As the newly appointed CEO of Nexus Group I was faced with enormous complexity. Despite the relatively small size of the company (just over 300 employees in 11 countries), there was a multitude of offers, some of which overlapped.
I did what I always do when I start a new role. I first try to understand.
So in the first few weeks I interviewed more than 100 employees – all with the aim of gaining sufficient understanding to then try to help refine and focus.
To ensure ‘fresh eyes’ and the ability to question old truths, I turned to my long-time friend Jonas Dahlberg Jonas has the ability to ‘make the difficult simple’ and that was a quality I wanted to bring to the company.
Together with Jonas, we began an intensive period of fact-finding. The aim was to identify products we should invest in and where we could win.
It’s not always comfortable to be part of existing management of a company and then be subjected to this kind of rethinking and questioning. Our big shift led to an intense year of change. In the first year, 64 people left the company. And 100 new people joined. This huge change gave us amazing opportunities to think and do new things.
If you follow my stories this autumn, you’ll hear more about how we’ve future-proofed the business.
First – try to understand …
