Ulf Arnetz: Implementing Executive Strategies that Work

Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Today's episode is with Ulf Arnets. Ulf is the founder and chairman of HowWe Technologies, which is a platform to help CEOs develop, track, and implement their strategies with alignment all the way down to the front line. He's also a serial entrepreneur who has founded several companies with four strategic exits and he's also an author of three different books. Our conversation started with what Ulf says is his superpower as an entrepreneur, predicting new trends at the right time.

And timing is everything when it comes to ideas and entrepreneurship. You could have the best idea in the world, but if the market isn't ready for it, it does not matter. From there, we talked about executive strategies and why most of them fail when it comes to implementation and what to do about it. We also talked about the difference between strategy and vision and execution, how to get employees bought in, and how to treat everything as an experiment and much, much more. Let me know what you think about this episode after you listen to it. Let's make it happen. What's happening, make it happen, family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong Vidyard and Chili Piper. Gong's data is more than valuable.

It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes. Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere. No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered. Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar, and every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools, and now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today.

See you soon, everybody. Hey, Ulf. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on, man. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Thank you, John, and thank you for having me here. Absolutely. So we're going to get into, I think it's a very timely topic right now as far as leadership and really making sure everybody's trying to get on the same page, especially in times of chaos like we're in right now. But Ulf, why don't we set the stage here? Give us a little context on your backgrounds, where you're coming from, some of your experience, and then what you're up to today, and then we'll take it from there. Sure. I'm Swedish, but I spent quite much time in the U.S. as well. So I started my companies in Sweden.

I very much proved them there, and then with customers and proofs and so on, and then quite early moving over to U.S. and expanding U.S. So I've done that twice before. Right now, since more than 10 years, we have been focusing on selling increased revenue profit to CEOs and also to help the CEO to get the buy-in from managers, middle managers, team leaders, and employees in order to ensure an accelerated execution of whatever this CEO had decided to change or improve or whatever it could be. So that's my focus. I like it. And I mean, as I was preparing for this, you know, kind of a valid point, you know, being a CEO myself here, you know, CFOs deal with many financial solutions, right? Software solutions to help them stay on track and track everything.

But CEOs rarely have more than their Excel spreadsheets and some, maybe some Google Docs here. So I want to start with this. You had said something that never, you never founded a company based on a business idea that didn't, that already existed. So that's an interesting quote from one of your, from one of your articles that, so I want to back into what made you think of this idea, but then let's macro that out because I would say most ideas are, are iterations of, right? Exactly. So let's listen, let's talk a little bit about what made you come up with this idea and what you, where you saw the need, but then let's back out into your kind of approach to entrepreneurship, if you will, or starting businesses and, and where that goes.

So talk to me a little bit about that. No, sure. Uh, now I think, I think if, if you look into, um, smaller countries than us, um, it's easier to see a trend or a need, uh, it's also, uh, it's tougher competition. If you start a company in us, you normally have better backing when it comes to, to money and so on. But when it comes to experience, if you have a business idea and you would like to test that on small companies, mid-sized companies and large companies, it's perfect, uh, to do it in, in a smaller country. And this, this idea, uh, came actually from that. I've always been interested to sell and help CEOs. So that's what my companies have been very focused on. And even if I've been in IT and software the whole life, it has always been software for, for, for executives.

And during several years, I, uh, worked with strategy, uh, creating strategies, help companies to do the strategies and so on. And what I found was that the strategy is normally, uh, quite many power ports and it's, it's a big portion, uh, made by someone who is, is, is an analytical part about the market, the situation and so on. And that is normally 50, 60% of this document, maybe 70% actually. Then it comes to 10, 20%, which is more, okay, what should we do about it? And then it's nothing about how do we, uh, do in order to execute this, to, to really make it happen. So the idea was that it's a lack of a software in order to do something, which is proactive, not just look into the output, but I actually have an input.

