3 Bob London - Peter Baumann Interview: What was the process to develop the strategic narrative?

Can you just talk people through the process so they understand what's involved in something like this?

I think there's some common stuff, and then there's some other stuff which is flavored to the individuals and the business, et cetera. I think the common stuff is largely driven by, first of all, an appreciation of what you're trying to get to and why, and then about who are the right people to bring in the room. And we probably spent— I don't know if it was a disproportionate amount of time, but we spent a lot of time thinking about who those right people were. We wanted to get representation across the group. And we needed representation that reflected both really broad, holistic understanding of our business and the market and customers, et cetera, and partners, as well as representation maybe from people that didn't have that, but had very strong views. And you're trying to marry those two knowledge sets and experiences together. So that everyone agrees ultimately that this is your North Star, this is your vision, that's why you're going there. One of my team has a wonderful saying he introduced into the business, which is, um, disagree and commit, but don't disagree and leave the room. And, and, and so we, we had to do that, but we didn't want to do it through force. We wanted to do it through the journey and had to bring in a third-party expert such as yourself, Bob London. So somebody that could guide us on that journey. One of the processes, the CEO, I think, not to be the dominant voice. You can do some lobbying around the meetings and in the meetings, but not just say it's this way and everybody needs to follow me now. How do we, how do we make that work? And so my own personal style and what I felt was appropriate for the business was I wanted the team to get there. I think that was one of the biggest accomplishments that we, we pulled off, actually, Bob. Not only are we really happy with our, you know, our end results, but I think the process to get there was, was a real success. It was very empowering. Everyone understood why we chopped some things off and added some things into the mix. And when we got there, everyone looked at each other and said, oh my God, we got there. And that's continued since the 2, 3 months since we kind of engaged with you, that's continued as we presented it to the broader company and the team. And having those people on side means that they support the story as you go wider.

Does it then become a deliverable, an initiative, this strategic narrative or North Star that comes from a shared ownership place of the leadership team? Or is it, nope, this is the CEO's— ultimately the CEO has to own it? Or how do you think about that?

Well, I think maybe it's different for different businesses. In our case, it became the group thing and the CEO presented it. So in our case, the group came up with it. I literally didn't go into this session knowing what it was going to be. We knew we needed something and we knew it was going to be really difficult because it could be so many different things and the market was changing so fast around us. But at the end of the day, I wanted the team to agree, a bit of a consensus management approach, if you like. I wanted the team to agree because I felt anything less than that probably wouldn't work, given our history and where we were in the market and the business. But ultimately, then after that, it was the CEO to present it, that this is what we're doing and we're not veering off it.

So you had become the steward the voice and face of it so that everyone understands that this is important.

That's right.

Critically important.

Yeah. Malvadís and the steward. I think that's nice. Yeah.