3#11 - Anna Carolina Wiklund - Strategy in the Digital Space (Eng)

«We are going to treat our data at the highest level, making sure that we can use it as a competitive advantage. Then it’s a strategic choice.»

Unlock the strategic potential that lies at the heart of Data and AI with our latest discussion featuring Anna Carolina Wiklund from IKEA. Embark on a thought-provoking journey with us as we dissect the significance of robust strategies in shaping digital landscapes. From the role of data as the lifeblood of digital commerce to the ways it can radically alter customer behavior, this episode promises insights that redefine the boundaries of e-commerce and digital merchandising.

 We explore the complex interplay between business, digital and data, revealing how the alignment of strategies across various organizational levels can forge a path to  business impact. Learn how a coherent vision can transform not just marketing strategies, but also those of HR and other departments, and the critical importance of shifting from output to outcome-focused objectives to measure success.

Finally, we navigate through the evolution of strategy in the face of AI's relentless march, examining the essential need for agility and visionary thinking to keep pace with a rapidly transforming arena. This episode is a masterclass in instilling a culture of excellence, accountability, and collaboration that can propel companies forward. With real-world examples and actionable insights, we offer a clarion call for businesses to reassess and adapt, ensuring that their strategies are not just surviving, but thriving, in the AI era. Join us and fortify your strategic acumen for an increasingly digital future.

My key takeaways:

• «When we talk about product mindset its all about how we work as a team.»
• It is important to ensure aligned autonomy, when working in a compartmentalized organization with product management. You are delivering a piece to the totality.
• «Now, we need to have an adaptive Strategy everywhere.»
• Digital is the totality, the ecosystem that you are creating. Data has to flow in that ecosystem.
• There is no digital without data, but there is data without digital.
• People are coming and going within your company, and are bringing data along.

One Strategy

• The goal of strategy is to create one clear direction for the company.
• If you have multiple strategies, you will pull people in different directions.
• Break down strategies in where you deliver the value.
• Organizational models and actual value creation do not always overlap.
• There are transversal strategies that stretch throughout the entire organization (eg. HR, product), whilst there are specific strategies that strive towards one goal (eg. marketing).
• You can no longer afford to have business and digital separated.
• Digital tools do not deliver any value unless they are part of a process and used by the business.
• Ensure that you measure that matters, what is the value that you are creating.
• You need to work on a mindset for the totality of the organization, not a digital vs business mindset.
• OKRs can help to get that forward leaning mindset and to become more process oriented.
• The strategic part is really the choices you have, while plan is the actions you take towards these choices.
• A plan is about creating transparency in the company, so everyone understands what they are delivering and how it fits together.
• You need to have a goal to work towards. Your Strategy is laying out the logic to get there.
• «Culture eats strategy for breakfast»

Chapters

• 0:00 Strategy's Importance in Data and AI
• 13:27 Strategy and Data in Digital Space
• 22:15 Aligning Strategies and Goals in Business
• 30:25 The Role and Evolution of Strategy
• 38:26 Culture and Strategy for Business Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is Metadema, a holistic view on data management in the Nordics. Welcome, my name is Winfried and thanks for joining me for this episode of Metadema. Our vision is to promote data management as a profession in the Nordics, show the competencies that we have, and that is the reason I invite Nordic experts in data and information management or talk. Welcome to today's episode of Metadema, and this is a topic that has been discussed a lot and it's quite close to my heart as well, because I love to talk about data strategy and AI strategy, so we're going to talk about strategy in the digital space. I think the term strategy has been used as a buzzword or even a holy grail of working with data, and suddenly the word strategic is just added in front of activities to make them sound more important or more structured, especially since we started with the data as an asset mindset. I'm talking about the importance of data as a strategic and there it is as a strategic asset to the company. There is a business value in data and we need to talk about data in a strategic way, but we shouldn't use the word strategy in stationary, and there's really a lot of different strategies to talk about.

Speaker 1: 1:34

We can talk about business strategy. We can talk about AI strategy. We can talk about data strategy. We can talk about digital strategy, and the question is is it just what's in in the moment? Is it just well? A couple years back, we talked more about digital strategy than we do today and now, suddenly, during the last year, everyone talks about AI strategy. Or is there some value in all of those and especially in how you relate those to each other? So with me today I have Anna. Anna is working in e-commerce and digital merchandising and these are areas where you can see the effect of a data or digital or AI strategy almost immediately in your customers behavior. So welcome Anna.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Thank you, winfred, and thank you for having me here today.

