project management, product management and vendor management. Networking, negotiations, partnerships, and cost-savings efforts are also involved. All of these different departments and activities are driven by and aligned to the business development goals.
To me, the most important factor is to ensure a strong and clear line of sight to and understanding of the customers and markets. Both their current and future needs. Even the need they don't know they have.
During my time as CCO and CEO I have worked extensively with customers and across my organization to collect knowledge into the strategy and its associated tactical gameplans.
Supporting education
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Diploma in Management
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Vestas High Potential
Strategy & Tactics
Where to go, and how do we get there
Winners have a plan, and losers have an explanation. That's a saying that I have always worked by.
A good strategy is setting the overall direction but has clear associated tactical plans, which are to be executed operationally. So the strategy is very little without the clear and clever plans. And this is where many fail. It is "easy" to say what you want to achieve, it is the HOW that is difficult and requires knowledge, experience and investments.
I have extensive knowledge utilizing various strategy frameworks such as "Strategy Deployment" and "Traction/EOS".
At Vestas MHI I was responsible for driving the entire strategy process across departments and took the learnings into my roles as CEO
Supporting education
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Diploma in Management
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Vestas High Potential
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Strategy Deployment
Operational Excellence
Luck is when you drive 150km/h and you don get cought
Building a business, which achieves its strategy objectives and is capable of earning money, does not come from being lucky. It requires a certain mindset, skillset and routines, that allow the organization and its processes to be constantly improved.
I have for over 15 been involved in defining and improving processes, departments and entire value chains. I have helped people understand why having done something for 20 years does not mean that you are excellent at it.
Perhaps the biggest challenges and learning was to build a global "sound production setup" from a point where the involved engineers in the beginning said:
"our work cannot be described or defined in a process, it is an artform".
A year later the setup was running global utilizing bespoke process which were optimized and ensured via operational excellence routines.
Supporting education
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Advanced Green Belt in Six Sigma
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Diploma in Management
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Vestas internal operational excellence courses
Technology - IT & Tech Savvy
Born within IT - The stronghold of today´s business developers
Unlike many other leaders and business developers, I don't originate from sales or finance. I originate from the IT arena.
With an education in IT, I started my career with Vestas IT and learned from the ground how IT enhances business. Today a business is nothing without technology.
I exhale in bridging the gap between business and technology and the people on "each side". A valuable asset, when conducting both business development and operational excellence activities.
Supporting education
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IT Science education
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Diploma in Management
Communication
If you want to get your message heard, you have to tell it differently.
That fact says it all about communication, it is difficult.
I have been trained, coached and actually communicated in many shapes and forms, and I still have not perfected it. It don't think I ever will.
But, I actually enjoy it
So I am no longer turning my back to the audience fixing my eyes on my own presentation when I am standing in front of 200 people communicating a message.
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I have held various presentations for 500+ people in both Danish and English.
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Speaker at ITSMF conferences
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Speaker at DANSK-IT globalization conference
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Speaker at Write2User conference
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Countless internal company presentations and communications.
Supporting education
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Lots of experience
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Vestas High Potentia
Globalization
Not easy....
You have done it many times before. Baked the bread for Sunday morning. You don't think about the recipe, you have even forgotten it, you just do it. And it tastes great every time.
Now, what if you suddenly had to divide your bread creation with someone else? Where do you stop in the process and where does the other person take over? Hey, what is the process/recipe??
Adding to the complexity is then suddenly the fact, that there are several persons in the process. Persons you perhaps have never met in real life. They are in a different time zone, so you can only communicate during your evenings. They don't speak your native tongue, so you get misunderstood often.
And let's share our documents, but do all have access to the systems? Systems that are slow, soo slow that you cannot work effectively.
I have been through all these challenging situations several times.
Globalizing a department, business unit or entire organization brings a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of challenges that have to be taken very seriously. Otherwise, the challenges supersede the opportunities and benefits.
Supporting education
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Lots of experience
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Diploma in management
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Vestas High Potential
Negotiation
When you want someone to say yes, you are in a negotiation
Great negotiation is about great collaboration. It is about several people faced with different aspects of the same problem. The advosary is not the person across the table, it is the situation. The person across the table is the counterpart, who is struggeling with aspects of the same problem.
Negotiation to me is about being able to find that balance together, where I will utilizing tacitcal empathy and negotiations skills that create the trust based influence which will help me lead the negotiation in a positive direction.
Negotiation is to me NOT about who takes the most at the other parts expence.
From mergers and tenders to salary negotiations I have been involved as the lead in several occations.
Board Menembership
Overview, focus and asking the tough questions..
Having been a board member of two startups, one that is now sold and another which is about to break into the DK market, I appreciate the knowledge and experience it requires.
Not being in the operations and daily turmoil combined with my experience is exactly what I utilize as a member of the board.
This to ensure that this unclouded view is communicated to ensure the CEOs overview and focus. It is also to ask him/her and the management team the tough questions that arise from the clarity.
Quality & Lean
We are GREAT because we have done it for 20 years.
As an advanced greenbelt in Six Sigma, one will appreciate that it is NOT the case. Being 20 years in an industry, but where you have never defined, measured, analyzed and deliberately made changes based on objective information, costs extra money and leaves you in uncertainty.
Uncertainty whether you meet the expectations of your customers. OR whether you are spending way too much effort and money achieving them.
And it does not have to be difficult. "Just" executing Pareto-analysis and asking 5-Why´s will get you a long way.
That of course requires, that you have define your services/products, described your process AND defined your error types.
Coaching & Employee development
From a leaf in the wind to focused efforts
Imagine three escalators. You are standing in the middle of the middle one.
They are all going down but you are walking up, against the direction.
On your left and right, there are two other persons. They represent your competition, the overall development and evolution.
In order to just stay at the same place, you and the persons to the right and left of you have to walk. The walking symbolizes your development.
The moment you stop, you slip behind.
When I ask what your development goals, desires and associated plans for the next two years are, I rarely get clear answers. I find that the majority of people, once they have started their work and family life, looses the drive, focus and HELP to get their minds into that needed focus.
A focus needed if the person, and therefore also the company, is to evolve and achieve its strategic targets.
I enjoy inspiring people and help them to start walking up that escalator. And have done it many times.
Project & Program Management
Winners have a plan, loosers have an explanation
From creating and implementing stage-gate and associated governance models to building project management organizations from scratch globally, I have done it.
Yet I try to keep things simple, otherwise it is not operational.
When people ask me how detailed their project plan should be my answer is always: "To the level where you are in control". The same goes with the details of the stage gate model and everything associated with it.
Find the detail level where you are in control. It sounds easy, but it is not :).
Leadership
Inspire, show direction, demand, grow and ensure trust
Leadership is perhaps the most difficult thing ever. Because leadership is about people, and we people, are different and difficult. Therefore, as with communication people have to be treated differently to achieve the same objective.
To me leadership can be boiled down to, being able to start the "inspired fire" within each individual. A fire to become the best possible version of oneself and thereby help achieve the company strategy but also grow as an individual in the process.
It is also about being able to take time with the individual in the moments of despair & frustration and help them see the right path.
It is also about being able to make decisions in easy and thought times.
When people tell me they want to become a manager and leader I always ask them why? It should not be because of a better paycheck or you get to decide.
It should be because you want to get the best out of the individual, transform these individuals into a team that can do things they didn't dream of. I love to lead.