How could you accelerate whatever you have decided needs to be executed according to the strategy or business plan or whatever you as a CEO have decided? Okay. And so, you know, you would said your, your superpower is to predict a new trend at the right time. Um, and I, you know, and I think you and I are on the same page with this as far as timing is everything when it comes to new ideas. And, you know, whether that be a brand new idea, go to market or a new idea for your existing business. How do you predict timing? Cause if there's anything, I mean, I've come up with, I can't tell you how many ideas that I thought were fantastic and just the market was not ready for them. But then five years later, all of a sudden a product that, you know, pretty much mirrors either what myself or some other entrepreneurs I know created all of a sudden takes off.

Right. Just like the Uber wasn't the first Uber, you know, those, those types of things. So how do you, how do you predict timing? Cause that is a very, very hard thing to predict based on how fast things are moving right now. I have to be honest. I think that, uh, how do I do that? I don't know. So I have the answer actually. It's just a, it's just a feeling. And I must say that, uh, in my previous companies, I have done perfect time. In this company, we were a little bit too early actually, uh, into the market in the same time as we probably needed that as well. I mean, we have a lot of advantages based on that today. Uh, but we were a little bit, uh, too early. So, uh, timing is everything and it is difficult.

So I, I don't, I don't really have an answer on how I do it. It's more, um, in this case, uh, at least, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's quite bad out there and it didn't become better after COVID and based on, you know, all these disruptions out there and so on. So for sure it's a, it's a trend really happening. So how do you know to persevere? So for instance, you said right now, you know, you're, you were a little bit early with your current, uh, endeavor here. Um, but you know, the market, you see the trends, how, what are the indicators that you look at to say, this is worth continuing to pursue because the market eventually will, uh, grab ahold of this or, you know what, we're just, the indicators aren't there.

So we should either restructure or try something new. Right. Um, I think first of all, uh, we are a SaaS application company and we are mesh measuring everything. So we have been measuring everything since 2017. And, um, what makes me happy is the percentage of CEOs actually choosing this type of, of application and solution. Um, and then on top of, of that, it's, it's like all this KPIs is going in the right direction. And finally, of course, that larger and larger companies, CEOs are actually buying this type of solution. Um, if you look into the digitalization, uh, whatsoever, regardless if it's for the CEO or the whole company, or if it's for, uh, other type of roles or what, what is going on, I think it really have changed the last three or four years, which makes it more difficult for a CEO to say, no, you know, it's for everyone else, but not me.

Yeah. So, with the planning process here, you know, a lot of organizations, they look at it from a year standpoint, you know, the beginning or the end of the previous year, they look back at the previous, you know, and say, okay, how'd we do? And then they set milestones and goals for the coming year with the main one being revenue. And there were some studies that you had referenced in your, uh, in some of your articles about what percentage of goals that most companies have, right? And a lot of them have too many goals, which makes it very hard to disseminate down. Um, and some of the best ones really focus on, you know, three, four, five, very, very big strategic goals. Could you help me understand, like, give me some examples, and then we'll kind of talk about how to implement those throughout the organization and translate them.

But what are some examples of big goals outside of revenue and profitability? What are some of the other ones that you see are effective? And, and then what are some ones that you've seen are just not very good, you know, goals that are on that list of one to five big ones? Sure. First, if I could just answer your first questions first a little bit. I think that's interesting to, to know that according to Gartner and other in industry analysts, uh, it's about less than 5% of all CEOs using an application, a digital application today. And what we mean with digital application is more like an application, which is more for business critical users. You know, how could you accelerate the whole execution?

How could you align the whole organization? How could you get everyone involved in this? That's less than 5%. Uh, 10% of all strategy executions or executions or something which is not just a day-to-day type of business. Uh, 10% of those are successful on time. So, you know, it's so many millions of dollars lost every day, uh, based, based on this. Uh, and to give you an example, uh, we meet, of course, a lot of CEOs and companies. So, in the worst case, it could be a company where of course you are not using an application and you, you don't really see the strategy as, as important. That is actually very common because what has happened during the last 30 years is, is that Gartner and MIT and those, they have said very much the same.

That strategy execution is broken. So, it has been like this for many, many years, and the statistics I just mentioned has also been there for many, many years. Uh, so what is very common and, and, and people listening to this part today would probably recognize this, that the company makes a strategy and before the employees, when they, before the employees really started to change and starting to do those activities or changes that are needed. It's coming a new strategy. So, so it's, it's, it's very much a strategy is, is that really important? Is the strategy execution really important? At the same time as when the company did the strategy, they probably used very expensive consultants. It was so important to be successful with the execution of this strategy on time, but when it comes to the execution, you know, 90% fail.

