Episode 16: From Documents to Models: Inside Grundfos’ PLM Transformation with Torben Pedersen

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Torben Pedersen, Head of PLM Program Office at Grundfos and a seasoned leader with more than 20 years of experience in project and portfolio management, digital transformation, and team leadership. With a career spanning senior roles at global companies such as Grundfos, Siemens Gamesa, and Maersk, Torben has led strategic initiatives in Product Lifecycle Management, R&D, and business development.

Known for his analytical and structured approach, Torben excels at turning both unstructured ideas and formalized projects into tangible results, always with a strong focus on financial and business value.

Outside the corporate world, Torben nurtures his creative side as a passionate music creator. When he’s not leading transformation projects, he produces and shares his own music.

In our conversation, Torben dives into a wide range of topics—from the mindset leaders need for successful PLM adoption to the practical steps that move an organization toward digital maturity. Below are the key themes we explored throughout the interview:

⚉ Engaging Users Early and Building User Communities
⚉ Avoiding a Big Bang Approach: Small, Targeted Implementation Projects
⚉ Ownership Within the Business, Not Just the Program Team 
⚉ How Grundfos Measures Success Without Traditional ROI Calculations
⚉ PLM as an Enabler for New Business Models and Managing Complexity
⚉ Governance First: Setting Up Strong Structures Before Execution
⚉ The Risk of KPI-Driven Behavior
⚉ Early Career Lessons: Meet People Where They Are
⚉ The Human Side of PLM: People, Culture, and Communication
⚉ Partners, Not Suppliers: A Collaborative Approach to Consulting


MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:
⚉ (Spotify) Golden Grayline: https://open.spotify.com/artist/14DQ2kFzKCkK8NxbK2az3l 

CONNECT WITH TORBEN: 
⚉ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedersentorben/ 

CONNECT WITH SHARE PLM:
Website: https://shareplm.com/ 


Join us every month to listen to fascinating interviews, where we cover a wide array of topics, from actionable tips, to personal experiences, to strategies that you can implement into your PLM strategy.

If you have an interesting story to share and want to join the conversation, contact us and let's chat. We can't wait to hear from you!

Transcript

[00:00:12] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Hello and welcome to the Share PLM podcast. I'm Beatriz Gonzalez, CEO of Share PLM. And as always joining me is my cohost Jo Voskuil. And, hi Jos. How are you doing? And who is with us today?

[00:00:26] JOS VOSKUIL:
Hola Bea. It's a wonderful day. Once in a while, the sun is coming through again here in the Netherlands, but today we have an interesting guest from Denmark, Torben Pedersen, and he works for Grundfos. I met at Torben a few times in the past on the, the PLM roadmap conferences where we discussed their big PLM ambition in, in Grundfos, and also we worked with him this summer.

So I'm very curious to hear what Torben is doing, what he's experiencing, and also we discovered he's an excellent musician with his group, Golden Gray Line. We will add the link to the notes.
So a warm welcome Torben, and we are glad to have you with us today. Tell us all about you and PLM. Can you share something about your career journey?

[00:01:10] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Absolutely. Thank you Jos and thank you Bea for having me here on this call. I'm from Denmark and it's raining outside my window right now, so I think Jos you are, you are more lucky than I am that you have a sunshine in the Netherlands.

So I've been working with Grundfos for the last 12 years, working with product development and now also heading a PLM program office that is caring for the PLM transformation journey that we have embarked upon in Grundfos.

But going back a little bit, I graduated from the University of Aalborg back in 2001. I have a master of science within industrial management and electronics manufacturing. So actually I have a background from supply chain manufacturing but also R and D. The first or the last two semesters of my university stories I wrote a master thesis together with a Danish company in Minsk, in Belarus about transferring technologies from globally to Belarus to a low cost production side.

And then after that I was hired by the same company. So I was expecting or actually lived in Minsk Belarus for three and a half years trying to see what I wrote in my master thesis, how to, to bring that to life, transfering more manufacturing production to Belarus from various parts of the world.