Speaker 1: 2:22

It's fantastic to have you on. We would like to get to know you better, so please introduce yourself, thank you.

Speaker 2: 2:28

Yes, so my name is Anna or Anna Carolina as my full name.

Speaker 2: 2:34

I'm working in IKEA currently with data and analytics, but I come with the background from e-commerce, worked previously at boostcom, which is a fashion retailer in the Nordics, and I've always been extremely interested in data because it is what is kind of driving the digital experience, and if you want to improve your experience, if you want to figure out how to compete in the market, you need that specific data from your customers or from your brand.

Speaker 2: 3:09

So my interest in data is quite huge and I also have some different aspects of strategy into that, both from working with digital product management, where strategy is an integral part of each component in whatever you build digitally. So you need to have the way of breaking down strategy and setting goals. So that is where this keen interest in data is coming from and, from a personality point of view, I'm really a futurist and an optimist both optimist and optimizer, I would actually say because I love improving things and if you want to improve things, you also need to understand where are you today and what goals are you setting to improve things. So that could be improving things within the scope of work I have, but also personally in terms of biohacking or just being a better person of yourself.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Wise words. I think both improvement and innovation have to have a bottom line to work from. If not, what are you actually improving? So great point? What are you doing when you're not working with data or e-commerce strategy? What are your hobbies?

Speaker 2: 4:22

Well, my hobbies? I don't know if I have hobbies. I would say work is my hobby, but then I'm also a mother of two beautiful children, so love hanging out with them and also spending time with my friends and learning, reading up on what's going on in the world, and especially now in this exciting era of AI.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Fantastic, thank you. So let's talk a bit about your context and background and especially I'm fed it already I was interested in the e-commerce part and how that affects strategy, so let's just start there. So what learnings can we draw from e-commerce and what can other sectors do better maybe?

Speaker 2: 5:04

Well, I think e-commerce is such an interesting playing field because I think a lot of retailers today are playing in this space and, if they haven't already, they have been forced to or are on their way to be multi-channel retailers. So e-commerce is one of those aspects where you need to also have a strategy. So how do you play the game in that field? What makes you unique within e-commerce? And it's quite difficult today, especially if you look at the customer experience. You look at the high-end brands and you look at the low-priced brands and look at the experience that they're creating digitally. They're quite similar. So no one has really kind of cracked the experience aspects of creating something really unique in today's Web 2 experience, if you kind of take that approach. So for me, one of these very interesting aspects is to see how will AI change the playing field of e-commerce and will these kind of flat 2D experiences of what e-commerce is today really be something we want to experience in the next step in this area?

Speaker 1: 6:20

Fantastic, and we had two previous episodes that touched on the topic. We did one episode on customer experience. I think my learning from the area is that customer experience is really how can you get as close as possible to your customer, and we talk in all sectors really about value creation, and it becomes so eminent when you are so close to your customer, so that relation is really important. And the other thing that I thought of is we had an episode with H&M about how to use AI in product development, and we also talked about how can you get away from that 2-dimensional setting that you have in digital commerce and go more to well, I want to feel the fabric, I want to see the color combined with other things, stuff like that. So there is a lot of possibility, indeed.

Speaker 2: 7:12

Yeah, I think there are multiple aspects of getting closer to the product in e-commerce today, and a lot of the experience that you have as a brand is actually also built on the context of your customer created content. So there are a lot of brands working more and more with these aspects and maybe it's actually part of their strategy to reach a certain level of product information but also let the customer have their say in terms of unique selling points for a product or what they find interesting, with all the different user reviews, etc. That the different brands are using today. But there is also, of course, the aspect and you can't really talk about e-commerce without mentioning Amazon right, which completely changed the customer expectations, and that is what I'm thinking that we're going to see in this next era of AI is also the brands that are going to go in, utilize AI together with their data and enhance the customer experience, and that is going to set new expectation from a customer perspective. So that will be extremely interesting to see if they are able to create these different agents or assistants that will not just help you like the ones that we've seen today.

