SPEAKER_01 0:03

Today's guest is Jörg Arlemar, co-founder and chief operating office of an AI powered platform helping by small and medium enterprises improved operational, commercial, perform, and financial performance. Before building QCOX, York spent more than 30 years across industry and consulting, including leadership roles at Nokia and McKinsey. In these episodes, we explore what large enterprises do you misunderstand about small business growth. What is it really like to go from corporate executive to a starter founder at 59? And why operational clarity may become one of the biggest competitive advantages in the AI year? Welcome to the Future Ventures Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hi Maxine. Nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

It is a pleasure to have you on. I've been looking forward to this episode and uh and the insights that you would have that you have to share. So tell me, what was that burning desire behind you living the cushy rows of uh big big companies and starting the starting QCOX?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Well, um I think the most important um you know aspect was I was at a stage of my life uh where I thought actually, you know, I want to do something different. Um I did also not found it uh by myself. We did we did it together, actually, the three of us. We know each other for a long time. Um Andreas, uh one of my co-founders, has been with me um also in my Nokia career already, uh so we have a long history together. Uh we did a lot of transformation together and um a lot of work across the continents. In addition to that, we have uh we have been joined by Carolina, uh his also wife. She has been a long-term consultant, uh, she has been uh for long many years actually consulting in McKinsey, but also had been partner at McKinsey for a couple of years. And um, so we said, look, after all these years with large corporations, what can we do actually to help the enterprise market? And the first starting point was the hypothesis that we looked into you know the European environment, and you know, the backbone of the of every economy, quite frankly, across the globe is the small medium enterprises. It's not the large corporations. The large corporations do drive a lot of innovation, I would think, and also, of course, have excelling power, um, which they can you know drive markets with. But at the same time, you know, the everyday you know employment, uh, but also the uh gross domestic product of every economy is driven actually by their backbone, which is the smaller companies. And we said, how can we, you know, how we how can we help them in the best possible way? And uh one aspect which really actually you know drove and hit us hard when we looked into the details, is that we found out actually that 40 to 50 percent actually gap exists between the operational excellence and efficiency of smaller companies versus actually compared to the large corporations, and we said that we must be able to change that. So we said, how do we actually you know do that in large corporations? I mean, usually we have a lot of people, we have lots of capabilities, we have capacity, we have experience around the globe in every market you could uh dream of, and we can pull these uh you know experiences and cap uh capacities and capabilities together to form for something new. Take the age of AI, for example, you would actually go out and have a lot of people actually you know already, which are developing in your organization skills around that, and otherwise you build organizational capacity actually to do so. In smaller organizations, it's more very constrained on capabilities and capacity, and of course, also budgets. So if corporates don't know any further, they will go to external consultants and usually the top uh prime companies, which I have been also privileged to work with, but they cannot serve every small company. On one hand, actually, it is you know too too much actually, you know, budget. Let's be clear also on that, for smaller companies to engage these large uh consulting uh company firms. On the other hand, they have also a gross need, a gross need, a strong need actually to have counterparts in your own organization to work with them. So that means small companies actually are constrained by time anyway, already and capacity. So, how will they even serve that market? So we said, okay, how do we do this? And we then found out we first did a market study in seven European countries with more than 1,200 companies to explore actually if we are right with our assumptions, and the feedback we got was actually very clear. Uh, we are on the right path. Um, you need to do something digitally, you need to give them top expertise at a much lower budget, much faster turnarounds. And that's why we said we need to go digital, but at the same time, there's a human aspect as well. There, that's that's why we developed something which is more it. It is clearly at the center is technology, but at the same time, which is to create speed, of course, and scalability, but at the same time, it is us uh with our expertise actually, you know, helping to train the workflows which we have been developed on by hand. And at the same time, we can also be there for sparring actually when you know the time gets tough. We want to bring companies fast to execution, that's uh that's the key. You really need to go out there and uh you don't have time to develop a six, 12, 13-month strategy and then think about it for six months and so forth. They want to see results in these smaller companies relatively quickly, and uh that's what you can only do actually when you work a lot digitally. So you need to understand fast actually, you know, what's the baseline, what's the problem to scope for, um, what diagnostic actually can we do fast, um, and then come to an executable plan, and then iteratively actually, you know, uh perform, get the performance up and get better. So that's uh intrigued us, and that was the long answer now, of course, to your question, to your ingoing question. For me, it was, I think, at the end of my, I would say, corporate career, I thought actually I need to do something very different. And in McKinsey, I did a little bit of that already because we we did a technical tech-enabled consulting model. Uh, so I helped actually growing, you know, one of the assets they bought to to kind of comply actually with the operating model of a large corporation and at the same time keep their own uniqueness and brand identity and go-to-market principles and so forth. And uh, so I found actually this is very exciting actually to do something you know on your own and at the same time maybe serve a market, which I feel is unreservia.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

