The Company Road Podcast

E76 Milk the cow vs. Make the future: Your company’s commercial dilemma

• Chris Hudson • Episode 76

Share episode

Send us a text

“I realised, I'm just an arrogant tw@t that believes I know how to do things, but actually other people know how to do things as well, maybe even much better than I do. And that many solutions are based on context, on history, on future, on vision, on motivation, on setups, on ability, on all kinds of things. So there's no one solution to a problem. There are many, many solutions to a problem.” 

Andreas Moellmann

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

  • How different cultures approach change and innovation
  • Why companies get stuck repeating past successes
  • The horse race illusion of believing you have a winning method
  • The innovator's dilemma between milking existing profitable models versus investing in new technologies
  • The gap between developing solutions and getting organisations to accept and implement them
  • How company size, systems, and hierarchies impact flexibility and innovation capacity

Key links

About our guest 

Andreas helps brands and businesses get future-ready. A seasoned brand and marketing strategist with over 30 years experience in transformative roles from strategic planner to Chief Experience Officer at network agencies (Publicis, BBDO, DDB, Saatchi & Saatchi) and digital agencies (SapientNitro, Isobar) in Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo. His experience stretches from automotive, FMCG, consumer electronics and telecommunications to banking and insurance where he worked on Berliner Bank and Gothaer Versicherungen. 

Andreas’ focus lies in connecting brand and marketing thinking with technology to help brands and businesses succeed. His work has been recognised at global, European, and local effectiveness awards, as well as creative competitions such as Cannes. He serves as a judge at the APAC Effectiveness award and local competitions in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Pakistan. 

Today, Andreas provides his experience as an independent brand and marketing consultant across APAC. He currently lives in Bangkok.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneuship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.


For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/

Chris Hudson:

Hi there and welcome back to the Company Road Podcast. My name's Chris, and I'm really thrilled to be speaking with Andreas Moellmann, a brand marketing leader and a strategist who spent over 30 years helping organizations, helping brands and businesses get future ready. And he's a seasoned brand and marketing strategist, and so he's been working in this field for over 30 years in transformative roles from strategic planner to chief experience officer, and a lot of the big network agencies. So you're thinking Publicis, BBDO, DDB, Saatchi and Saatchi, as well as digital agencies. Sapient Nitro, Isobar, and he's also worked across a number of cities. So Berlin, London. Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo, and yeah, he's got a huge amount of experience. It stretches from automotive, FMCG, consumer electronics, telecommunications to banking, insurance. He worked in Berliner Bank and yeah, a number of different places and I. He's worked across all these cities. He's got a fascinating perspective on why corporations move slowly, which is what I wanna get into today. Why people move and jump into action instead of thinking things through and how AI is really changing the way that we understand problems, particularly today. It feels like a really relevant topic. So if you're someone who's trying to drive change in your organization, today's conversation is gonna hit differently and it's gonna be a really interesting one to get into. Andreas a huge welcome to the show.

Andreas Moellmann:

Thanks So. So for having me, always awesome to be here and very much to our conversation.

Chris Hudson:

Thanks, Andreas. And yeah, you've worked in all these places. Berlin, Hong, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai. Now you're in Bangkok. And yeah. I just wanna ask you maybe a general opening question, which is around what patterns are you seeing and how different corporate cultures in some of those places approach change? And why do some people resist change more than others? Do you think? That's a really open question.

Andreas Moellmann:

Yeah, that's a open question and a very big question. I guess we can spend our podcast on this topic and probably.

Chris Hudson:

You talk and I'll just go.