Speaker 2: 8:32

Solando, they launched an interesting AI application helping people to shop, but it's still kind of this I'm searching for something. It's not. What do I already have? How do I complement? What is my style preference? Who am I? What is my kind of aim of my outfit tomorrow? So there are so many aspects that they can still tap into in that fashion industry when it comes to enhancing that experience and not just going from. I have already discovered my need. Now I have to go to an e-commerce site and search for what I want. I have to filter, I have to go through all of these steps and then the checkout to actually having those suggestions coming to me based on what are my activities for next week.

Speaker 1: 9:20

There is so much great potential, but I want to talk a bit more about the learnings that other sectors can have from e-commerce. And one thing that is quite interesting during the last years, we talked much more about product management in all industries really, and definitely in data. We talked about data products, we talked about hit or mesh, but then you end up in the one side of me heavy industry production, where production really is compartmentalized. You're producing one part that fits into another part that fits into another part that eventually fits into a product that goes to the customer. So you are really far away from your actual customer. How can you really work with products there and get that product mindset?

Speaker 2: 10:07

I think when we talk about product mindset, it's all about how you work as a team within product management.

Speaker 2: 10:15

So how do you ensure that you have the aligned autonomy, especially when you have a complex manufacturing aspect of I'm delivering a piece to a totality and, in a way, we could see that everyone working with product management is delivering a piece of a totality?

Speaker 2: 10:36

I'm just thinking back to my experience from working with the digital experience in IKEA, where, of course, if we look at the team working with the product recommendations, they are just a piece of a totality of a customer experience and a totality of ensuring that we are selling the right things and that we're presenting customers with what they want.

Speaker 2: 10:58

So, in every part of every business, you need that aligned autonomy to understand what is my job and how do I deliver to the maximum of my ability my ability as in the team. So it's also with the product mindset, of understanding what is the piece. How am I measuring the success of my team based on the success that we need as a totality? But also, how do I make sure that I listen to my team? Because if you work with product management and you have a product owner, that product owner is there to work with the strategy, making sure that we're doing the right things and why we're doing the things we're doing, but listening to the engineers, to the user experience specialist to make sure that we're building it right. So, doing the right things and doing things right is always something that I keep coming back to.

Speaker 1: 11:51

I think you can read my mind because I was not trying to get off track with product management. But I want to actually talk about the importance of strategy. When you have compartmentalized production and you have a lot of different pieces that have to fit together, how would you say you should work strategic in that area?

Speaker 2: 12:08

If you have an organization with a product orientation, I think that strategy is extremely important and breaking down strategy.

Speaker 2: 12:19

I think usually, if you talk about a project or organization, you might have a high level strategy, but then you go into planning and then it's all about making sure that the activities are actually coming together as one, but with product orientation, with product mindset. What you want to do is to make sure that you have designed the different capabilities in your organization to fit one another, but also leave then the space for aligned autonomy and empower the teams to be able to then take the overarching strategy and break that down for their area, because with an agile organization, you also need to move. That's the point of being agile, because the world is changing faster and faster and you need to be able to actually adapt as you go, where strategy is an extremely good tool for that. So, not just breaking down, this is a task we need to do. Do you do your part of the task? But actually, are you achieving the business value and your part of achieving that business value within your team?

Speaker 1: 13:26

And there is a. I think there's a nice drawing that was made by Spotify, I think, where they talked about that level of autonomy. Right, you want to be in a place where you can get directions, but the autonomy ensures that everyone works on their piece in the way that is actually fitting to the bigger picture, not directing each and every step on the way.

Speaker 2: 13:47

Exactly, and that's the aligned part of it, right. You don't just want autonomy, because that can be just chaotic. It's not that everyone can just do what they want, right. It is about creating that totality or an experience or a fora, a complete product at the end. So the alignment is the key piece and where strategy comes in as well as then setting the right goals.

Speaker 1: 14:10

And there we are in the middle of it. There is a certain complexity to it. You talked about basically everything from product management to organizational development, to strategy, and everything has to come together. Those pieces have to fit together and it's kind of when you talk about strategy, I always look at it as a certain logic right that you lay out. This is how we see the future developing and these are the steps we're going to take to adjust to this.