So um before we come back to you, and because I think you have an uh a very illustrious uh history and career, um, can you put it in simple terms, kind of like what is the burning problem that Qcox is solving? I know you talked about workflow and digital, uh, but just just to contextualize the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Well, we have we have three three main areas I would I would say as problem areas. Usually the question there are many questions around growth. So, how can I grow my company? How can I compete with the rest out there, and what I need to do actually, you know, inside that bucket of growth. Yeah, so when you when you peel the onion, you will find a lot of things like there's commercial aspects, there's marketing aspects, there's brand, there's value proposition, there is how do I use simple simple things in these days is how to actually you know change myself to be present in today's world out there with my offerings. Very often it's about social media, it's about LinkedIn, it's about other media uh they need to go to, and they don't know how to, because they have either ignored it for a long, long time, or they have never really actually approached it as a real, you know, kind of sales contribution channel.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Or lead channel. And uh the second, so there's a lot of dimensions under growth already, and we see actually that I would say at the moment 50% plus actually of our customers are coming with that topic in mind because everything is about how can I grow my revenue, how can I you know be more efficient, how can I actually be compatible, uh, sorry, competitive in in these tight days. Um, how can I drive actually you know my profitability up? How can I win more leads? The second big bucket is very much linked to that as well is my business performance. So financial performance, forecasts, uh, profitability, costs. Uh, we found actually that a lot of companies, especially smaller companies, do live actually, you know, I would say more on the traditional, actually, you know, kind of in the traditional kind of sense, actually from an accounting perspective, they do actually know what their tax advisor is telling them and they see what they have in their bank accounts, but they rarely look actually, you know, beyond you know the current month. Sometimes they do, um, uh, you know, at least from a prospect uh generation perspective, but very often not when it comes to financial forecasting, cost rigger, um, changing uh you know suppliers, etc. etc. So there's many dimensions under that. And the third aspect is very operational. So there's topics like how can I, when I grow, there's obviously an impact to my organization. How do I need to change my model from a small company to become a bigger company and a larger company? And what aspects do I need to consider in my operational dimensions? Be it actually the leadership team, be it, you know, the um the delegation, um, you know, the model, the mode of operations, uh, how do we actually, you know, what KPIs do we use? How do we measure people? I mean, all of these topics, up to you know, how can I get my supply chain, you know, uh differently set up, how can I change my procurement, how can I actually work um you know more effectively with my manufacturing?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Um I mean, this obviously really resonates well uh with me. I spent uh 13 years between um Iwan and Deloitte, and what I'm hearing is actually you've taken some of the consulting framework and made it available in the hands of uh small and medium science enterprises, and funny enough. Um one of our top three performing uh uh guides is the McKinsey 7S framework that we have on our website. Um, so I'm assuming some of this kind of knowledge is proliferating into uh into what you've built. Um that's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Um it clearly is, but maybe let me let me uh sorry that I'm interrupting you, but I think it's an important uh topic actually, and and just an aspect I want to bring to the table as well. Yeah, um, I mean, what we have been training our workflows with is to eliminate actually corporate and consulting language. What we found in most times is that these very nice and very good frameworks, which we use, of course, in the background as well to structure problems, yeah, to structure the reality and to come to an executionable plan. But you need to translate it into an operating reality of people who say, What does that mean for me?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

What do I need to change now in my daily life? What do I need, what is the task of my colleague? What is the task of myself? And I think that's this translation. We are trying to do this translation as well, uh, to become much more uh clear, I would say. Um, in in in terms of you know what is it, uh, what is it you really need to do?