And I think that actually gave me some insights for, you know, or at least an eye opener for how different cultures work and what are the main, say, drivers across different global sites? What are the main themes? How do you treat people in a global setting?

And as you're thinking, working in that company was a medical device company. And medical devices are heavily regulated industries. You can have the FDA, the Food and Drug Association, they can close down a factory if you are not compliant to, you know, traceability, if you don't have version control in your documentations, and so forth.

So actually I was brought up with having that logical insights that of course you're in control of your documentation, of course you're in control of, of how you're making baselines and version controls, and you have traceability back and forth on everything you do. So it was a little bit of an an, an eyeopener when I moved from that heavily regular industry into an, let's say, an ordinary discrete manufacturer where you more or less could do whatever you suited. In case you hadn’t had an idea, you were able to change a peg material, you can change the color, a product, you can change whatever, without really documenting it.

So I actually recognized that my upbringing at that time and the DNA of what I came from, was I think, has been a strong asset onwards that, you know, I find it very important that you document your things, you're in control of your documentation and you know where to finally know how to also navigate in different versions of your documentation.

And I think that's also what's quite fruitful now in the role I have currently. But, after my Minsk endeavor, I moved back to Copenhagen, and there I met my wife. And then we decided to move back to Jutland, where I live now when we got our, our first daughter. So I start up or I was introduced to another company in, in August close to where I live now, that was making lighting fixtures for concerts, so moving hits, LED lights that you see on, on disco techs and concerts. We were making that.

And I just started that company and then I know I just joined that company, then I was asked if I would move to China and start up an R and D function for that company in a small city called Zhuhai, close to Hong Kong. And we moved to China with my wife and my 10 month old daughter. And we were supposed to stay there for one year, no, two years, but we were just entering the financial crisis back in 2008. So we came back a little bit before time and then I'd say it's need to find what are then my future perspectives? Where do I want to go?

And then I decided to start up my own management consultancy company doing project management for various industries. I was hired into working for Vestas, the wind turbine company and Nordisk, insulin manufacturer.

And then my last client as an extern was actually Grundfos. So I started in Grundfos as an external consultant, but within a few months I was kindly asked if I would like to join the company. And I think that was for me the best of all choices. So I said, yes, please, and then I've been there more or less ever since, and been very pleased about that.

[00:05:39] JOS VOSKUIL:
So you're talking about your, your Minsk experience and I'm curious there, because on one side you did first a theoretical part and then you had to do the work also, was there a big difference between your theory and practice? Can you tell something about that?

[00:05:54] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yes, there were and I think I was quite often told by some of my colleagues that I've had a quite naive approach to how I would think, let's say the projects that were driving that they would be implemented. So I think I lack the experience in that, that time that there is a difference between what you think in theory and what you actually are able to do. You need, you know, to mobilize organization, you need to understand where the organization is and you cannot just apply a theory and then assume everything would happen according to your own plans and according to your own thinking.

[00:06:28] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. I think that's in particular in the academic world we see the concepts being developed and then they hit reality and they hit the people, I think also. And uh…

[00:06:37] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Exactly. Exactly. I actually think that was maybe one of my biggest learnings and that I still take with me also, is that, I mean you need to meet people where they are. And I think you should not try to be understood. You should rather try to understand, so try to understand where are the people, why, why are they acting as they are? Because I don't think it's a bad will that they're trying to do something, you know, that opposes your proposals.

But it's more like you need to understand, I say what are they operating? Why are they in a given position? So try instead of, you know, just pushing your theories in and assume that they will work, then try to understand where are they and meet them on part with who they are and where they are.

[00:07:20] JOS VOSKUIL:
But I can imagine in Minski was maybe a single culture. Then in the end, moving to Grundfos, a global company, how do you deal with culture there? Is it still as visible?

[00:07:32] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
It is very visible still. Now, I think we are truly global in the sense that we have, I mean, colleagues all over the world from all over the world. And also in headquarter, we have people from the US, from India, from China, Sweden, the Netherlands Jos also.