And to give you an example where, you know, companies are different. Uh, some companies are really in the forefront and some companies are really behind. Uh, most common is that you do the strategy and, and you're not really following it up. So you delegate the strategy too early to different types of executives and they bring it down further down and out to the employees in the organization. But you're not measuring, you know, how, how, how is the alignment going? What type of, of improvements do we really have now after three months or four months or five months? How, how do we connect those improvements to top and bottom line? That's normally not happening. And some companies, they have, uh, a strategy saying, for example, we are, we're going to become number one.

And, you know, it's not so easy to wake up as an employee in the morning and say, oh, today I really going to focus to do more so we could become number one. So when it comes to your, your question about examples, um, the strategy, and this is something most people don't know, I think the strategy in itself, I think it's, you know, we should take those markets. We have to be successful with these new products. Uh, we must win within this area of business. Uh, we must become more profitable. So it's, it is actually normally revenue goals and profit goals or market shares goals within a certain timeline that that, then it becomes a very complicated because the CEO is delegating this too fast. And that's when it's starting to become very, very difficult because you have all this cross-functional different type of interests and challenges.

Uh, so it's, it's the strategy in itself and what, what the company should achieve is not complicated. It becomes complicated to do the strategy execution based on that the CEO is delegating it too fast. And if you look into the number of goals, uh, which is also the, uh, the responsibility for the CEO to, to do the prioritization, right? It's, it's, it's really, so the number of goals could be too many, uh, and everyone in the executive team is, is very much, maybe not saying, but thinking that I like that goal and that goal. That's something I'm going to, because I have an advantage of that, but the CEO don't get the whole executive team to really focus on. We as a company, what, what, what, what, what, what is absolutely most important for us as a company and you, you, John have been, you are a CEO, uh, and other people in this, in this pod is, is probably CEOs as well.

And what happens is if you are an executive sitting in an executive, uh, team, if you belong to the executive team, you have two responsibilities. One is your PNL or your, your department, right? But the other responsibility is actually to, to help the CEO with what's most important for the company, regardless of the strategy execution. So the CEO and the executive team, they must, first of all, uh, make the prioritation, you know, what, what, which are the most important goals. And that's normally increased revenue, profit, market share and so on. But it's a misunderstanding there because, uh, next step, I think that was up to your question. It could be something else, right? And that's the initiatives, which initiatives should we focus on in order to improve revenue profit.

And that could be, uh, uh, new markets, new products, uh, and so on, this type of initiatives. And then it's quite easy because the initiatives, if they are approved, the added revenue profit will go up according to the, uh, to the strategy. But in order to be successful with that, it's actually the activities, which is normally the employees. When they start to do more correct activities that will actually accelerate the whole execution. So we'll talk about that kind of trickle down effect, but I want to start, I want to keep it up, uh, up top here a little bit, which is, you know, with some of those strategies that, that you mentioned, as far as be number one or get this product tomorrow, whatever.

I don't know, uh, and getting people bought into it. Right. So I've always said, if you don't have a vision, if people don't believe in a vision, then they're never going to do anything more than their job. But if you paint a picture for them, so what's the difference from your perspective on a vision and a strategy, because, you know, become number one in the market, right? That, that, you know, if that's a strategy or a vision, I could, I could position that as both. So how do you, how do you delineate between the two? Yeah, that's a good question. And I'm not sure that I have the answer to that, but I would say that the vision is more something, uh, which is, it's broader. You don't have to do the, the, uh, the prioritization.

You don't have to make tough decisions. Uh, I think it's easy to get a buy-in and alignment around the vision, but to only have the vision will not be enough to get all people in, in the company to really understand why, what, and how could I contribute? Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's say we've, we've gotten the executive team together. We've created a, we have a vision that, the way we want to go, we have some strategies that we want to implement. We got to now trickle this down to the employees to get those activities going so that we're moving in the right direction. I think it's a challenge at any size organization, but obviously with major, huge organizations, it's the, it's the biggest challenge.