SPEAKER_01 12:57

I I couldn't agree more, like uh um once you're a consultant, it's kind of hard to shut off the like they call the consulting clothes. Um I remember in 2015 I was leaving Deloitte to become the chief audio executive of a publicly traded company, and and at that time it was sizable, it was about 800 employees. Uh it grew quickly to a lot more than that. I think they're now at 5,000. Um and the first thing, because it was working really closely with the CEO, the first thing the CEO told me is like, stop talking like a consultant and start talking like you're one of us, right? You're you just morphed over a decade plus, you just morphed talking like a consultant. That's right. So um, that's right. Yeah, I know I I I I I couldn't agree more with you, York. Um now you have a really, really interesting background. Can we just double click on your career and what you have done in the past and kind of like what um how your background has better prepared you for where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Well, I think I think uh you know, uh let me let me quickly go through it. Yeah, there were yeah, there were all two two components actually to my uh to my career. I mean, one was the international you know environment. Um I have been living in all continents. I have been living you know 20 years abroad with my family. We moved from from place to place, uh, you know, from from Europe to Asia and and uh to the Americas. And what we found is actually that this international, so first of all, actually this international ability um um to understand different cultures, different ways of working, and so forth is very intriguing. So that's one thing actually, which I already um always tell also young younger people how should I organize my career? I'm always saying stay flexible, yeah, stay open, stay flexible, and grab the opportunities when they present themselves. Um, and I was, I would, I would say actually lucky enough that I had always the possibility actually to be challenged a little more from from actually you know services sales. Um I became actually very fast, you know, the service leader in of sales actually for the European market. Then I became um uh a project director because someone said to me, and and I found that very interesting, um, you sold that uh project, which was a very, very large turnkey, uh turnkey operations. Why don't you go execute it? Because when you know it, um, you know, by heart, what is going on there, uh you maybe learn actually other trades. And so my career went, and they gave me always more responsibility, a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that. So the challenge grew over time. Um, and then we brought companies together, we integrated, of course, large entities like Nokia and Siemens Networks and so forth. So it became very large. Um, and then they said, Look, I mean, can you can you be the transformation leader for this, you know, large large transformation which we have? Uh, which I think was a pivotal moment um in my career because it kind of changed my perspective on you know how you run good businesses and how do you transform actually a business that is very, very complex and global. So I did that uh for around 18 months, and then I'm always saying actually we became very profitable because we did so many things in the right way, in the right spirit, uh, with a lot of very hard decisions, of course, to be taken. Um, like we got rid of products and and uh divisions, even yeah, we divested quite a lot of businesses, uh, nine at that time, and we doubled down on others, and we said, actually, you know, concentrate on where your core capabilities are. So it was this focus moment again. Um, and then it was all about clarity. And this is one of the big themes, also. I think you know, smaller companies can learn from large corporations is the operational clarity. You need to be super clear in what leadership actually translates into the last person in the organization, and that they know exactly what they have to do, and that it becomes, you know, not something which is a second guessing of where the direction goes, where you want to go, and where you have to go, and how you succeed, and what is my personal contribution to that. So, from that transformation moment, uh, we went then to um I went then to the US, and then later actually we uh acquired Alcatel Lucent. And I'm always saying we were lucky because it we are in a consultant, we were in a completely actually kind of competitive environment, and everything consolidated. It's the telecoms industry, very difficult uh industry, and we became we became faster in in you know in our success uh than Alcatel Lucent, because otherwise it would have maybe actually turned out the other way around. We joined forces, I still see it actually as a as a very good complementary merger because they had fantastic businesses which we didn't have, and we complemented each other. Um, and that is always a good success uh factor, of course, when when you bring two companies together, that you don't have too many overlapping parts. Um, they asked me then to be the integration leader, which another was another fortunate step for me. So I joined this this yeah, this fantastic two companies with uh 100,000 people each um uh to to become one company, which was of course great. Um then after that, actually, you know, I became uh the CEO of one of the largest business groups, um, together with the president and with my co-founder Andreas, who was the CFO, we were running that business because that had the most complexity in it. Later, I became the chief transformation officer of uh Nokia Group. I then became ultimately the CEO of the Nokia Group. And um with all its positives and negatives, because you can design any operating model actually, you know, in slightly different forms, you give a little bit more central control and efficiencies across business groups, or you do actually, you know, you know, mimic more or less actually that you have almost a holding and you require the business groups really to you know run their own businesses. And uh from there, uh, when I left, actually, I joined McKinsey because they asked me uh if I could help them out uh with this you know acquisition they did. Um, and I was then helping them to really scale it up, to globalize it, uh, to bring it actually close to their operating model. And that was a unique experience because you had this uh dual role in a sense. On one hand, supporting actually the go-to-market principles and operating principles of the Kinsey, at the same time, you had your own company, um, which you had also to protect in terms of you know brand, value creation, you know, customer intimacy and so forth, because we had other customers as well, um, because it was a SaaS business. Yeah, and um, yeah. So I think I think the biggest learning, the biggest learning is this operational clarity. I think that is uh really something actually, you know, I bring in into any discussion with uh CEOs from smaller companies where I'm saying, look, I mean, let me look into how you are running your business. I mean, how clear is this to you? If I would interview five of your people, would they all actually you know give me the same answer? Would they know where you're going, what you're doing, what they are doing, and how is this measured and what does success look like? These are usually actually the key questions to ask.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