Speaker 2: 14:39

Yes, indeed, strategy is also something that is changing though over time, because I think a lot of companies have done some strategy work once and then they want that to actually last for five years. But now we need to have an adaptive strategy everywhere, because things are changing so fast and the playing field especially now going into the era of AI will continuously change, because you do not know what your competitors are going to do. Right, you need to be able to understand how do you play to win in that field that you have chosen.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Now let's take it one step back and talk a bit more about the strategies, the strategy in digital space, and there is a certain difference between data and digital. What is your definition of digital worth of data?

Speaker 2: 15:28

Well, for me, digital is the totality. It's more the ecosystem that you are creating and you want your data to flow within that ecosystem. And to be able to do that, you need to treat data fairly and you need to have quality of the data, you need to make sure that it's secure, but you also need to think about it as a competitive advantage, because I think that, if we go back to what you said in the beginning, that a lot of companies are talking about treating data as an asset. Well, sure, an asset is nice, you can lock it into a vault or something, but that's not what data is about. It's not about locking it in. It needs to be used and it needs to be treated as a competitive advantage, because that's what it is today.

Speaker 2: 16:21

And I think that there is this aspect of people not wanting to fully embrace data strategy because they don't understand the movement that it creates. So, if we think about the strategy and the definition of strategy, right, it is the choices, strategic choices that you are making to say that this is how we are going to compete, this is how we're going to be better than others, and if the data in your company is actually the thing that is going to enable you to do that. It's not just an enablement, it's a strategic choice you're making that we're going to treat our data at the highest level, making sure that we can use it as a competitive advantage, and then it's a strategic choice. But if it's just, yeah, we're actually already doing that, but we want to just operationalize it and make it better, then that's a different story. So it's also where are you as a company when it comes to this type of strategic thinking?

Speaker 2: 17:22

Is it a movement you need to make? And then is it a strategic choice to make sure that you can be playing in this field that you have chosen Whilst. Then the digital part is how are you creating an ecosystem that is delivering business value? So, for me, whenever we talk about digital, it is with a hint of the business. So you have technology, which is purely okay. How do we ensure that we have really a technology vision where we are making sure that we're taking the steps in implementing or updating the different technologies in the right order, while when you talk digital, it's data, it's technology? How are we creating an ecosystem that is delivering business value?

Speaker 1: 18:08

Fantastic. Thank you so much because these were really good explanations, something that has been discussed a lot and it's not that clear, and you made it really clear. So thank you. From Daima perspective, it's a data perspective right. It's a right, and President of Daima said once that if you subtract data from digital, you're left with nothing, but if you subtract digital from data, you still have data. So data is fundamental and also should be fundamental to your approach to digital. How do you see the relation between the two of them?

Speaker 2: 18:44

Well, actually this is something that I've talked quite a lot about, because data is what's left right. You will have people coming and going in your company and if they are coming and going with your data, then you're losing all of your value. So you need to make sure that you are treating your data in a good way, because, as people move on, the data is actually the core of your company. If you look back at it, it is the value that you create today is the data. So that is an extremely important aspect of any type of business, especially if you're looking at scaling your business.

Speaker 2: 19:24

These types of things are easy when you are a small startup and everyone knows everything. You don't have any knowledge transfers, etc. But when you are scaling, when you're becoming bigger, the data is what is flowing in the processes. The data is what's left when people have come in, done their job and then moved on to another position. So when the next person comes in, they continue to work with that data and enhancing that data. But data is what is your company in the core.

Speaker 1: 19:55

Reaching to the choir, but yeah, I totally agree with that. Data is at the core, and it's also at the core of what you produce as a company and what you are left with once your company is gone, and I think that's why it's so important to have a good, structured approach to how you treat your data in your company. One of the questions we had right at the start was should you have one strategy to rule them all? Should you have a set of strategies? Should there only be a business strategy where digital data is a part of, or should there be several parts, several strategies?

Speaker 2: 20:32

Well, I believe there should be one overarching strategy and you can say that you could have some strategies for that one whenever it makes sense. The whole point of a strategy is actually making sure that we're creating one clear direction for the company. So if you have multiple different types of strategies, you are kind of pulling people in different directions. So to me, the best choice would be to have one overarching strategy and then work out the pieces of what is it that makes us win in these different areas. So it might be within HR, as an example. So our overarching strategy is to be an employer that people want to work at. But then you might need to make some choices to how do we play in that field of recruiting the best people. How do we make sure that we also keep them at the company at the perfect amount of time where they can develop and also bring the value?