I remember, you know, my first company, we were acquired by Staples and I sat there, you know, in boardroom meetings and executives, you know, $20 billion organization. And when I was sitting there with the executive team, you know, the president and the SVPs and of the different divisions, it all made perfect sense. But then as it trickled down to the thousands and thousands of frontline sales reps and employees, it was like it didn't, it was like those conversations didn't even happen. And so, you know, how can you in massive organizations, then we'll bring this down to smaller organizations, but how do you disseminate the, how do you, you know, create the strategy or create the vision, create the strategy, figure out all the pieces involved, know what the activities need to be and translate that down to the ground floor in a timely manner.

Because in a lot of ways, by the time you ultimately get there, the strategy needs to change. And so how do you do that in a kind of more of an agile way and get everybody rowing in the same direction towards that strategy? Sure, sure. We have a slightly different experience, actually. So, first of all, it is normally one or two persons within the executive team that is against, maybe not saying that. So it's so important that the CEO and the executive team really want this and understand what's in it for me and why do we do this and so on. And if you get that power, then you get it to the next level and so on. And I think that what we have seen, and that's also what MIT have found in their studies, is that 82% of all managers and employees would like to contribute and help the company to become better.

So it's very much about understanding why. And that's, if you don't have a digital application, it's very difficult for the CEO or the executives to communicate the why. Because when you go deeper and deeper in the organization and you pass other managers, the message is changed. It's like a whispering game. You know, when it gets down to the employees, everything is important. Everything should be done yesterday. And you don't get the why. So the why communicated directly from the CEO to all employees. That's so important. So they understand, okay, what's in it for not just the company, but also us working in this company. And then the why from each manager that I'm reporting to. So I could get, okay, I don't get 500 different versions.

What we should focus on, I get two, right? And hopefully they are in line. If I get that, then all studies is showing that, you know, I would like to do this and I would like to contribute. If I was to get help with how. And then if you have this type of digital application, they normally includes role-based help and advices and alerts and insights. So you don't want to have an application, which is typical traditional OKR, where you just report activities or you report to either an OKR application or Excel or something. It's just me reporting. I don't get anything. But if I could get something from the application, from my manager, from the CEO, then it gives me something. Because every person is asking themselves, what's in it for me?

Yeah, I think that's why I think that bigger picture vision is important to get buy-in. But then the individual, like what's in it for me, if you can't answer that question, the likelihood of anything being implemented is not high. So, OK, let's bring that down to smaller businesses with, you know, maybe 10, 20, 50, 100 employees. You know, what's the difference, I guess, that you see in major organizations from a strategy standpoint and implementation to smaller organizations and their ability to be a little bit more agile? It's a quite big difference, but it comes down very much to the type of CEO. So if the company is small enough, it could still be several thousands of employees, small enough so the founder or someone who has been working operationally in this company now is the CEO or is on the board or is still a very engaged owner, then it's so much easier to do this within the company because it's someone who really cares.

If the company is bigger than that and almost becomes like the CEO is more taken care of, of the stock market and something, you know, a lot of external work and so on, then it becomes more complicated. Yeah, I think the question I keep coming back to, especially now, you know, I've said this recently that I don't think they're quite, quite frankly, I don't think there's enough time for full blown strategies these days because I don't know too many executives that can look out more than, you know, a quarter or two and predict what's going to happen. I mean, you know, here in the tech industry, for instance, who could have really predicted that, you know, Silicon Valley Bank would have gone under and Credit Suisse would, you know, go under.

I mean, there was indicators if you were really paying attention, I guess, in the banking industry. But if you're a tech industry, you're putting your money into a bank that's the fifth, you know, 10th largest or 12th largest bank in the world, you figure you're right. And then all of a sudden it shuts down. And so, you know, how do you, how do you adjust or create an agile framework so that your strategy isn't, uh, we're going to put this stake in the ground for this year and go all in and realizing that there are many variables to take in place here. And how do you prepare yourself to adjust for them? Right. And that's, uh, I actually wrote my first book, uh, which was just about strategy execution as well.