I'm I'm curious. Um I mean, the reason why we named our podcast, Kalen with clarity, is uh um for the same reason. Like all we're trying to do is by working with founders, we're just trying to modulate the path they take instead of zag along the way to find uh to to reach their final destination or or the next set of milestones is what we're trying to go help them find the most rackable path. Um now in my 25 years of experience, uh what I have found is uh and and and I primarily work with large enterprises, I have not found large enterprises to be good at clarity. Um like in the tech world, there's there's there's the uh objectives and key results framework that was popularized by the by the founder of Intel, then that got adopted by um by the technology firms. But for the most part, if you look at other large enterprises, they're goals. In the clarity, capital location. He's very hard, harsh. Like it's very random. Um, we have like for that reason we created a valid creation framework, we've done like a lot of this, but I have not found this to be done well, regardless of whether the company is top 20 TSX company here in Canada with 8,000 employees or smaller companies. What are your observations around your around the companies that they're amazing and getting to that clarity from goals? I think you said like one of the goals is that from the CEO or from the leader all the way to I don't know, layer six of the or seven of the organization, clear in terms of how their work attributes or contributes to to the overall success of your organization. Who does it well? Who doesn't? Why why do they do it well? Kind of like what are the key ingredients or or impediments then in the way of doing it well?

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Well, I think first of all, I agree with you. Yeah, of course, uh, of course, uh, I'm I'm pretty sure actually that there is a there's a large um difference actually how corporates are run uh and and enterprises are run. Yeah and not all of them you know were run very successfully. We did a large transformation as well to exactly come to this clarity and get everything aligned because it was you know not very fact-based. And I think that's one of the one of maybe the key aspects actually, which I would call clarity already, which is you know, it's not about stories, it's not about you know anecdotes, it's not about you know what happened to me actually three years ago. Um this is not about what I heard from someone, it's about facts. Yeah, I think it all starts from there. Do you have even the data to support it? Yeah, and that is I think missing in a lot of companies. Or if they have the data, they don't bring it together, they don't bring it together. Okay, but I think I think a couple of aspects still actually, you know, for me are key. And when I'm saying, for example, when I'm talking to smaller companies or founders or um, you know, other startup leaders, I'm always saying do not copy, of course, what's bad in corporate structures. Let's call it for a second bureaucracy. Yeah, because bureaucracy in a small company will kill you. But what you should look at is operating discipline. Operating discipline means things like you have clear decision structures, yeah, you have very clear priorities, which you first need to define. And very often what I see and observe in larger and smaller uh companies, I have to say, is that the priorities are not clear. And priorities for a CEO of a large company might be sometimes very different, actually, understood when you go down, you know, the command chain in a sense, if I call it that way. Yeah, so you need to get your leadership team to align actually, you know, on your priorities and communicate those uh priorities also clearly, and then you need to measure it. Then the other thing is the execution. People always try. Our strategy was not good. I'm saying, look, I mean, the strategy is usually not the problem, it is usually the execution of the strategy. It's the cadence, how you're executing, it's clear what priorities out of your strategy actually come first, and how do you measure it? How do you measure actually the performance of what you're executing out of your strategy? This is usually where the main gaps sit, which I could see, and when I'm translating this to what can you do differently, then I'm always saying, I mean, be clear of the priorities. Who owns what? Make it simple, yeah. You know, who owns what? What does success look like? So that means actually, you know, when you execute on this, ultimately, what is your outcome? Do you want what you want to achieve? And if it's not the outcome you expect it, because is that then still good enough? And these are the kind of you know KPIs, and I remember, you know, there's this typical traffic light, uh, you know, traffic light reporting methodology, of course, where everybody says, yeah, we are either green or we are yellow or we are red. And at one point, when I had too many disconsents, I would say, and uh unclarity in the organization, I changed it actually, and I said, let's eliminate yellow. Yellow is a hybrid in between I'm doing, I'm delayed and I'm not doing well on execution, and yes, everything is green. So I became, yes, you can actually say, uh, well, Jörg is German. Maybe I became a little bit black and white, but sometimes it is that way. That you've maybe first trained the organizational muscle also, and the routines are coming in where you're saying, okay, it's not about yellow, because otherwise you see, I've seen report sheets actually which are everywhere yellow, and then you say, Okay, but how does this yellow actually you know help us now? Yeah, yeah, so if you are all behind on all of these execution areas, well, then label it red, yeah, yeah. And then it's always the question: how can we solve these problems? Yeah, and and I see this also with scale-ups, because you also saying it's all