Andreas Moellmann:

I think the best way actually is like over 25 years ago, almost 30 years ago, when I moved away from Germany to Hong Kong, and that was my first stint outside, outside Germany and outside Europe. And I remember as a very personal story, I remember that I had a discussion with my wife about. Washing the clothes because in Hong Kong the washing machines are different. They wash with cold water and they move very slowly from Germany. We have Miele and we have like big, massive, gigantic metal built washing machines that have hot water. And I said, oh, the clothes cannot get clean like this. That's possible. We need a new washing machine. So of course we used the washing machine that was there and the clothes were fine, is a very little anecdote. Helped me, not just this, but being outside Germany, being outside Europe, being a different culture. That helped me to see that there are many ways how to solve problems, not just the ones that I'm used to. And I think ever since I'm fascinated by how people solve problems back then, I realized, okay, so I'm just a arrogant twat. That believes I know how to do things, but actually other people know how to do things as well, maybe even much better than I do. And that many solutions are based on context, on history, on future, on vision, on motivation, on setups, on ability, on all kinds of things, right? So there's now one solution to a problem. There are many solutions to a problem, and my job as a strategist is. To help find solutions that work better than, let's say the average solution. And for me, since then, I've been on this journey to understand how to solve problems and how actually help companies to solve their problems. I like to solve. And I think a lot of business problems, I actually. Down to marketing, and I define marketing very wide. If a CEO is not good in expressing his vision to his employees, and therefore they don't know really what to do, that is for me marketing. That is managing the market, managing everyone inside and outside in order to know why this company is doing what is doing, and most importantly, how to do it better. In this sense, I think a lot of issues that business have goes down to my broader definition of marketing, and I like to use my experience in order to help solve their business problem through marketing and ideally with solutions that work better than the average. A long answer to your question, and again, but we said already in the beginning, we could spend a lot of time on this. I think a lot of. Companies, their biggest challenges is that particularly have a little bit larger, that they had a streak of success. Those people who are responsible for the success or actually benefit from the success, they probably believe they have worked out a way on how to maintain their success because they have a certain trajectory, right? A repeat. The things that. I've been doing in the past, and that worked and I tried out for a long time to get it work. It didn't work, and now it works. So now I have to basically milk the cow and do more of it because that is finally the way of how to be successful. And I think I'm an entrepreneur myself. I'm working as a consultant on my own, and I'm doing the same. I'm trying to figure out, have to do it right, and once I figure out, then I will be very happy and I will just continue repeating it. The fallacy potentially here is. That even though you figure out or you believe you have figured out why you're successful, that might change. And just because you've been successful once or twice or three times or five or 10 times, it doesn't mean that you were su successful 11 times. It doesn't mean that you actually have figured out that there even is a certain. Method that leads to success. There is, I think there's a, maybe you've heard about Derren Brown. Derren Brown, yeah. I, Derren Brown. Yeah. Illusionist and Awesome. He brings, brings together hypnosis, illusion, mental, he's also called, I think he calls himself a mentor. It's one episode where it's called the horse race and. He's calling this woman, I believe, and said randomly he doesn't know her, and he calls her and said, Hey, on Saturday there is a horse race bet on horse number two. I give you money, I give you 50 bucks. Take the 50 bucks and put on horse number two. Right? And she wins, right? So next weekend he calls her again and said, look, I have the next horse, right? It's number five. And she wins, right? And she, he does it 3, 4, 5 times, right? And she wins. She wins. And then he calls her and said, okay, look, I have another horse, but this time I want to tell you my method. So bring all your money. Bring all the money that you get. We meet at the races. I bet. I take the money, I bet on the horse. And while the race is going, I tell you how my method works, right? Okay. She says she's excited. She gets my, I think she gets 20,000 pounds a loan from her parents or something. So it brings all the money that she