And during that time, it was very common with five years for the strategy execution. And you're absolutely right. So a strategy could probably be done for two, three years, but it's, you don't have one company out there which don't have to adjust based on, you know, different type of disruptions happening all the time. So that's, if you don't have an application and you are trying to adjust and change because it's actually the initiatives that normally change, right? You still want to increase profit. You still want to increase revenue. So that doesn't change. Maybe, maybe the amount change, but that, you know, that don't have an impact on the organization. But the initiatives, what should we focus on, that could change.

Uh, and if you don't have a digital application, then that could take about a quarter to more than a year to get an organization to change according to what the CEO has said on television this morning, for example. Uh, right. Uh, and if you have a digital application, then it takes a maximum two weeks until the CEO and the executive team decide, you know, based on this disruption, we need to change a little bit here. Just make a correction. Right. And then maximum two weeks until then, please understand, okay, what should we focus on instead? What should we do more of? And what should we do less of? So how do you do so as an executive in today's market, right? You put a strategy in place and all these things are, are, you're seeing some leading indicators, for instance, that the strategy is not working.

Um, what's your advice to, how do you instill urgency without creating panic in a market like this? I mean, the banking industry, the, the bank runs are an obvious example, right? The CEO got on, he was trying to be honest and said, Hey, you know, we've stuck through, you know, we've stuck through bad times with you. And now it's time for you to stick through with us and said the bat said the word you probably should not say, which is panic, don't panic. And then everybody panic. And so, you know, I've had my own challenges personally with seeing some indicators saying, okay, we need to get, we need to start moving in a different direction. We need to start taking different actions here. Um, but balancing the, the severity of the problem with the communication structure, if you will, necessary to make sure that people without in, you know, the insights and maybe aren't as, um, able to change or willing to, you know what I mean?

They just don't have that entrepreneurial structure, that DNA, if you will. And so they, they, you know, not being in a structure and not knowing what the plan is, is very, very concerning to them. So how do you balance that need to move and need to create urgency here without instilling panic as a leader? And it's, it's, it's not so different versus, you know, other departments that where you have executives that are actually using a digital application. So let's say that, uh, the head of sales, he had to change goals. So something happened on the market when it comes to sales, it's not a big thing for the people working in, in the sales department. They're used to, if you're working in finance, it's coming a new rule about tax or whatever.

And it's the same thing. It's not, not a big, big thing that, so that if you're up running and you are driving your company in a more proactive way, uh, as, and disruption happens, it's not, it's not the big thing. It's happened to actually all our customers every, not every week, but at least a couple of times per year that something changed. And based on that, they had to, to, to make a small, uh, small change or adjustment to that. And as me, as an employee, if I could get straight information and correct information from the persons who actually made a decision or makes this change, that's much more appreciated that some, you know, a lot of rumors or whatever it would be. And actually, if you don't have this type of application and we see that all the time, people are firefighting already on the CEO level and the executive team level, they don't have time.

They are running. They're always behind this firefighting. And then maybe the company's not, uh, acting fast enough or changing fast enough. And based on that, you have to maybe decrease the organization with 10% of all employees instead of having a more flexible company between, you know, different type of decisions and what the employees needs to focus on. So, I'm a big fan of frameworks and agility and experiments, right? Like just trying, almost treating everything as an experiment with a hypothesis of how it's going to align and then a beginning and an end and a measurement. How do you create, uh, you know, if you're talking about strategy and then the execution layers and goals all the way down, um, how do you allow the organization to, to keep an entrepreneurial spirit, if you will, all the way down to that level?

And how do you balance that with people who just need to do their job, right? Because there's one thing about being creative and, and, you know, getting us to that next and breaking, you know, walls and all that stuff versus, hey, I just, I just needed to execute on this plan. So, A, how do you create that environment? And then how do you balance the need for execution versus coming up with new ideas and experimenting on what works and what doesn't work? It's a, it's a very good question. Uh, I have heard, uh, several times I've heard CEOs say, I don't want to micromanage my company. And then it's like totally misunderstanding because today you probably have 500 reports, double reporting, too much information.