about scaling with clarity. Scaling with clarity actually is also a matter of you know, founders or co-founders or small organizations in the beginning, they know each other, they aligned, they talk to each other on a daily basis. It becomes complicated when you start actually having more and more people in your organization. Yeah, and you you cannot just actually you know control this by your informal network in a sense, where you're just talking to each other. Okay, so formalizing a bit doesn't mean bureaucracy. I think that's the other point as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah, I mean, I I I I I couldn't agree more with you. Um shout out to Atlassian. Atlassian, if you're listening, we would love to have you as a sponsor. But we we use uh with a lot of the companies we work, we use Atlassian Suite of Products where we use the confluence product for communication. Atlas was setting out the goals, the OKRs, and then Twitter for their product project management. Because that's where from the very top to the very bottom, you know exactly what you're doing, and you you know exactly how your action task priority contributes to the overall success of the organization. Um, and and it this has to be a dynamic way and it has to be low friction way in order for you to continue to track this. Without this, good luck trying to uh have this alignment of priorities.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Absolutely, absolutely. Because that will, I mean, what you just described is is clarifying the communication also. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, because when you have when you have clear structures in place, how you you know communicate through the organization, it becomes very transparent and very visible. And what you also eliminate, it's a it's a nice side effect, I always felt, is the kind of control via actually knowledge, so power via knowledge, um, especially larger organizations who see that, of course. Uh, but it can also become a bottleneck if, for example, a founder is not very good in communicating, and they have maybe all the knowledge, but they have not explained it to others, they have maybe not told others about it, and people can't second guess what's in your head, they need to understand what is in your head, and I think these are the kind of things of unclear communication, duplicating work, because ultimately one leads to the other. Yeah, people think, yeah, it's all clear, but again, it's a this ownership of work. Yeah, who is who is assigned to this task? So then be accountable also for executing that task. Take the ownership, you don't have to do this by yourself. That's very often also a common misunderstanding. You but you own the outcome, yeah. And I think that's that's a key aspect as well, and it will eliminate actually, you know, a lot of duplications, which is ineffective. Um, clearly, leadership bottlenecks. I mean, yeah, you see that only that is a growing pain of organizations in my in my perspective, because they suddenly become hierarchically organized with permit principles, which they think actually is a modern way of organizing organizations, it's not because specifically now with the technology and the data at hand, think about AI. Yeah, and we are thinking, I mean, our our theme also was reinventing leadership in the AI era, yeah, means you have more or less democratized knowledge and information, yeah, and that's something which leaders have also to deal with because the power is not the throne anymore they are sitting on, it is actually you know orchestrating others to the right outcome, sure, and helping them to make them better, and these are the kind of key aspects actually which are also changing cultures in uh organizations a lot.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I couldn't agree more with you. Um when we work with scale-ups or what other people may refer to as growth uh growth enterprises, growth companies, the most the two most common areas where we focus are coaching the founders on how to say no. Um and then how to best allocate resources to the things they say yes. Um because especially in the in the early stages of growing a company, let's say that you're at 50 uh employees and you're trying to get the 500 employees and trying to grow the business and exhibit. You have the the tendency, the capacity here. Oh, I can I can build a product, or oh, I can capture this revenue. Um it becomes a massive distraction. So continuously working with the founders, coaching and mentoring, like uh to modulate and to to to stay narrow in terms of where they the where they are. Um is a gigantic ongoing task in terms of helping them. And uh the one way that it becomes a reinforcing behavior is having uh at your fingertips or having the information that kind of feeds and validates these decisions. So I I couldn't agree more in terms of what you're building, this becomes super important because re like the reinforcement behind behavior or becomes a habit, and so you need this information.