has, Debbie, the horses, she ends over the money and he goes away, puts it on a be right, comes back and say, okay, now the race starts now. Now he's explaining all the. Six months ago, I called 20,000 people and I told them, bet on horse number one, horse number two, horse number three, and horse number four. And I gave them all some money, right? And then there was a bunch of them, 5,000 people they won, right? Because they bet on the rise horse. So I caught the 5,000 people. For the next race. And I told them that on horse number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then there were a thousand people who won. Right? So you are the one who went actually through all the six kind of phases of winning and losing. And you are the only one out of the 20,000 people who actually won all, all these six. And I have no idea which horse is gonna win. And she's a bit disbelieving. And then basically the horse is not winning, but he's coming back and saying, oh look, I. I didn't bet on any horse, here's your money, don't worry about it. He said, look, the reason why I did this is that people think because they're successful, they think they have a method, they think they have an advantage over others. But the reality is this is like a system and it's like you might be the one that wins, right? And you might be the one that wins again and again. You're just like the lady in the horse races. At some point you won't win. And it's just luck because you can try hard and it's good to try, and the more you try, the more chances of success you have. But that is chances of success. That is not creating success. This is not you in charge of what's happening, right? A large part of this is actually being sensitive to what's happening and adjusting to change all the time, and actually taking in and trying and learning from it in order to adjust of what's happening rather than believing. You are successful. So again, long story coming back to your original question. I think a lot of companies, because it's hard to be successful, once they found success, they stick to their methods of success and it carries and it has a certain trajectory because there was a reason why. It was sticking in the first place and the other things before, not right. But then I think the challenge is to realize, oh, but things are constantly changing. So what stuck now might not stick tomorrow, might change. Might not change. So I need to maintain this flexibility. I need to be able to constantly adjust my methods, my learning, my way of looking at the world, my way of how do I actually contribute to the, I think that's where I think a lot of challenges are wherever you go, really, and I've been in many different places, many different cultures, and it's just human nature. It's human nature to somewhat stick to the things that make you feel good and believe the story that you're telling about yourself, that you're successful and you correct it, and that you just. Continue running it, and from this moment on, you're just trying to maintain that story because you were waiting and hoping for the story for such a long time that finally, when you find it, you just wanna stick to it. You don't wanna question it just in the moment when you just feel you're successful and saying, oh, maybe it wasn't me, or maybe it was something different. So I think this kind of. View and realization, this perspective and this openness to not attribute success to me or myself or my methods, but actually being open to realize, yeah, I tried and this one it stick, but I. I don't know how long. I don't know why, really. I just go with it and I won't be disappointed when it doesn't work because I want to do the next thing. I want to learn more.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are lots of things within that story that I find interesting and I feel like I. In the story of either you being in control or not being in control because it's down to luck. The common ground might be around tenacity and perseverance, and that could be a unifying theme because if you are determined to make it succeed, then in the end, most people would think you would succeed, particularly in a business sense.'cause you, you've got the tenacity to see it through. A lot of people don't get to that point, and that's why entrepreneurship is so, is practiced and conceived in lots of different ways, obviously, and people get as far as they can and then they may take a corner or they might stop, right? The same thing happens with intrapreneurship, like within an organization and this podcast about intrapreneurship. People are getting as far as they can. But if they hit the wall or if they come and go up against obstacles, then they're most likely to either change their tactic, stop. So yeah, it is an interesting one about how much control you feel you have personally over the situation versus what might be influenced by others or even just down to pure luck.'cause you were putting it just before.