I think we are used to work amongst colleagues that I know from multicultural elements. So I think in, in our daily work, it's not like now we are thinking as things. I think we are in the company thinking more, more multi culture because we are among peers that are from all over the world, from day one, where I think when I moved to Minsk, at that time it was me and a few other Danes, and then the rest were, you know, local, the Russians.

So the mindset was different. We need to adapt to them. Whereas a thing here in Grundfos, we have it under our skin actually because we, we are amongst peers from all over the world, no matter where we are living and where we are working. Also, you can see at, at our Chinese sites, we also have things, we also have people from other cultures. So we are multinational by birth, I would say, in Grundfos, which is, it gives, gives some benefits.

[00:08:36] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yeah. It also gives some flexibility and willingness to change, right? Because people is more flexible and understand the cultures.

[00:08:44] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yeah exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:46] JOS VOSKUIL:
So Torben, in the introduction, you also talked about your responsibility for the PLM transformation project. And when I hear PLM transformation, I often see the mistake that people think PLM is a system, so we are going to change to a different system. What kind of PLM transformation are you planning at Grundfos? Is it people, process, tools?

[00:09:08] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
It's a people, process, data, and tools. Yeah, so I think we always say it's people, process, data, and tools. And I think it's deliberately that we say tools at the end because we also say in the same sentences that this is a transformation program, it is not an IT project. Even though I think the IT part is very visible and it's very easy to talk of the IT part and we are engineers, so we love the IT part. But we are very conscious that this is a transformation program where we need to make sure that our colleagues are being mobilized and understand why we're doing this. And then you say the tool itself, that's just an enabler to make sure that our processes and our people are helped in the best possible way.

[00:09:48] JOS VOSKUIL:
And can you tell us what is the transformation? The transformation always says we go from to. What is the from and what is the to?

[00:09:56] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
I think there, there are many froms and there are many tos, but one of the things that we try to depict to our colleagues is that we are going away from being document based to be model based.

So what we would like to do is to cater for cross-functional collaboration. And we want to get away from having the documents that test in words, in emails. And we want to get away from having links to SharePoint sites that are not maintained and what have we. So, but rather make sure that we work on the same say, life environment of models.

And whenever I use a upstream is, is updating something then it's accessible to any downstream consumers? Literally, right off the bat, it is easy to say that we are going from document based to model based, but it's also very difficult to describe what looks like throughout the full value chain, because it is not just having a 3D CAD model. That's also it, it's also going into how do we do the model based in the system engineering world, and how do we do model based when we go into our advanced manufacturing engineering?

And in order to describe that, it's very difficult because people, they get many, many different pictures. What model based is, and that's what we're trying to focus on, to elaborate and make sure that we understand that we are going away from document based, that we are going model based.

[00:11:12] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
What is the starting point that you are having, it's more starting from greenfield, from scratch, so you have some legacy ways of work is a history that you need to change, and what are the challenges you are facing there?

[00:11:26] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Now we, we are selling 15 million products a year. So we have, you know, a daily business to maintain while we are doing this, uh, transformation. And we are doing PLM today. I mean, we are bringing products to, to the market and we are able to sell them and we are able to take them back and we are able to do engineering changes to that. So we have PLM capabilities on Grundfos.

What we want to do is to structure PLM, you know, more holistic end to end, so we have traceability going back and forth, and also we are working with a term called digital twin or digital mess, where we want to make sure that everything we do is connected across tools, but also so our processes are supported so we can go back and forth.

I think one of, one of the challenges that we want to work in new ways, but we still want to maintain, you know, the old business. And I think it's not realistic for us to go truly model based on all our legacy products. So we also need to find out where do we distinguish, you know, new ways of working with new model based and where do we need to live with it? I say the old legacy documentation approach. And keeping that maintained. So we will work in two different ways for a long time, depending on whether you are developing a new product or whether you are selling a product that has been on the market for like 30 years. So I think that that's, at least, that would be one of the challenges that we need to deal with.