Speaker 2: 21:35

But, as Netflix, I think it is Netflix who also have the statements to say that they appreciate that people have loved to have had worked at Netflix. So not that they want to keep them forever, but that they want the time that people have spent on Netflix to have been valuable for them, and that's quite interesting. So, of course, everyone has a different approach to how do they play in that field, and the same thing goes for marketing. So what is your strategy within that area? What are the choices you're making to stand out with your product or your service?

Speaker 1: 22:15

Here's my big issue problem that I see with having different strategies in the business, the two models we talk about. Right, we talk about either you have one strategy for that covers everything that you do in your company, or you have several sub strategies that align to the overall business strategy. So I mean this is a problem for bigger, larger companies and organizations, but as soon as you have sub strategy, those sub strategies are more relevant some departments, and so if you talk about HR strategy, I mean this is HR organizing, creating the strategy, having that outlook, having that logic light out, but really it impacts each and every single business unit. So how can you align the different parts of your organization to the goals?

Speaker 2: 23:03

So there's a bit to unpack in this, right, I think that there is the aspect of breaking down the strategies also in where do you deliver? The value depends on how you organize. Are you organizing into functions where you do the work and you have the goals, or do you have an organization where you have one reporting line but you deliver value in part of the business? And this comes down then to organization versus, you know, value delivery aspects. So I think that that's something that you have to ask yourself as a company how are we actually working versus how are we organized? Because that might actually be very different. Because if you are working together in strategic areas where you're enhancing the capabilities for the company, then that's the group that needs to have a strategic not strategic goal, right, because that's when we are destroying the word strategic but where you need a strategy of how do we, as multiple different teams within an area, actually deliver to enhancing this part of the business? So I think that's also the kind of apostle you need to lay as a company to understand.

Speaker 2: 24:18

Okay, if we break down our strategies, if we take HR as an example, the strategy should not be just how do we do HR, but HR is also how do we lead people right? So that aspect needs to be part of all of the different teams, and all the managers need to own up to that responsibility of meeting that aspect of the business. So of course, those things need to also be overarching goals that all of the organization need to adhere to. So you will have the different parts and different parts of the strategy that goes for the totality. Hr, I believe, is one of those.

Speaker 2: 24:57

I also believe that if you have a customer strategy, as an example, that goes for all parts of the business, but if it's a marketing strategy, then it's actually for just one part of the business, right? So then that doesn't need to be adhered to to everyone. Then it's very specific into one capability. So my thinking is that you need to figure out how do we break down the strategy and then utilize strategy to ensure that you create aligned autonomy throughout the company so that people understand what are we delivering to. So what is it and why is it that we're needing to do these things? And, of course, the goals also need to be broken down then in the same structure.

Speaker 1: 25:38

And if we try to bring this back to to digital, I think this is kind of imminent. With it, Even a lot of digital parts in larger companies that there is a digital business unit who often owns the digital strategy but really applies to everyone in the company, though other parts of the company don't see it that way. They see this as something that digital to us. This is not, doesn't affect us, and I think that really is a. It's an organizational problem at one side, but it's also a cultural problem.

Speaker 2: 26:08

It is Absolutely. I've seen a lot of this and I think that most companies now actually need to to merge more and more the business and digital aspects. You can no longer afford to keep these separate because more and more, everything you do is digital. So I think that we will see companies moving more towards the approach where we look at a strategic area of our business. We have digital teams and we have business teams. They work together. You know digital.

Speaker 2: 26:42

If we talk about digital, again, what's the difference between digital and data? But what's the difference between digital and business? I think this is the cultural aspect right when we need to bring people together. We're working on the same thing. And if we think about digital tools, you know they don't deliver value unless they're part of a process and the business people are utilizing them. So we're not sitting with different goals, but often we can end up with different goals, partly because we have a separate digital strategy that is not adhering to the totality of the business strategy, where we instead need to have joint goals, where our digital teams and of course, this is coming back into the product management aspect You're not looking or measuring your teams based on their output, but the outcomes, and you don't get the outcomes until your systems, your output, is actually used by the business people.

