From business development to process optimisation.

Business development reaches across sales, marketing, project management, product management and vendor management. Networking, negotiations, partnerships and cost savings are part of it too. All of these are driven by, and aligned to, the business development goals.

To me, the most important factor is a strong and clear line of sight to the customers and markets, and an understanding of them. Both their current and future needs. Even the need they don't know they have yet.

As CCO and CEO I worked extensively with customers and across my organisation to bring that knowledge into the strategy and its tactical game plans.

Winners have a plan, and losers have an explanation. It is a saying I have always worked by.

A good strategy sets the overall direction, with clear tactical plans that are executed in operations. Without clear and clever plans, a strategy means very little, and this is where many fail. It is easy to say what you want to achieve. The how is difficult, and requires knowledge, experience and investment.

I have worked extensively with strategy frameworks such as Strategy Deployment and Traction/EOS.

At MHI Vestas I was responsible for driving the entire strategy process across departments, and I took the learnings into my roles as CEO.

Great negotiation is about great collaboration. It is about several people facing different sides of the same problem. The adversary is not the person across the table, it is the situation. The person across the table is the counterpart, struggling with sides of the same problem.

To me, negotiation is about finding that balance together. I use tactical empathy and negotiation skills to create the trust-based influence that helps me lead the negotiation in a positive direction.

Negotiation is not about who takes the most at the other side's expense.

From mergers and tenders to salary negotiations, I have been the lead on many occasions.

Having been a board member of two startups, one of them since sold, I appreciate the knowledge and experience the role requires.

Not being in operations and the daily turmoil, combined with my experience, is exactly what I use as a member of the board.

It lets me pass on that unclouded view to support the CEO's overview and focus, and to ask the CEO and the management team the tough questions that the clarity raises.

Building a business that achieves its strategic objectives and earns money does not come from being lucky. It requires a certain mindset, skills and routines that allow the organisation and its processes to be constantly improved.

For over 15 years I have been involved in defining and improving processes, departments and entire value chains. I have helped people understand why having done something for 20 years does not mean you are excellent at it.

Perhaps the biggest challenge and lesson was building a global sound production setup, starting from a point where the engineers involved said: "Our work cannot be described or defined in a process, it is an art form."

A year later the setup was running globally, using bespoke processes that were optimised and kept in place through operational excellence routines.

As an advanced Green Belt in Six Sigma, you learn that this is not the case. Being 20 years in an industry without ever having defined, measured, analysed and deliberately made changes based on objective information costs extra money and leaves you in uncertainty.

Uncertainty about whether you meet the expectations of your customers, or whether you spend far too much effort and money achieving them.

And it does not have to be difficult. Pareto analysis and asking five whys will get you a long way.

That of course requires that you have defined your services and products, described your processes and defined your error types.

Winners have a plan, losers have an explanation.

From creating and implementing stage-gate and governance models to building project management organisations from scratch, globally, I have done it.

Yet I try to keep things simple, otherwise they are not operational.

When people ask me how detailed their project plan should be, my answer is always: "To the level where you are in control." The same goes for the details of the stage-gate model and everything around it.

Find the level of detail where you are in control. It sounds easy, but it is not.

You have done it many times before. Baked the bread for Sunday morning. You don't think about the recipe, you have even forgotten it, you just do it. And it tastes great every time.

Now, what if you suddenly had to share your bread making with someone else? Where do you stop, and where does the other person take over? What is the recipe?

Add to that several people in the process. People you have perhaps never met. They are in a different time zone, so you can only talk in your evenings. They don't speak your native language, so you are often misunderstood.

And let's share our documents, but does everyone have access to the systems? Systems so slow that you cannot work effectively.

I have been through all these situations several times.

Globalising a department, a business unit or an entire organisation brings many opportunities, but also many challenges that must be taken very seriously. Otherwise the challenges outweigh the opportunities and benefits.

Unlike many other leaders and business developers, I don't come from sales or finance. I come from technology.

With an education in IT, I started my career in Vestas IT and learned from the ground up how technology lifts a business. Today, few businesses work without technology.

I excel at bridging the gap between business and technology, and the people on each side. A valuable asset in both business development and operational excellence.

Leadership is perhaps one of the most difficult things there is, because leadership is about people, and we people are different and difficult. So, as with communication, people have to be treated differently to reach the same objective.

To me, leadership comes down to being able to start the inspired fire within each individual. A fire to become the best possible version of oneself, and thereby help achieve the company strategy while growing as an individual.

It is also about taking time with the individual in moments of despair and frustration, and helping them see the right path.

And it is about making decisions in easy and tough times.

When people tell me they want to become a manager and leader, I always ask them why. It should not be because of a better paycheck, or because you get to decide.

It should be because you want to get the best out of each individual, and turn those individuals into a team that can do things they didn't dream of. I love to lead.

Imagine three escalators. You are standing in the middle of the middle one. They are all going down, but you are walking up, against the direction.

On your left and right are two other people. They represent your competition, the overall development and evolution.

To just stay in the same place, you and the people beside you have to walk. The walking is your development. The moment you stop, you slip behind.

When I ask people about their development goals, wishes and plans for the next two years, I rarely get clear answers. Many people, once work and family life have started, lose the drive, the focus and the help to get into that focus.

A focus that is needed if the person, and therefore also the company, is to evolve and reach its strategic targets.

I enjoy inspiring people and helping them start walking up that escalator. I have done it many times.

If you want your message heard, you have to tell it differently. That says it all about communication: it is difficult.

I have been trained, coached and have communicated in many shapes and forms, and I still have not perfected it. I don't think I ever will.

But I enjoy it. I no longer turn my back to the audience, eyes fixed on my own slides, when I stand in front of 200 people with a message.

I have given presentations to 500+ people in both Danish and English. Speaker at itSMF conferences, at the Dansk IT globalisation conference and at the Write2User conference. And countless internal company presentations.