[00:12:43] JOS VOSKUIL:
So I hear many of the messages that I've been preaching also for many years, the model based, the hybrid way of working. But one of the, the big challenges there is often the organization, people cannot work in hybrid modes. They can only work in one mode the best.

How do you take people in this journey? Are they choosing which way to work or are they assigned to new tasks? How does it work?

[00:13:08] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
We are not there yet. So you can say we have not, we maybe not faced all the challenges yet, but what we are doing right now is being very conscious about when we are setting up the definition for the new work. We want to make sure that the users are being engaged to define how the future should look like in order to depict what is the new normal.

And then, then we want to make sure that they are part of that, you know, transformation program. So it's not just a tool we are dumping on the table and then they have to adapt to that. So we have been quite conscious, very early in, in the program a few years back to, we actually start the very first few months where we, we started the program some years ago we actually had some 200 interviews with different users in, in the organization.

[00:13:49] JOS VOSKUIL:
Wow.

[00:13:50] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
First of all to understand, where do they see current pains when it comes to feeling? What are the pain drivers? But also see where are your future aspirations? What is it you need to be able to do in order to, to live up to our, let's say our Grundfos strategies.

I think that was a wise call at that time, because we are still using those statements, as, you know, the argumentation for why, why we want to do this. And we are still revisiting those pains to justify what we're doing. So we are not just coming up with new bright ideas or, you know, a consultant coming in saying, now I need to do this and this and this. We are always trying to cater for pains that has been identified in organization. To make sure that the users, they have been on board in the journey.

Going back to the hybrid work, Jos, we have not yet decided how to come about that. We have not decided how to split that cake. We can just see that our ambition is that we want to increase our innovation rate. So more and more products will come through the new ways of working, and less and less product will be maintained in the old way. That's how to bridge that gap. I think we should have an interview in a few years from now, Jos, so then I will get back to you.

[00:14:55] JOS VOSKUIL:
That sounds like an encouraging statement because when you say a few years you have many companies that cannot wait a few years. They think they want to do a project in one year or two years, and I think does it have a different, because it's a family owned business or the family has a big voice in it, and you can work for the long term.

Because I think that's the big difference I've seen in, in projects and maybe in other companies. You worked also before that you need to have this long-term vision.

[00:15:23] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yes, and you need to be patient. I think there are so many elements, you cannot just force things to happen right away. And I think being in a company like Grundfos, where the foundation is the majority of shareholder in the company, there is a larger element of patience and understanding. We don't need to deliver, you know, quarterly results, you know, as public trade companies and there might be no more impatience in such kind of companies.

So I think group management and our upper management, they understand that it takes time and we have spent a lot of time also understanding ourself what are the needs and what are the implications when it comes to this transformation. And having this ping pong also with our upper management all the time, so they understand, you know, the complexity of this.

It is not just, you know, like you say, it's not just adding a new tool. And then we are up running.

[00:16:52] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
When we talk about tools, Torben, what tools is covered in this PLM transformation? Is it a PLM system, or it's also ERP or CRM or other system? So what is your strategy?

[00:17:05] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Currently we have identified 200 different tools and applications you see under the umbrella of PLM from the very early conceptual ideas of a product until, you know, we develop and we bring it to the market and to the inner, right? So we have a tool chain of at least 200 different tools.

And on top of that, then we also signed up with Dassau so the, the three days platform will be one of those 200 tools. It will be a major one, but it will for sure not be the only one. ERP integrated to ASAP will also be one of them.

One of the things that we are debating right now is to look into the 200 tools and then see how many of these, let's say some of them are very legacy tools, how many of these will cease to exist and be, you know, migrated into a three DX platform or, or some other tools? Because our ambition is to reduce the number of tools because a lot of those are not integrated with each other. They are standalone islands and they, you know, they are maintained in small pockets throughout the, the young station.