I don't know if the information I'm feeling is even going to be used. So that's just, you know, but it's a quite common thought that if you have something like this, it's, it's micromanaging. It's not, it's actually microdelegate. So, uh, what it's all about is that you have, you combine this with the methodology and everything needs to be very simple, but it needs to be a top down, bottom up process. So if you tell me, John, what I should do, and I'm reporting to you, I will not like it. But if you ask me what I suggest to focus more on and accelerate, and you have a veto right. So you could always say, no, no, no, that's not really in line with what I'm thinking about or what I've asked for.

Then you and I have a communication about this focus. And that's why it becomes positive also for managers on a lower and lower level and also the employees, because you're involved. If you commit to something that you haven't been a part of making the decision for, you will never, uh, never do that. You will never think that this is fun. So we actually didn't lose one customer during two years, uh, and you can't buy this type of application and it's only for the CEO. It must be, as you said before, it must be as me as an employee or manager, what's in it for me? The application have to give and give and give, not just ask for numbers or actions or whatever. What's up, everybody? I know you're enjoying this conversation.

John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heap. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content. All of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day. $365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly. A hundred percent of the time, 24 hours a day, and then at the same time, you're going to get access to our bi-weekly ask me anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it.

This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL, one more time, is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guest for this week. As a leader, if you're not painting the vision and getting people bought into that vision, then they're never going to do anything more than their job. But also, at the ground level, if you don't get them involved, maybe not the vision, that's your job as a leader. But if you don't get involved, then how are we going to get there, right? So here's where we're going, here's the strategy, and now what do you think?

And if you're not involved in that process, again, what I find is that people just do their job, right? If you just tell them what to do or paint this picture and don't let them know how they're included in this, they're just going to do what they're told to do. And that is usually the bare minimum that doesn't get them fired. Yeah, and John, it's actually, we don't have to talk strategy execution or whatever. So if we just look into our own experiences, I think it's been very, very common that in a company, you talk about they and we, it's a behavior long time before strategy execution. And why is that behavior? Why is that? That's some sort of defense that you're not integrated into what the company is trying to do, or it's too slow.

Or based on increased cross-functional needs nowadays, it's a lot of conflicts, right? I can't do my job better if they are not doing their job better. So it's a lot of confusions, which have nothing to do with strategy executions, which is built in into companies. And I think that if it's a little bit more structured and you get, you know, if you become a little bit more digital, both as a CEO and something for all employees, not just one department, I think that helps. You know, if you could shorten the time from, I have a problem, I get help to solve that problem. Even if it's a cross-functional problem or something, of course, it's more fun to work in the company. If I could share what my impact is, what impact does it has on increased revenue and profit or saved money or whatever, of course, it's more fun than just going to the work and do a lot of things and not really knowing what I'm contributing.

How much of this, and, you know, I think this is a bigger question, but I'm curious on your perspective on this. A lot of times when strategy is, you know, adjusted or there's a new, you know, because of market conditions, the people who got you where you are today might not be the people that can get you where you need to go. And, and not because it's their fault, you know, it's, they were, they were hired under a certain structure of certain expectations. And now they're being asked to do something different. How do you communicate that? And I'm going to give you a quick example here. Um, when we were acquired by Staples, okay, we were, uh, you know, 80 person company, uh, 12 million in revenues just got bought by a $20 billion organization.

And they did just what every other, every huge organization always does when they buy a small one, they say, oh no, no, no, no, no. We bought you for you. We're going to let you do what you do and we're going to help you, support you. Right. And then inevitably within the year they get, you know, uh, sucked up into the mothership. But, um, it was evident to me that there was a frag, there was a, the, the, the group of people that we had as a startup, right? We were the company, we were Thrive Networks and we felt that identity. And then we got bought by Staples. We were still fighting to, to maintain that identity. But in reality, when another organization buys you, you are now that organization.

And when I got fired, uh, or, uh, offered another opportunity, which is a nice way of firing me, I remember saying to my CEO at the time, I think you need to, cause there was a lot of just backtalk and people, you know, behind the scenes complaining and everything else. And, you know, nobody really wanted to say it out loud. So I heard it all. And I said to him, you know what, you need to step up and have a meeting with the company after I'm gone and say, look, everybody, here's the vision. This is what we are now. We are Staples. We are, this is who we are and this is what we're going to be and paint that vision. But then say to them, um, with that, I know most of you who are not, were not hired with this expectation.