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Yeah, I mean, I think what you're describing is the daily reality of in a lot of companies. Yeah, you want to go you want to go fast and you have to do things you know in a in a in a speedy way, but by that you're slowing yourself down because you're starting too many things at the same time, and you're not completing you know the things. And I'm not I'm of course not an advocate actually for sequential working. Um, I don't want to be misunderstood because I think parallel working is good, but at the same time, you need to see what capacity you have, and the priorities need to be prior. I mean, in I mean, that's the hardest, like you said, actually, what are the kind of yes-no decisions? It's the prioritization ultimately, which is the challenge to really sit down and say, okay, what does really matter now? It doesn't mean actually that the other points don't matter in the future, but building this kind of consensus of what is in now in my reality to get us moving forward the right priority and assigning them the right people onto it so that they can complete this task. That's the absolute key. Um, I just worked with uh with uh one you know founder in my um um whom we are working with, who is scaling with a luxury problem 30-40 percent per year per annum. Okay, and the the the company, so that's revenue base, and at the same time, actually the organization grows with most probably not totally linear, but grows also with 15% a year, and he is completely without actually sales organization, completely. He is the only salesperson, the CEO of that company. Okay, and we are now working on debottlenecking that challenge because, of course, he is yes, he starts to be overworked. I mean, he cannot cope with all of these uh requests anymore. And how do you do that? You need to then actually trust other people, you need to manage through other people, yeah. You need to train them actually, you know, on your own concepts, you give them clear boundaries, you give them training, you give them the professional muscle uh to do it, but you need to also, you know, and that's why I see one struggle in in in founders, um, you know, CEOs, etc., to give away what you actually were always doing, and you think you can do best, of course. Yeah, and then the next person needs to do it, and you need to scale it up. Uh, this becomes also a cultural, almost a cultural personal aspect. Yeah, you need to make that leap to become a better leader and a better organization, organizational leader, which which is very different to just a leader.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Oh, I I I I couldn't agree more. I mean, I was smiling as as you were as you were talking. Um it's definitely one of the blind spots uh that was here crossed, um, that crossing the cosm of founder-led sales to whatever your sales strategy might be, like product-led growth, sales-led grow, community-led grow, whatever it might be. You're just kind of letting go of the reins and trusting that uh that you like the the team can carry the torch forward. But uh, but as many leaders say, greatness is in the agency of artists. You have to let go if you want to scale a company, if you want to grow a company to new heights. Now, on the weekend I was interviewing um a founder, she has an AI startup. Um she's originally from a Turkish heritage, grew up in Netherlands, in the States. Um absolutely uh um stopping my track. She's like, if you are a founder, you have to start like a Turk, but finish like a German. I'm like, Well, what do you mean? She's like, Well, in the beginning, it's all bad, bajan, bajan, bajan. Like, I have the energy. But the Germans are known for flawless execution. So I was like, Okay, I get that. Okay, so you've worked you're you you've worked I mean you're originally from Germany, you've worked across the world. So kind of like what do you see that the the that that stands out to you maybe from a cultural perspective or from a German perspective? Like, what do you see that that makes German businesses like powerhouses when it comes to execution?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Well I am I'm actually a little bit torn, yeah, with uh the statement. I mean, I I can't do anything about actually my of course on uh you know where I'm born. Yeah, I mean, I'm a German and I I of course I was kind of educated maybe in the German system in the beginning of my life. But I think so. What we when we worked, I mean, one of the aspects I always admired most is actually, I always said I'm working for the United Nations, yeah, because there were so many nationalities in my teams, in the teams I worked with, where I contributed, and that was the richness I found. Because every culture brings something different to the table. You just need to you just need to actually you know nurture those elements and understand the aspects also of how to get from A to B, which is not the same maybe for a German sometimes, than for example, someone in Asia. Yeah, you need to maybe go a different route. Yeah, or when you think about Middle East or Africa and so forth, every every uh country, every continent, every every single you know community is different. And I would really say ultimately I have seen fantastic um you know companies and performing extremely strong, of course, in many, many geographies. Yeah, I think one thing which they all apply, most probably, and not only the Germans, um, the good companies, is you know, doing this prioritizations right, yeah, getting this clarity, yeah, making sure actually that they want to work for that topic. They know this is the topic they need to prioritize. They have passion, exactly to um uh your quote from uh um this lovely you know um lady there. She's most probably actually absolutely right. It's the it's passion for the outcome, also. It's not just I'm working actually on something which might or might not be good. You need to believe and you want to create the best outcome ever. And I think that's an important differentiation also when you when it comes to cultures and leaders, and how you mix maybe also cultures so that you drive to the best possible outcomes. And um, well, I'm always saying actually, you know, I mean, leader leadership is is can confuse actually a lot with discussion with progress. I'm always saying, look, I mean, leadership. Oh, I had so many meetings, I had good conversations with my colleagues. Well, that's fantastic, but are you making progress? Yeah, are the right topics you know addressed? Do you address the bottlenecks and so forth? And I think it's this kind of routines, which by the way, is completely cultural neutral. I think everybody can learn it, but it's routines which you can actually say. I mean, do my meetings always have to be an hour?