Andreas Moellmann:

I think there are many stories I, I don't know, it might be. More of an urban myth, but yeah, you might remember in the eighties there was this big battle. You might not remember. I'm not sure whether our listeners remember in the eighties and when there was a big fight between, I think it was video 2000 VHS, and. Yeah, and so which was the fight was, which becomes the prevalent, dominating video format and globally, and apparently the reason why VHS worked, so the best quality, I think was, I think video. That's

Chris Hudson:

why all the ad agents using,

Andreas Moellmann:

and, but, and so VHS was an inferior technology and quality, but. The VVHS was, I don't know anymore who was responsible for which format, but apparently, and again, I don't know whether it's an urban myth, VHS was the only format that allowed porn, whereas all the other two formats did not allow and did not collaborate with porn producers. And apparently that content, that was the main driver. For the success of the video format. So it wasn't the quality, it wasn't the technology, it was the content, which nowadays, if you tell the story, you would say, yeah, of course the content rules, everything is content. You have great content things. It's not the platform, it's the content that actually makes the platform successful. But back then, I think that was a very new thing. I think here, who would, in hindsight, you can explain and say, yeah, of course content. But in that situation, I don't think anyone would've for been able to foresee that something. And again, it doesn't matter whether the story is true or not. What matters is that this is a common kind of process of business thinking. You develop a piece of technology, so you focus on the qualities and the benefits of this technology, but you're probably not focusing on the content that actually makes this. Technology actually valuable for people, right? Because they're actually not looking so much for the quality and for the pixels. They're looking for what is actually, what can actually watch with that, right? I think for me, that's also a good example how. Anyway, it's a bit of the black swan thing, right? You don't know what you don't know, and therefore you don't know where it's coming from. Now you can learn from the past and you can say, let's also put this on the checklist that we're sure that we actually cover this. But there might be something outside your real or perception outside of what you define your category is about that actually defines whether your category or whatever you're doing in the category is successful or not. And I think that's why one. That that is, I think a big barrier when it comes to change for companies is to be able to look outside their reals of what they think, defining the industry, being open-minded in terms of, and getting people in that have no idea about whether they're smart people, but who have a wide perspective of the world and, and can then look inside your industry and say, and other industries that might be interesting or what about this, or what about that? So you keep going in terms of how can I evolve this, that, that you not, that you're not get stuck into something. The automotive industry basically. The European and US automotive industry, they just got stuck with, uh, combustibles. Right. And even though Tesla showed them the way forward, they ignored it. Even though the EU said, you, you're not supposed to sell combustibles in now six years anymore. They still. Could not put enough sufficient effort into EVs and got basically pushed aside by the Chinese. I, I remember I was working for Mercedes-Benz back then, was one of my clients. Yeah. And I, I, I, you know, it, it didn't take. Ev serious because for them there were no cars. It, they didn't smell like cars. They didn't feel like cars. They're just different. There's no cars. But that happens if you have a lot of, of automotive nerds working in your company because they are there for this specific reason. They're looking inwards and they're specialists for this, and they're super good at this. They can't look beyond that because they're not interested in looking beyond, they're interested in this thing. That's why they're specialists, right?

Chris Hudson:

Yeah, yeah.

Andreas Moellmann:

Yeah. So I think you can find a lot of these examples. I work for a lot of, quite some automotive brands. I. I was never really interested in cars, to be honest. I was always interested in why other people are interested in cars because that's what I wanna understand. I wanna understand why they are feeling so strongly about it, whereas I don't really feel much about it. That's just a thing for me that gets me from A to B. And some are nicer and some are not. And some are luxury and so are not. Fundamentally, it's not my thing and in a way because it's not my thing, but I'm interested in why it's other people's thing that allows me, I believe, to see things that other people wouldn't see because they just wouldn't look at it. They just wouldn't be interested in that they, they're either in it or they're not, and they're in it. Then they're just feel, yeah, of course it is in it because I'm in it, so we're all in it. But they all then see just the thing that makes them being in it. They don't see anything outside or what might change. The thing that they.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that point. It really lands us into that situation of people's self-worth, really within an organization and their feeling of capacity, capability, skill, pride in their work obviously, and willingness for change is, can be quite deeply rooted in something that. Somebody feels incredibly pleased with the work that they've done so far, but they wouldn't necessarily change it completely and start making EVs, so you and I wouldn't do that in our line of work either. Probably. We might try, but I think there's interesting dynamics there where organizations are written in how they operate. Efficiencies with productivity in mind and systemic constructs that has to be set up for it to become profitable. But that becomes, its very constraint because everything is then written in that footprint. Your job description for your next hire will be written in the way that is built around the role that already exists, and how are we gonna start assessing people for the lateral thinking and how much is too much and what's comfortable and what's not comfortable. How do we kind of design for this maneuverability, do you think, in the organizational sense?

Andreas Moellmann:

Yeah, I think you mentioned it. There's a certain fairness in particular larger companies and corporations not being so flexible, agile and dynamic. And the fairness I see is if there wouldn't be, so if large corporations will be very flexible and agile and dynamic, there wouldn't be any point for startups to do their job because they would do the job right. And that's that fairness. I, I believe, also explain to a certain extent, first of all, I think with quantity changes, quality. So if you up to a certain point, the nature of what it is that you're doing will have to change. It's just the way things are. If you build a hangar for airplanes, large enough. Then it will develop its own weather. And so it's naturally that with quantity, the quality is changing to a certain extent. I think a lot of companies are aware of it, which means to some, to larger, some to not to smaller extent. They focus on their culture, they focus on their ways of doing things in order to preserve their culture, which also makes sense. Like you say, okay, we believe it's our culture that actually allows us to get here. We need to produce Google and our Amazon. We believe we need to replicate this and preserve this, but again, also by. That approach, you narrow it down. So you believe you have found a way of success that leads you there. So you preserve that way of success. And in some cases, this works again, as is the horse race model. Of course, there are certain aspects that. It attracts certain caliber of talent, having certain environments that are better than in comparison to other companies. So there are certain benefits that probably propagate innovation and progress and so on, but still, if you have a certain size, you will have to, whether you want it or not. Bring in certain systems and by bringing in defining certain systems, that means you lock yourself down. You cannot shift anymore as fast as you want because that is a contradiction in terms. So you cannot have systems that be flexible because you cannot have a flexible system. So either as a system or not a system, either as a way of working or not. So there is a NPS. You can try, but you gain some, you lose some, and that maybe is the other thing. What's your focus in terms of gaining and losing, right? If you want to milk the cow more, you make your systems more rigid. If you want to still leave some flexibility, you make the system a little bit more vague, maybe it may becomes more guard rails in the system. But again. There will be limitations, and I think this is somewhat fair and only makes sense. I think one way to how corporations can avoid that is in a way very simply by not becoming big. Now there are ways of not becoming big, if you wish, for example, by structuring your company in little independent units and building incubators. Phillips, for example, set up a lot of, is one of the largest research institutes in Europe. And they had this whole system of open innovation. So they said the campus is open. Any company can come here and set up an office because we want to work with others together. We want that influence and research and having a water cooler conversation where two people meet that never would met and they said, Hey, I have this, and hey, you have that and why don't we do this together? So you can set up something. But then you set up a system that. Prevents you from being big if you wish. So you trying to offset becoming a corporation, you prevent to become a corporation. I think that is a good way of maintaining a certain open-mindedness and being influenced with ideas. But that's not enough. I think I. It's not enough because for example, jumping a little bit here, if I look at Japan, I think the Japanese are very innovative. They have, and I think part of the reason, I believe is because of the rigid social structures. So people look for outlets and so they trying to find solutions for just about everything. If you go to a Daiso Daiso is like a Japanese store.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah.

Andreas Moellmann:

Uh uh. You find in Japan you can basically. Maintain your entire life just at Daiso, you don't need anything else. And everything just costs a hundred y what is that now? 60 cents or something like this. And do you find solutions for just about everything? They still have ca cassettes for, yeah. Yeah. I think you can still buy them and Daiso you can still buy if you need it.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah, yeah,

Andreas Moellmann:

exactly. So they still have these kind of things. So I think you, you wouldn't even know where to get them today. So. Again, solutions for just about everything. And when you go into a er, you actually discover how many things in your life need fixing. You didn't know because you haven't thought that this is a problem, but once you walk through a er, you f, oh, there's a solution for a problem that I didn't know that I have, or maybe I should try that.

Chris Hudson:

That's what IKEA did as well. There are plenty of retailers doing that all the time, and that's the magic of walking through a store and picking up. The amount of.

Andreas Moellmann:

Japanese business culture and actually where Japan is as an economy, on a global scale, you don't see much innovation. You don't see much. You saw a lot of, in the nineties, eighties, nineties, Japan was super innovative, very powerful. And then the bubble bursts. And I think once the bubble bursts, Japanese business leaders said, okay, we have to preserve the status quo. Now. We don't wanna sink any deeper. Our job now is just to maintain things as they are. And that's, that's what we do, and that's what they're doing today. This is nice saying that. Japan has been in the year 2000 for the last 40 years, and I think this describes it perfectly. They were so well ahead and now they're so far behind now, it doesn't seem, they're far behind everything. Functions is awesome. It's really great. Everything is working'cause Daiso fixes everything. Um, yes, but, but again, on the global level, they, they're just not, there's not much innovation coming through from Japan. And I think one reason is that there's lots of innovation in Japan, but it doesn't bubble up. To the surface, the systems that they have in place, the way that they work, the way they evaluate ideas and so on, prevents them to actually having innovation coming through the world stage. Again, I'm generalizing and, and stereotyping. You will find Japanese companies who are not like this, no question, but by and large as an economy at think, that's my perception, that one reason why there is innovation. It's just not coming up. I. So this is another thing that, that I think it's a very big challenge for organizations is how to enable, you mentioned earlier intrapreneurs, right? How to enable intrapreneurs to actually do their job, because CEOs often have a good idea of what's required, but they're solve for the company to progress and evolve. But they're often so far detached from the real work and there's so many hierarchies, particular with large, larger corporations that the layers that are there, that vision, that requests is just not filtering through. You know what basically ends up within the system is maintenance prevention, status preservation. It's, I think, is this, how do. This is again, a very big challenge for larger organizations and somewhat a fair one. How do you stop to reward people from preserving the status quo? And that question is already a contradiction in terms because if I want to make money and I have a successful. IE myself with good margins, business model. Why would I not want to preserve the status quo? Mercedes and many other global car makers, they make money with combustibles and they make very good money. Mercedes has record sales in combustibles, not in, yeah. Why would they divest? Why would they actually, how could they tell their own people to say, Hey, you do a great job. We're selling talk, but we don't wanna sell that stuff anymore because that's not our future. We know what the future is. And now it's laid out. We have written it. We're a mobility company, now we're not of our cars anymore. And they say. Are you kidding me? I I just, the record says you just as ragged profits and you just wanna ditch that. So it's, that is a dilemma, I think in tech is called the innovator's dilemma. One, when do you actually divest on your legacy technology and when do you start investing fully into the new technology, into your innovations? So a Tesla doesn't have these problems because they don't have legacy right there. There's nothing to, there's no status quo tool. To preserve. They can just fully, and they know they have to fully commit to the new thing and that becomes their advantage. Now. They have other problems to solve, no question. But there's the upside. The upside is finding something that works through this kind of rigging with reality of the things that don't work, and finally have something that does work and then boom. Right?

Chris Hudson:

Yeah.

Andreas Moellmann:

And I think this, this shifting of perspective, I think that is the biggest challenge for a corporation to get done because if shareholders want their money, and if the CEO said, ah, we forget about this combustibles now we are fully, we're committed to EVs, we ditch this. Now we're not just EVs, we only make mobility. Now we're getting into bicycles and we're getting into change and we actually developing ecosystems around mobility and so on. And so we say, okay, fire this guy, hire the previous CEO who was running the show perfectly, and we make shit loads of money, right.

Chris Hudson:

Is what happens. This is what happens. It's the same with government, which changes every few years as well. Companies are trying to align with what conditions are there and what presents, and unless there's a higher level order of influence that comes in and there's an agenda for climate change and sustainability and the. There are other things that do play a role in some of those decisions as well, but it feels like organizations would just be milking the cow as you were putting it just before. I did see a product strategy model from, I think it was like Elon Musk before he went unpopular. This was going back 10 years or something. I. It was juxtaposing the standard progression of a product into market from one iteration to a better version, to a better version. That was just going up the scale like that, and the Elon Musk model was basically to circumnavigate that pivot at the start and then just get to a higher level outcome without any of those incremental steps essentially. I think you may have seen the model, but yeah, it's within everyone's day-to-day role as an Intrapreneur, how do we make that possible? Because not that you want emulate Elon Musk in, in. Everything, it feels like there. There've gotta be some side steps here for the bigger step to be made. Otherwise it's all gonna be incremental and constrained and, and not innovative. So what do you think?

Andreas Moellmann:

Yeah, I have a few thoughts on this. Very different ones. I think maybe one way. I think the first thing that comes to my mind is actually humbleness, developing more humbleness to where you are, wherever you are, because. Uh, unless you are in, in, I don't know, in a prison or something, you know, I'll probably doing okay. You might not do as, as well as you want to, as you envisioned it or whatever, but you're probably doing okay. Right? And so humbleness in terms of. Gratefulness for where you are right now, and that where you are right now isn't really just your doing, it's mostly the doing of other people because the other people that allowed you to be there, that supported you, that enabled you, yeah. That, that gave you opportunities that I don't know fed you so. There is no one person who makes success. That's impossible. It's a huge group of people who make success and who one who represents it is just that. It's the person who represents it. Now, if that person was a very smart person and had chairs and blah, blah, blah, that might be also a very rich person. But fundamentally, it's all the other people that actually made it happen in some way. So their humbleness in terms of recognizing where you are today. It's actually a blessing and there's no guarantee that you will be there tomorrow as well. Right now if you're tomorrow not there, of course you want to, you wanna strive that most people want, right? That's absolutely fine. We should strive because it's life is short and we want to experience things and we want to experience particular our own talents and so on. So by any means, strive, try, but don't set your expectations too high and be disappointed if things are not working because that's just not helping it. It won't get you in any better place. So that's why in, in a nutshell, humbleness, I think is a very good prerequisite in order to bring in new things, be it change, be it innovation, be it progress, whatever. Can I ask on that point

Chris Hudson:

just quickly address, have you seen that manifest really well in in any of the cultures that you've been working? Have you seen it in play out within organizations successfully in some way?

Andreas Moellmann:

No, I, that's a good, a great question. I've seen the opposite. Most of my time I've been working in ad agencies and ad agencies, I. The opposite. Yeah, they maybe less so today, to be honest, but particular I think 20 years ago, a successful agency was driven by. Gigantic egos. Yeah. Um, because people who are egocentric are great in selling stuff because they want the feedback. They don't even care about the sell. They care about being great and being seen by others being great. Yeah. It has worked so well in the old days of advertising particular to have great egos. Making great things, of course, to the detriment of anyone else because everyone else is just a, just a slave to the big ego to make shit happen. And with this whole notion of kind of greatness and magic came this whole idea, we can solve everything. We're just, we're just geniuses and that just don't see it. And that that came together with this. Complete ignorance of reality, like business reality, just, we just, great. All we need is a great pitch and a great idea, and then we're just fucking great

Chris Hudson:

a piece of paper. Few pens, we'll fix it. We'll work it out. Yeah,

Andreas Moellmann:

exactly. We'll, yeah, exactly right. Yeah. And this, if you see this today is like with a little bit more experience and a bit distance as well, you see how this, how huge the disconnect is of agencies and their clients. How often. Agency, the agency world and the client world marketing client agency world, they're basically never overlap. There is nothing that they actually do together, apart from doing some ads.

Chris Hudson:

So I think there was some lunch in the middle part, I think. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Our season lunch in the middle. Yeah. Yeah.

Andreas Moellmann:

The publications are different. Awards are different, meetings are different. They're all in different worlds. And the trouble is that's totally fine for the client because they have the money. But for us as service providers, it's really surprising how little we actually play in the world of our clients, given that our job is to help them and to be successful and to work for them. And I think this leads to be this level of, unfortunately. I work with more, yeah, digital agencies, particular, those that are more, can I say platform oriented? My impression was they're just much more down to earth. They're just more. Problem solutions focus, they, because there is a mix of technology and engagement that needs to happen in order to make a platform work. So I think in a way, maybe to more generalize it, I think the closer businesses to their people, actually to the customers, I think the more humble they become, the more real also they become because they, if you focus on. On, on the person that you actually work for. I think you are much, you're much better in picking up what your role is and in, in, in a good way and also in a bad way in terms of, in more realistic way, not in some kind of hairy fairy fancy I in illusionary way. Yeah. I'm reminded on, I once, when I was living in Hamburg, we had this bakery. The corner. And in this bakery there was woman working, selling bread. And when you came to So weird, but I still remember this very vividly when you. Entered the store and wanted to buy bread. She said, hello, how are you? This great. How can I have it to her? She gave you the sense that she was just waiting for you to enter the shop and buy something and she has, she owed happiness to, to basically sell you some bread and it was just such a pleasure. Sister, you, I love to go there and buy bread. No, I just said the bread was. Pretty okay. It was not great, but pretty. Okay. But I to go there, not for the bread. I go, I went there. I need bread. I need bread, right? I need decent bread. Was decent bread, but I love to go there just for the interaction with her. She was just awesome.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. You were the first one there. You were the first one there at 4:00 AM when the bakery opened and you got the welcome and then they got the bread. They opened up pretty early though. Bakeries. Yes,