You were hired under us as Thrive Networks. So if you are not on board with this vision, let's figure out a nice transition here. But if you are on board, great. And shut up. I don't want to hear any more bitching and moaning about this whole acquisition and how messy it is. We got to go. So that's what my recommendation to him was. It never happens. And we fumbled, you know, kept fumbling through, but what is your, how would you, uh, that scenario where you're acquired and now you are part of, but you, you now have to address the fact that most of your employees, companies did not buy into that, did not want that. How do you communicate that as a, as a, as a CEO? Yeah. I mean, I've been in that, I mean, I've done three exits, uh, here in US and, um, I must say that, uh, two of them at least have been very, very positive.

So it, it depends very much on, uh, that, that you share the why, you know, because it's also something positive. If you could really get those two, uh, two cultures coming together. So, so that, that's, that's for sure. But as you did, I mean, you were very open. If you know, this is what we're going to do. This is our next, here you need a strategy actually. Here's, you know, where should we be three years from now? Uh, even if it, we don't start in three years, we start directly. Right. But if you don't share the strategy, then of course, uh, you should, you should leave. But if you look into midsize and large companies, which is not having that very, very, quite seldom type of, of, of, uh, merger, which happens then and then.

But you just look into people who, uh, maybe they, they, you know, they are not changing, uh, fast enough. They are not looking into new opportunities and so on and so on. That's very often based on that. You always, in all organizations, you have like 30, 40% really good managers and you have like 30, 40% really good employees as well. So the question is, how could you, how could you, how could the company or the application and help these people to actually become better managers and better employees on a daily basis? And that's typical modern digital applications today for, for strategy execution, because change is a so important part in order to have to be able to do this improvements that according to the strategy.

So I think, I don't think what you're looking on today is very common that we have to change the whole company from A to B. We are bringing consultants for four years in order to do that transformation. I think you will be laughing to that type of behavior in a couple of years. Um, yeah, and I, I, I agree. I think that the, the work, you know, what, what strikes me, unfortunately, is that, you know, through acquisitions, they look at the numbers, they look at the finances, they look at the profit, they look at the alignment. Uh, but rarely, uh, do they actually look at how to truly integrate these two from, from before the acquisition. And that's what my challenge has always been in working and, in, you know, either being acquired or acquiring it's, it's the, the people make all the difference in the world.

The strategy is fantastic. The, the finances are easy to figure out, uh, you know, and you could put together a plan to execute on all this stuff. But if you don't get the people on the board, on the right board, you know, on the right bus, if you will, to make this thing happen, it's going to fall apart no matter how good that strategy is. And there are certain people that are made for that transition. And there are certain people that quite frankly, aren't. Yeah. And, and as you said before, uh, you know, you have to understand what's in it for me. Uh, if you understand what's in it for me, uh, an acquisition could be very, very positive. And if you don't get the right why and answers, of course, it's something negative.

Well, I think that's, and that's easy from an executive standpoint, but to get employees to realize what's in it for me, right. As far as, you know, I think that's one of those ones that takes almost hand-to-hand combat, if you will, with direct line frontline managers to articulate what is in it for them, as opposed to an executive who thinks, because you can't have that broad message about what's in it for them at the leadership standpoint. You actually have to have those one-on-one knowledgeable conversations with each individual to tell them or, or share with them or expose to them what could be in it for them. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, that's very similar as we spoke about before, you know, it, it can't be only top down.

It needs to be a process, a top down, bottom up. So if you just take this example that the company have been acquired by Staples trip, for example, uh, you need to go layer and layer. Uh, and then, uh, and for the employees, so the people further out in the organization, they have other reasons for why they would like to leave or why they would like to contribute to Staples in this case. And, and the reasons are different, but it's still so important that they understand what's in for me and how could I contribute. Yeah. Perfect. All right. I think that's a good spot to, to end it there. Anything else that we missed that, uh, that, uh, you think, uh, was important as far as the framing this conversation with, uh, uh, with alignment from the top down?