And if you have tools like this it's very difficult to obtain a digital thread and have traceability going back and forth, because then anyway, you need to have that, that manual layer in between one tool, maybe converge with spreadsheet and then the import into another tool.

Then we are losing that country traceability and we want to avoid that. So the more we can adopt into, let's say, broader tool chains, the better. And then consider also integration to some other tools.

[00:18:27] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
What is the general feeling of the people that is working with at tool and, and it has high probability to be sat down and migrated to the new system? Is some kind of excitement because they will work with new technology or it's kind of, they are protecting their way of working?

[00:18:44] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
I think it's a combination of both. I think there is excitement that we will give the new capabilities. I think that's an excitement element to that. But also think a lot of our people they see, you know, this specific small tool as they're darling, maybe they have even, you know, invented and they, you know, added a tailor into it to, to make it so specific that current need they have. So it's a combination of having these people to understand that for the greater Grundfos, it might hurt you individually. For the broader audience that has an abundance of opportunities, that will be much better if we get rid of this tool.

[00:19:17] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yeah, it is a, a theory. We humans, we care more about loss than about winning new things. We always want to keep on what we have, even if the, the new value, value might be bigger.

[00:19:30] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yeah.

[00:19:31] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And I like a lot also this approach. We were seeing it the last year in the Share PLM summit, some of the keynotes that people were saying that being honest is very important. And Torben what you are mentioning also, like being open and say maybe this new way of working is not going to benefit you as it is the older one. But this it's a contribution for the whole company at the end.

[00:19:52] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Exactly. A very tangible example could be that some of our mechanical design engineer, I mean they will most likely have to do more data related work on their documentation right now in order to cater for downstream consumers. So maybe we might be more cumbersome for that specific person, but there'll be so many benefits downstream. And of course they need to understand that link that contributes to other users and that benefits downstream.

[00:20:18] JOS VOSKUIL:
And I think that's one of the topics also, I think Denmark is also, like Scandinavian countries a very much a culture of end user involvement and the voice of the end user is participating. I heard last week a very nice anecdote from a company. They even have the user veto, that's an end user can say, I don't want this change because, and he can veto the change.

[00:20:42] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
How is it working?

[00:20:42] JOS VOSKUIL:
I think as a global company, you can't do it anymore, right?

[00:20:44] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
No. No.

[00:20:46] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yeah,

[00:20:46] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
No, those days are over.

[00:20:48] JOS VOSKUIL:
I think so too.

[00:20:49] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yeah.

[00:20:50] JOS VOSKUIL:
Torben what I understand that you're, you're starting a quite long journey with the people. And then of course, how do you take those people on the journey? Are you going to train them? Are you going to educate them? Are you going to have newsletters, all this kind of stuff? What are you means to take people on this journey?

[00:21:06] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Well, I think I say yes to, to all the things that you are, you are just posting as examples. I think what's very important for us is to make sure that we have users onboarded from the very early start of the different implementation projects they're running, because we want to have the users defining the use cases and the capabilities that we want to develop.

So it's important for us that it's not just, you know, an external consultancy company, company that comes in and tells us what's best for Grundfos, but we'd rather want to have, you know, our external partners help us facilitate these kind of user engagement dialogues. So we are setting up small user communities within specific PLM capability domains, and then we have these as the voice of our intern customers to make sure that what we're doing is benefiting those users.

[00:21:55] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Are you onboarding the people, some groups ,or you are you doing a big one? What's your plan?

[00:22:01] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
No. Yeah, we are not doing Big Bang. So the way we are implementing our PLM is in smaller projects. So we are focusing right now on, on the very early lifecycle steps of the early phases of lifecycle going into product development area mainly. And so there might be further, if you look into the holistic end-to-end prosa then, uh, manufacturing supply chain and so forth it might come later. But for now we are focused on, on product manufacturing, no product development and product management.