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah, agree.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Can the meeting not be 20 minutes or 15?

SPEAKER_01 41:29

15, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Do we need all these people in this resume? Do we need them in all of these meetings?

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Agree.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

We invite this series of events and then people populate their calendars with it. I think it's much better sometimes to say, hey, let's shrink it. Less people, less time, let's get to the point.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

Or can a meeting be a memo?

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Exactly. Is it enough? And I'm always uh I I always repeat actually, maybe one uh anecdote from my from my own life as well. When I when I uh took over Middle East and Africa as a region at one point, I came to the team actually, and I did a big town hall, um, you know, with uh I think it was thousand people or so, and I and I put one slide up, only one, which had my mobile number on it. Okay, and I said, I don't want any emails other except there to me to not CC, not BCC to, and you explain to me in that tool what I need to do. Yeah, then you send me an email. If you want me to do something for you, for your customers, you call me. It's okay, I'm just a call away. So I'm not distant, I don't need this long email chains, I don't want 40 people on the email, a distribution list. You copy everything just just to be safe rather than sorry.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

And I think it's these kind of small routines which can change the dynamic and culture of you know organizations, leadership teams, etc. And um what of course good you know, managing directors or CEOs of smaller companies need to learn is actually that they need to let go. Do they need to be in all of these meetings? It's a it's also a question they need to ask themselves.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

100%.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Yeah, so I think it's it's very often actually all about uh simple methodologies, simple changes, um, it's approachability, of course, as well. That you don't think you are you're someone other than the others. Because quite frankly, I remember as a COO, I had a town hall in China and um I another anecdote, and I said, Look, I mean, the majority of decisions are not taken by me. Yeah, the majority of decisions is taken. In my organization by you.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

Daily. Thousands of small decisions which you take, which bring the direction of our company into either a good direction or not a good direction. What I can decide are only the things which are escalated to me, and they should be it should be clarified why it is escalated. Why can you not solve this by yourself? Because at the bottom, and I'm not saying bottom of the pyramid or something, what I mean is actually, you know, close to the action, you can decide with much more factual understanding. So you decide. As long as you know what our you know playground is, where we want to go, what our direction is, what our priorities is, what do we want to achieve as an organization, you can decide. You decide. Some feel threatened by it, but most of them feel relieved, and you unleash potential which you usually didn't see before.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

I mean, it sets the cultural undertone if you have a leadership team that just empowers. Um because yes, uh, it it it it it may be um uncomfortable in some ways because you have to hone the outcome, but at the same time, it's very freeing and liberating to know that I I can get direction, and if we need help to remove barriers and roadblocks, I can raise my hand and get the help, but otherwise, I'm accountable for this.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Absolutely. And I have also examples where I went wrong. I mean, a lot of times in my life, yeah. I think that's another learning, actually, you know, of uh people. When you when you find out, you need to just be able to understand that you were wrong and correct course, take advice, take suggestions, and be not too proud to change something in your own behavior. Yeah, I mean, I I I did micromanagement actually, you know, and I later apologized and said actually I shouldn't have done it because I slowed the process down massively. Yeah, yeah. I took decisions for others where it was ridiculous almost, where the others felt actually, hey, I can do this decision. Why is he taking that away from me? So you learn over time, and then you gradually need to shift actually and transform your model to become a better leader, have a better leadership team, and ultimately a better organization.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Yeah, I couldn't could couldn't be more. I mean, the otherity that I'm seeing is like organizations that celebrate failures. And I have to clarify by what I mean by celebrate failure, are a lot faster moving and a lot more successful. And and what I mean by celebrate failure, we're not celebrating the act of failure, we're celebrating the act of learning. It's kind of like do the military is like did we make the best decision based on the available information at that time? That's that's really the questions you're trying to answer. Not did we uh did we get it right? Because we're getting it right, it could be a byproduct, a whole slew of slew the factors. Um so I I couldn't agree more. No, I I have a question for you. I mean, you and I are very similar path, like focus on change, focus on transformation, focus on growing, scaling. No, if a founder or leader wants to start executing on some of these principles, how do they go about what can they start doing tomorrow? How can they leverage AI to drive this clarity?