Speaker 2: 27:42

So what you actually want to do is also then make sure that there is a mindset shift with the digital teams to ensure that, okay, we're not measuring that we have delivered this feature. We're delivering a feature that is going to enable business value, and how are we then measuring that business value of what we're delivering? That can be super tricky sometimes, because you have to really change your mindset, both in the digital part, to make sure that you're measuring the right things. So there's this great book, measure what Matters, by John Doors. If you haven't read it, do talking about objectives and key results. Where you really paint the picture of this is what we're aiming to create, this is the value, this is where we want to be and this is how we measure that we've gotten there, part of the way at least.

Speaker 1: 28:32

Right, I have to start on a bit of a rant here. I think one of the main issues in digital units is the mindset, and I think there is a bit of a history to it, right from IT, from the 80s and 90s, where you really were focused on delivering services to the business, and that service management mindset is kind of part of the problem. Right Then, for the rest of the business, it sounds like this is something I can choose to or not. It's just a service I can pick from, and I think that that is part of the problem.

Speaker 2: 29:04

I agree. I think there is a mindset for the totality of the company to work on right. It's us, it's not them and so I think that OKRs is actually an incredible tool to utilize to get that work done, to bring the teams together, crafting objectives and key results, because that forces people to think about the next step, and I also believe that it's actually a really good way of getting a company more process-oriented, because that is something that you really need to fully understand. What is my piece of the puzzle? We were talking about the manufacturing before. What is my delivery doing to the totality?

Speaker 2: 29:50

Not just oh, I'm done, I've done my piece of the pie, but maybe you haven't taken care of your data as an example. So the next step of the process is actually not going to succeed because you haven't fully done your job, because you need to think of the process perspective, of the data flowing within the company. So that's where the OKRs help you, because when you start actually measuring the value of your work instead of I'm done with my work, you might actually have to start adding some tasks and thinking differently about when am I done?

Speaker 1: 30:23

Really important. Thank you. There's another pitfall we want to talk about, and that is a plan is not a strategy. So I think you and me talked about this quite a lot, but what do you think makes a strategy strategic?

Speaker 2: 30:37

Well, I think it's. The strategic part is really choices you're making and the plan is actions you're going to take. So how are you going to do that? How are you going to implement that choice? So, in agile companies, you actually don't want to do exaggerated planning, right? No, well, I take that back. No companies wants to do exaggerated planning, because while you're planning, your competitors are actually making efforts to to be better than you, so understanding the customer, etc. They're using their times in smarter ways.

Speaker 2: 31:13

So I would say that you have the strategy as your choices. This is what we're going to do, this is our what, this is our why, and then you need that plan to ensure that you're implementing the right things. The strategic part should also be able to tell you what are the capabilities you need as a company and what level should they be at from a maturity level. And then you need to look at okay, what do we need to do now? Then, to reach that maturity level? Do we need to bring in a new capability that we didn't have before? Or do we have a capability, but we're not really at the level that we need to be to be able to compete the way the strategy says? So then you create that plan, but the exaggerated planning is a very important aspect because it is an uncertain future, so we don't know anything really, and if we say that we're going to do this and it's going to have these results, you're not really pushing the envelope, you're just working in the known, which isn't really known.

Speaker 2: 32:18

So here there is this aspect of changing your mindset, from we have a fixed plan, we're going to deliver this thing in two years, to actually say we have a hypothesis that this work that we're going to do is going to deliver to these goals and we're going to create this value where the plan becomes a way to create transparency in the company, to make sure that everyone understands how their piece fits with the other piece and that we're delivering together, while you know, I think a lot of management teams today they do want that. You know I want the plan, I want it for two years. I want it to tell me exactly what's going to be delivered, at what time, at what for what budget. But the world isn't like that anymore. We need to change that mindset to say that we make bets but we create transparency, and this is what we're working with and this is the value that we hope to deliver. But we actually might need to make different decisions in two months. We don't know that yet.

Speaker 1: 33:19

This might be one of the most interesting, most challenging parts of creating strategy, because let's think about AI for a second here, where we really don't know how AI going to develop over the course of the next years. So there's a lot of conunds of war right, a lot of uncertainty, and this is exactly where you need a strategy to move forward. In that uncertainty and I think I was at 80 70s Minsberg came with his model of emergent strategy that you can't really have one strategy laid out at the beginning, but you go stepwise forward, you lift a bit of a lot of war whatever step you're taking, you can make bets more concrete whatever step you're taking, and you eventually get to your goal. But and this is the important part here you need to have set a goal right at the start. You need to know where you want to go.