No, John, I think it was a very good discussion. Um, I think that you asked me in the very, in the very beginning about, you know, being too early and so on. I think I said that, uh, we were a little bit before the trend, but just, you know, this trend is really happening as we speak. Uh, and, uh, it's supposed to grow even faster from 2024. Uh, and the reason is that Microsoft have moved into, they bought Ali and they have moved into this, what we call the proactive, uh, application. So you have applications, which is not just coming with output. It's actually applications that you could have an impact on input and, uh, in order to have, uh, better results and so on. So this type of proactive application, regardless if it's in strategy execution or anything else, is actually increasing very, very fast since a couple of years, uh, back.

And that's very much based on COVID and all this change, you know, all this digitalization going on, uh, in the market right now. Yeah. And I think that's the big question out there for everybody is like, you know, the, how fast things are moving now, I think can never, they, they can't be compared to what is happening. In the past because ever since COVID hit, it, it, it feels like something, uh, you know, whereas some major shift use, you know, might happen every three to five years previously. Now it's almost quarterly, if there's some major shift, I mean, you know, chat GPT is a perfect example. I, I, there's a lot of questions, you know, in our industry, in the, in the tech and the SaaS industry, it's, you know, there's a lot of companies popping up with chat GPT and leveraging it for emails and all these, you know, efficiency tools.

But I'm looking at it saying in about a year, it's almost going to be irrelevant because Microsoft, for instance, you just jumped 10, 10 billion dollars into open AI and chat GPT. And so all these companies that are starting up these nice little point solution, you know, email widgets and those types of things, I'm like, you know, once the email distribution center, if you will, Gmail and Outlook adopt this stuff, all of these companies might be perfect timing right now. And yeah, sure, they might position themselves for the acquisition in a year or two, but that's like a fraction of the fraction of the fraction of the, the number of companies that are coming into this market, because it's hot right now.

The trend is there. The timing is there. So that's the, I mean, going full circle back to our conversation. It's like, that's a, you know, it's hard to predict the future. And, and so, you know, understanding that and being agile enough to adjust along the way, I think is a critical factor in all of this. No, absolutely not. I'm, I'm, I'm with you. And I think that AI, we are working with this and, and, and, but it's still, um, it's so important. It's fun that it happened because this is really a big moment. I think it's, it's great. But I also think that we could just look on our customers. And when we spoke with the CEO, uh, just one year ago versus today, we get three times more CEOs that, that are, you know, starting business with us.

Three times more within a year. So it's, it's happening something on the market when it comes to digitalization. And then you can have different types of scale of digitalization, but, you know, to stay outside working analog for a company, I don't think that would be the future. Yeah, definitely not. Cool. Well, uh, thank you again for, for coming on board here. How can people find out more information about what you're doing and where do you want to send them? Yeah. Um, my company name is, is, uh, howie.io. Uh, it's a strange name here in U S so, but it stands for how we, so when the CEO, uh, is buying this application is actually how we, as a company, uh, could contribute better. Um, and we, we have the difference with our application is that it comes from many, many years of consulting where we have put in our know-how, uh, into the product.

So, so it gives something to employees and middle managers and so on. So everything is that is built in, uh, into the product with support and so on. And the most unique thing is that the return of investments is eight to 25 times the investment already within 12 months. So if you look into strategy execution, traditionally after 12 months, normally you don't even, you're not even aligned. Haven't even reached down to them, please. But with our application, this type of applications, you, it, it takes just one or two or three months and then everyone is up working. And if you have a disruption, for instance, that when you are up working, it takes maximum two weeks from the CEO is changing to, and please know what they should focus on.

And most important is actually that the employee satisfaction score is going up. So I don't think it's micromanaging. Dan, very cool. Awesome. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you, John. Thank you. And everybody out there, hopefully you found the conversation as interesting as I didn't got you to think a little bit about. If you're a leader out there, how to translate all the way down to the ground level and create that agile org that's going to get you the buy-in and the direction that you're going. Look, like I always say at the end of all these conversations here, regardless of what you got out of this, go out there and make somebody smile today.

Because if you go out there and make somebody smile, no matter how bad you think your day went, you got a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough. To keep the momentum going, if you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram.

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