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Um I I think I I think maybe the second part of your question actually threw me a little bit off uh of rail. The first one is easier. Yeah, what what can you change? I think the the first thing is actually change always yourself first. Yeah, so yeah, look at your own behavior, analyze actually what you are doing, um, how is your calendar looking like, what meetings do you participate in, and so forth and so forth. Yeah, you can analyze that quite well and start structuring it differently.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Because before you point at others, first point at yourself, yeah, and and analyze yourself because that will also make a cultural cadence. Yeah, it will change actually the rest. AI can help you, I've I found at least, AI can help you also structure your thoughts. It it's it's not the best actually when you just use ChatGPT as a or whatever, or Claude, or any of these tools actually to run your own thinking processes. But what it very often does very well is that you're saying, Look, I mean, I'm I'm I'm having actually this kind of raw principles and priorities. This is the context I'm working with. This is you know where I want to go. Can you help me sort actually the priorities? Can you think about actually, you know, what could I do more efficiently? Yeah, AI is fantastic with that. Now, I mean, usually how it structures the thinking processes, which you might not have fully clear, yeah, but take your human brain into it as well, yeah, because it's of course AI has limitations to its by its own rights, yeah, but it works with facts. It give it your right facts, tell it what you want to do, how it can help you, and try to actually you know spin spin into a direction where it helps you to to kind of not offload everything because there's this famous thing. Oh, yeah, um, there's an agent running actually my email inbox. Yeah, it's already actually sorting overnight all my emails, and in the morning it proposes me actually to draft answers. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. But at the same time, emails and and your own person, it's personal part of your personal communication. So you need to think about actually, you know, how do why do I need that? Yeah, I mean, maybe it can structure it. What again, what I would find a good thing is structure it, ask the agent to structure it in such a way, actually, what are my private emails? What is what is business priority? So, what comes in where I need to look first? So, so helping me actually structure my inbox in in a sense, actually, to make my life easier. What is maybe not necessary uh you know to con to uh to prioritize right now, it's all about prioritization. So I think AI can help a lot with helping you quit structuring things. Yeah, I mean, we have by the way, actually, we have in uh uh today a masterclass uh which we are which I'm running with three other experts uh speakers on operations efficiency in the age of AI, yeah. And if I'm cutting through the whole you know commute uh communication and so forth, the key priority is always data and processes because AI will always compound the problem. So if you have a problem already, it will not you know eliminate it. So you need to work on your structures, you need to work on your people, you need to work on your data, and then you can use effectively and efficiently AI to become much more efficient and faster, of course. Yeah, and this is the same actually for you know for your own life. Yeah, I mean use AI, but in the sense it was designed for, it was not designed to replace human thinking, it was designed to augment humans and human thinking and capabilities.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

I I couldn't get more. I mean, there's there's a ton of companies now working on building the company brain, and it's just a fancy word for how do we build uh a data lake where we're pulling information where the AI can reside on top to be able to extract what's important to do or not do. But it all it all starts with data. Data, data is at the at at the root of it. Um I know we're coming to the end of the interview, but uh I like to close the the conversations with a choice of of a question. And and you can choose to answer one, or you can choose to answer both questions. The first question is uh what's the best advice you have ever received? And the second question is what's the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Oh, this is these are very nice questions. So let me uh let me answer both. I mean, um, I think the best advice um I ever got is actually you know, be yourself and trust in your own capabilities. I know it it it sounds very undramatic and very common sense, but be yourself means a lot when you go through you know careers. Yeah, when you when you are still a very and we see this even in the football uh world championships right now, which are which are running, when you look at Luca Madrid, uh Modric for How turns now 41, um he has always been a human, he has never been, even though he's a superstar in soccer, he has never portrayed that. He has never you know used this to his advantage, and I think that means for me, be yourself. So stay yourself also, be yourself, stay yourself, yeah, but also trust in your capabilities. You will learn, you will fail. Like you said, let's celebrate failures. Failures will help you through your and through my career. Actually, it helped me a lot also to not only you know succeed, because a setback will give you time actually to reflect and hopefully correct course and be after that better prepared for something else. So I think that's um um that's clear. The kindest thing someone has done for me, I think it's all about human aspects ultimately. If you translate it to business, I'm always saying, again, people when they are saying, What is you know, what's my career ambition and so forth, and how can I how can I get to certain to a certain stage? I'm always saying, Look, there's three things in life you need to uh three things, three stars which need to align in life actually to make it happen. There needs to be an opportunity, you need to be capable and willing to do that, and flexible enough. And the third is actually someone trusts you and promotes you and helps you. There is not one single person who can actually do everything by themselves, yeah. And I think the kindest thing is maybe, of course, my family, my my wife actually always traveled with me, taking the hardship in a sense, having kids and and a house and so forth. And she always brought this social life to us immediately because I was all the time, you know, working and traveling so forth. Yeah, so that is most probably the kindest thing, actually, you know, someone did from that.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

That's amazing. Somebody to to support you and you grow, doesn't matter if it's a husband or wife, uh, a spouse or uh or mentor somebody that believes in you. Um York, it has been fantastic having you on the podcast and and for you to share your insights with our uh with our founders. I really appreciate that. Um I wish you nothing but success.

SPEAKER_00 56:12

Uh thank you, Maxime. It was a it was a great pleasure and honor actually to be here and um looking forward to many more conversations.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

Absolutely. Same here.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Thank you very much.