And then we have set up a number of, we say smaller projects within the whole transformation program where we have individual steering committees. So we have identified who are the main beneficiaries. Who are the ones that are going to obtain, you know, the benefits that we are doing on the projects? Who are these users in the lineation? And then we also reached out to them via their lineation to find out who are then the ambassadors, the future users in these organizational communities, and then we bring them into, to be the voice of the practice, to make sure that what we are doing in the practice is aligned with the business, with the line organization.

So we want to avoid that, you know, it's a group function that is pushing things, but we need to embed the ownership into the business.

[00:23:16] JOS VOSKUIL:
And maybe interesting point also, if you have a long term project and I don't know how many PLM roadmap conferences you attended, but you always have Boeing there talking about their more than 10 years transformation to a model-based enterprise. So they are maybe a few years ahead and much more complex products.

But also there we, heed the challenge, how do you motivate the management? How do you, I would say, measure success in this project and report to the management? Do you have any ways on that?

[00:23:45] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yeah, I think we have recognized that we cannot just make a return on investment or a business case, you know, with the financial numbers that, you know, will benefit the, the program because it's so complex. So you can come up with any numbers and that has been recognized by our leadership team.

So what we have set up is some kind of a benefit or outcome hierarchy. So on the high level KPIs you can see we believe, of course we will be more efficient. We believe that uh, we will be more innovative. We believe that we will be able to bring products faster to the market, but that's something you, you'll be able to see, you know, ten to fifteen years down the line.

So then we will try to reverse in here that say, okay what are then the outcomes and the outputs of the specific projects that will cater for these, let's say long-term KPIs. So we are actually monitoring progress per project on the deliverable level and output level per projects.

And then we are monitoring those to see on a capability maturity level, how mature are we? For instance, you know, with going model based. How mature are we, you know, with, I don't know, other capabilities? So we, we are measuring those progress on a much smaller scale. And by that we are justifying that we have progress and there's a matter of believing that we will meet, we will we'll obtain the, the high level KPIs eventually.

[00:24:59] JOS VOSKUIL:
And of course sometimes you push for changes because you want to enable new business models. I mean, and you can't do it with the old tools about the digital product passport or is this also one of the drivers in, in the background, the models?

[00:25:13] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Very much. I mean, digital product passport is, is also on our agenda and new business models and I think in general what we want to make sure is to, that we are enabling our abilities to deal with increase complexity. Increased complexity towards our customers they want, they say more than just selling a box product, we want to be able to sell systems.

We want to be able to sell solutions. And in order to do that we can see that our complexity internally are increasing and PLM is an enabler to make sure that we are able to deal with complexity. We don't want to reduce complexity, we want to be able to manage it and their PLM is, is one of the enablers. It's not everything, but it's, it's a major contributor. And also to support their new business models.

[00:26:00] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And coming back to the question of KPIs and how to measure success, we always talk about that but, I would like an example from your side. Who is the responsible of measuring this is you as, as the program manager of the PLM transformation or who is measuring that and making sure that the reports are updated?

[00:26:21] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Well we have a governance structure in the program. So the way we structure is we have a program, then we have different projects that are driving the, say the, the deliverables and the outputs. So each of the different projects. Need to, you know, be able to monitor their own progress and justify towards the steer that they are delivering on those promises.

Then we are on the program level trying to consolidate per project up on a program to see, okay, then what is the total progress across the different ongoing project? So that, it depends on what you are asking because we are, I think we are reporting on many different levels, both in projects, but also on the program level.

[00:26:59] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Mm-hmm.

[00:26:59] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
But on the program, yeah, we have like a PMO function that is doing the consolidation of our progress reporting. That is as strong, yeah, support to do that.

[00:27:10] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yes. I also believe that the strong governance is, is key for the change to success because if you measure consistently everyone is, is aware and everyone feel part of the change because they're contributing also through the measurements.

[00:27:24] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yeah, and you can say, I think one of the things that we were quite conscious about in the old days was to spend a lot of time setting up the whole program governance before we get started and setting up the operating model. How do we drive a project? How do we report? Because when, so to speak the language, but when the shit hits the fan and we get busy then we don't have time to adjust.

