An evening with Vestas and ISS – CBS Talks

May 19, 2014  //  By: Sophie Kirchheiner  //  DISCUSS, Featured, ON CAMPUS  //  No Comment

One night, one event, two extremely different talks, is what took place at Porcelænshaven around two weeks ago.

The follow-up to the smash hit event with Lars Seier Christensen featured Senior VP and CMO of Vestas Morten Albæk as well as the COO of ISS Henrik Andersen. Henrik Andersen kicked-off the night with the first talk on leadership in ISS, or so we thought, but more on that matter later.

Part 1: Henrik Andersen, COO of ISS

He began with giving us the history of ISS, a 113 year old firm, currently employing more than 500,000 people, which first opened as a night watch firm in Frederiksberg and Copenhagen. Henrik Andersen explained how ISS spent the first 100 years of their history on building a presence in the global market as the largest service company, and only the last 14 on doing more, such as acquiring 600 firms and integrating them into ISS between 2008 and 2014.

So what does it take to be the world’s largest service firm? ISS has adopted the following guidelines:

1) Leadership: They measure how good you are at leading others by asking the people you work with. “Everything we do right, everything we succeed with, is down to leadership”.

2) Customer segmentation: increasing transparency, greater insight into the customer segments and their profitability.

3) Organizational structure: a maximum of seven levels between the administration and new employees. It is a strength of ISS to have a flat organization and a short distance between top management and the lowest.

4) Integrated facility services: the employees have to work like a team.

Upon completing the obligatory “why is my firm so unique” speech, Henrik Andersen moved on to informing us 500 CBS students on what it takes to work at ISS, by stating “if I offend you, I don’t care” and “if you don’t like people, don’t come, please stay away”.

Apparently ISS offers some fantastic graduate programs both for finance graduates, but also in Nordic management, and if you possess the following qualities you, my friend, are ISS matieral: personal energy, willing to learn and listen, be good with people, entrepreneurship, passion, mentors (have them, choose them) a coach, working abroad – damn good experience!!, pride and diversity and execution.

So back to what I mentioned in the start about this being a talk on leadership. As you can see, that was not quite the case. Naturally a man can praise his own firm for being wonderful, there is nothing wrong with that. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with discreetly (or not so discreetly) fishing for potential CBS talents, however, taken that we were supposed to be attending  talk on leadership, and not a sales pitch, I was rather let down.

Part 2: Morten Albæk, CMO and Senior VP of Vestas

As we reached the break, I was left with a rather “glass half empty” feeling, as I was sipping my complementary Vitamin Well water and taking a bite off my complementary apple. Alas, I was not to be disappointed for long! Nay, as session two started, we were introduced to a rather handsome “Euroman”-looking man, going by the name of Morten Albæk, CMO and Senior VP of Vestas.

Morten Albæk began his talk by telling us a little sob story about his long way to the top, from his village in Jutland, a place he calls “one of the three biggest assholes on the planet”. I liked him already. He told us how he fled from this villiage to Århus in order to study history and philosophy (one of the only degrees his poor grades would allow him access to), thus increasing his “likelihood of being unemployed”.

Upon completion of his master degree, he faced a life of unemployment. Yet he was struck by luck, for his elder brother was working at the Danske Bank Group and heard the Head of Communications and Marketing complain about how he was missing an individual with fresh ideas in terms of marketing. This was how Morten Albæk, a slightly cocky, over-enthusiastic philosopher entered the business world, today placing him among the top players in Danish business.

Upon completion of the introductory and rather humoristic part of his talk, he moved on to the essence – leadership and “meaningfulness”.

He told us how an Australian nurse once made a study, by asking dying people in a hospital about their biggest regrets in life. Both old, young, rich, poor, educated and uneducated, this was what people regretted the most:

• I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Morten Albæk was particularly struck by the second point, of not working so hard, and stated how it was his goal for his employees to in the future, when looking back on their time in Vestas, feel that it wasn’t a waste of time and that they had done something meaningful.

“Money can’t buy happiness – rubbish! But it can’t buy meaningfulness” he went on to say. There is a great difference between happiness and meaningfulness. Happiness is the foundation for meaningfulness, and meaningfulness goes on top and beyond happiness. Happiness is something you can achieve through coincidence, people or money. Meaningfulness, on the other hand, is driven through generosity and the willingness to go the extra mile, to feel and to give love.

So the question a true leader should ask himself is not how happy his or her employees are, but how meaningful they feel their work is. Meaningfulness as a leadership tool correlates to being the best in the world. In a study McKinsey performed in 2013, they showed that employees who find their work meaningful, are five times more productive. So, in order to outcompete other organizations, having a workforce with a high sense of meaningfulness, will go a long way.

Upon describing Rockwools 6 hour paradox, where workers underestimate their actual working hours, he went on to say how successful leadership will be determined by the ability to perceive actual working hours for the employee, to create balance between actual working hours and salary costs, and to be able to create balance between salary costs and produced value for the company.

His next point concerned managing potential and talent. He started off by saying that the Jantelov, the law describing how everyone is as worthless as the next, is ridiculous. Today we have the X-factor law, stating that we are all something divine and unique, which is also ridiculous and ignorant. “You should neither overestimate or underestimate yourself“, he said, and that is the difference between over-confidence and self-awareness; always knowing who you are, what you can become and what you cannot.

This X-factor law is also implemented in organizations, and each organization with respect for itself, will have a talent program. “But what does talent mean?” He asked. It means that you are a person that clearly rises above the global average in whatever you are doing. “How many people are like that? Very few” . If you take a look into any “talent program” you will see that all are extremely average. Talents are average. What makes you able to perform above average, is how aware you are of the fact, that you indeed are, just average and how much time you spend being able to perform above average.

The final leadership point he made was about using “demotion” as a tool. We all know the wonderful tool of promotion, and the rather unfortunate tool of letting go, yet demotion is a tool only few leaders utilize. It is a very difficult challenge for a leader to demote an individual whose competencies did not correlate with the job initially offered. A leader is faced with the following options when an employee is not performing in a job. He can: do nothing (financially irresponsible), keep them and lower tasks (financially irresponsible), lay off an otherwise capable employee (humanly irresponsible), or demote (financially and humanely responsible).

He finished off with this remarkable quote by Theodore Roosevelt “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” If you do not have the capability to step up when it gets tough, you will have a hard time achieving more than average, he said.

As he concluded his talk (which was more than 20 minutes over time) I found I had to restrain myself from not jumping up and giving him a standing ovation. An evening that came off to a rather slow start, had indeed concluded on a spectacular high note, making me leave with a little smile on my face and a genuine insight into what makes a good leader – meaningfulness.

For anyone whose curiosity was awakened by my recap of Morten Albæks spectacular talk, he is also an author, and his books are available here.

About the Author : Sophie Kirchheiner