Speaker 2: 34:15

Yeah, so true, I mean, you need that vision. Right, vision and mission comes before the strategy, so that is something that you need to take into consideration. But what you just said made me think about Airbnb and Uber. When they started, I mean, they didn't have the strategy that they have today. Right, it has evolved over time. Airbnb started with yeah, you can have an inflatable mattress on the floor of an apartment and get a breakfast, and that has evolved to, you know, completely disrupting the hotel industry and the servant, that type of service industry. So that is something you have to see.

Speaker 2: 34:55

Your strategy should be evolving over time and hopefully it will evolve quite a bit, especially now that we're moving into the era of AI, where we don't know what the playing field will look like at all.

Speaker 2: 35:07

So, as you say, the strategy becomes a guiding star for decisions that we have decided, that this is what we're going to do and these are the problems we need to solve, because sometimes you can also end up in a situation where you become you know, analysis paralysis because we don't know.

Speaker 2: 35:26

Well, we've made some choices, we know what problems we need to solve within our company, so let's go and work on those Because you know at least we can, can do that right. Because we, if we look at AI now and we know that productivity within a company is going to increase, so how are we going to work with that? Are we going to utilize this money of cost savings to invest in cutting the price or are we going to, you know, grow and create more outputs? And this aspect you know, you need to actually look at the competitors in that space. Then Are the others going to lower their prices? Then you also have to lower your prices if that is also part of what you're competing with. So it's going to be super tricky now and it's going to be a constant, you know, checking in on the strategy, checking in on the goals and seeing okay, how are we adapting now to this face past moving environment.

Speaker 1: 36:22

What you really did now was making a bledge for having only one strategy in your business, Because what you really said is that, well, AI has so much effect on your business model that really it has to be part of your business strategy, rather than having an AI strategy on the side of it.

Speaker 2: 36:38

Oh yeah, I think so. You know it's going to change a lot. I think most companies will have to do their best guess at what's going to happen now. No one can really predict the future, but what are the opportunities within their field? What are their competitors doing? Is there any way for us to actually leapfrog in any part of our business into creating new experiences, or whatever it might be and can't go back to? You know, jim Collins Flywheel? Go back to a SWOT analysis and recreate your strategy for this new era, and that gets really tricky if you have some tools.

Speaker 1: 37:20

So what I've taken away so far from our conversation and it was a lot more. But there are three things I want to emphasize on, and one is you need to have a goal to work towards and your strategy is really laying out the logic on how to get there. When a lot of people talk about making strategy more tangible, they're really talking about plans of strategy, and plans are comfortable, right, you know what you're dealing with and you try to plan two, three years in advance, but those plans have to be based on your strategic and I'm using the word strategic decision because those are the decisions you made through your strategy. And the third part I found really interesting was quote culture eats strategy for Brexit.

Speaker 2: 38:02

Oh, yes, I think that culture is extremely important in a company because you can create the world's best strategy, but if it's just a paper product, it's not very interesting and it's not going to move you forward.

Speaker 2: 38:17

So the whole culture aspect is very interesting in actually having the whole machinery of the company delivering. Stephen Bartlett had an interesting LinkedIn post the other week where he said that he felt that he had the secret sauce for a company of success that paying attention to detail is what is then making his company unique. And I think that that is something that you want as part of your culture. If that is your secret sauce and it's not just about you as a CEO or a startup founder to pay attention to detail, right, because then you're micromanaging and you don't want that. So it is getting that into your culture. What is the level of excellence that we want to deliver to our customers, but also holding each other accountable within the company of delivering to that standard? So the culture of how you treat each other, how we see the customers it's extremely important. So when you add the good strategy on top of a successful culture, I mean that's when magic happens, thank you so much for a great conversation At the end of it.

Speaker 1: 39:35

do you have any call to action?

Speaker 2: 39:38

I think my call to action is for a lot of companies now to really go back to their strategies and re-examine the landscape that they're in, because this is a time of change and to win, you also need to be highly adaptive with your strategic thinking, ensuring that your teams are collaborating and working together, that you're bridging the gap between your business and digital teams to really deliver the outmost value. Thank you so much. Thank you, it was a pleasure being a part of your podcast, wipert.