We want to make sure that the projects are driven in a somewhat same way because also we have consultants coming in from many different new consulting companies and they have their own ways of working, but we want to make sure that we are doing it is our way and in a uniform way so we can consolidate progress. We can consolidate how we communicate and we can consolidate our project models across projects. Otherwise it'll be like four individual projects that you're taking off in four different directions.

So we spent quite a lot of time discussing how is the operating model and how does the governance look like before we actually get started.

[00:28:20] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Although the challenge I always see with KPIs, if you know what you measure, you will measure success. Because people will start working towards the KPIs.

[00:28:29] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Exactly. Yeah, you're right. And I also say, Jos, you don't get what expect. You get what you inspect.

[00:28:36] JOS VOSKUIL:
That's also a good one. Yes. coming to that experience, maybe it's a good moment to talk about experience. Experience is what you get when you don't get what you expect and maybe you have in your life also some of those experience that you want to share with us for our listeners.

[00:28:53] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yeah. But I think maybe going back to my, my initial naive days when I just graduated you know, trying to like also said in the beginning of this podcast, I think trying to apply a theory from your own thinking and assume that people understand you the way you are thinking. Then you're pity as you’re growing up. You need to be able to understand people where they are. Don't try for you to be understood, but try to understand the people where they are and then meet them, you know, in their daily life in meeting them with their pains and inspirations and communicated to them in their language.

So I think that was maybe also some of the initial learnings I had when I graduated that with going from a theoretical university environment where everything is theories and try to learn it. I think that was maybe one of the biggest learnings is that, yeah, all theories, they have a twist of reality also into it. So you need to understand the receiver of your communication, otherwise you will fail.

[00:29:52] JOS VOSKUIL:
I think there, we, we share this experience also when I went into the field to train and moderate in smart team implementations. It was not the smart team technology. It was the people, the culture, I mean, and that was also a big lesson learned for me.

[00:30:07] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yes. That's very important indeed for a program manager. It say that it's not only the technical knowledge, but also the people side and how to talk the language to all the different stakeholders with each difficult.

[00:30:21] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
It is, it is.

[00:30:23] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
So Torben, what could be your advice or the message that you would like the listeners to take away from this episode?

[00:30:32] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
No, but I think maybe one of the things that we have not addressed yet, but that's the, the whole people part is not just talking about Grundfos employees, it’s talking about everyone that is in the program. So what we are quite conscious about is that when we are talking people process data and tools, and when we talk people, we also talk our partners.

So the, our consultancy, the suppliers and, and one thing that we are quite conscious about is that the consultancy companies that we are working together with, we don't see them just as a supplier, but we see them as an equal partner. And so we are not just paying them by the hour just to do a, a delivery, but we want to develop skills and capabilities together with them and meet them also where they are, because then we get a much strong, you know, it would say a win-win collaboration between us as, you know, the, the customer and them as the vendor.

But if our partners see a mutual benefit in collaborating with us, not just the monetary part of, of getting the sent invoice, but they also can benefit. Then I think at least that's our belief and our hope, and then we get a much stronger collaboration. So when we say people, it's not just people, it's everyone in the program, also our partners, that I think other companies might use called suppliers, but we call them partners.

[00:31:49] JOS VOSKUIL:
It's a good point to mention this. Sometimes when I did consultancy they said you are a supplier, as if you are pro providing a product that has to be packed and wrapped. And yeah, the partner is what you want and you want to think together and, and come together to the solution.

[00:32:05] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And this is very linked to the language that you speak that our work it makes a difference. The difference in the, yeah, in the culture that you generate in the program, in the company.

[00:32:15] TORBEN PEDERSEN:
Yes.

[00:32:17] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Thank you Torben very much for this interesting episode. We have learned a lot on how important is managing the people side in a big implementation project.

And thank you very much to our listeners for tuning in.