Andreas Moellmann:

but you get good bread and I'm a sucker for good bread. Unfortunately, she got me there. But no, she got me for the service. She got me for actually giving me the sense that she cared about me very simply. And I. I dunno, my, my sense was she enjoyed her job, whether she really did, I don't know. But at least it came across like this. I think maybe there's, the other thing is also basic. If you enjoy what you're doing, you're usually good at it, right? Because you enjoy what you're doing. So I think. Being Sure. Am I doing, am I, do I like what I'm doing? And if I don't like what I'm doing, how can I put myself into a position to, to what I'm doing? What needs to change? Because if I like what I'm doing, I will be doing better stuff. Right? And I think organizations who allow that to happen and maybe even. Who foster it, who support it, who, who basically help people to get there. I think that's probably environment who perform better in the long run, simply because they're more, you have people who are actually motivated in what they're doing.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah.

Andreas Moellmann:

Another thought that on this topic, how do you get there is to maybe think and be more mindful about yourself, be more mindful about. Why you think, what you think, question yourself, not, not in a, oh, am I right? Am I wrong way? This is not about uncertainty. It's not about building insecurity into yourself. It's more about, oh, how did I derive to that opinion? Is there a bias or fallacy that I've been doing? Is there another way to think about this? The washing machine is there. Is there a different way of washing cloths? And I still get to a great result, right? I think being exposed for me, being exposed to different cultures, being thrown into different situations. Like when we moved to Japan seven years ago, that was, I don't speak Japanese. I had some dealings with Japanese companies before I worked for Den, indirectly, but out of Europe, I never lived there. So being thrown into this culture and trying to work out things, that's just awesome. I love that. I love to. So just like, how do I do this? How do they do that? Why do they do it the way they do it? And because I feel this is where I can learn, where I can enrich my horizon, where I can also, I. Question myself of how do I believe things should be in order to work and how they could be, for example. Right? And it's in a way, it's the harder way. Maybe there's another way of looking at it. Try to avoid the easy route if you can, because the harder route. It's not necessarily the better route in terms of the result, but, and it's probably the route that that takes more energy, more efforts and so on, but it's the learning on the way that probably are the most valuable ones. And that might get you actually to, to a better result. I, I think for me it's not even deriving, just getting the better solution is the process of deriving there. That is actually so interesting because if you don't, if you don't learn on the process, you just. You just have a genie. You can say, oh, he has a better solution. And then I think this is, maybe we can talk about this later about ai. That's the danger that I see in that if you just have a genie, just say, oh, here's a better solution. I say, oh yeah, that's a better solution. But you never really understood why that is a better solution. You have not, there was no need to go through process of develop that solution to, to comprehend what the solution is in any way, doing better or not, or mid doing or whatever. So you just accept it as the better solution. You're not learning, which means next time when you have a problem, you can't apply your learning because you haven't learned anything. So you, you don't become a better problem solver. You just stay on the level. Wherever you are, you, so you're not improving it. And that's seeing and understanding. Being interested in the problem in order to develop a solution, being honest to yourself and also to your colleagues and also to your company about what is really the problem here. I think that is one of the biggest challenges, that being simply honest about what's the problem here. I often have the sense that, and I'm contradicting myself a little bit, but. Seeing the problem isn't really so difficult for an outsider because an outsider just looks at it and say, ah, okay, you guys not talking to each other. Why? Why don't you just talk to each other? Then that seems to be the problem. But then that's not really the problem, that actually just the symptom, because the problem is. Personalities, his structures, his responsibilities is maybe deeply ingrained into the organization so you can easily get the solution, right? Yeah. You got the C talk that solution, but what's the problem? That is really the often the harder of it and actually solving that. It's a bit like I just started to re reread the Hitchhiker's guy through the galaxy. Coming to coming up with 42 is actually. It is not, if you have more experience and you're interested, it is actually not so difficult. Right? It's, it's going back to what the question was. What, how does that originate? How do you actually implement that solution into the environment that actually created that problem? I think that's often where the work is and, and that's also how I feel as a strategist is coming up with a strategy in itself is often. Is maximum half the work, the other half of the work is actually helping other people to accept that strategy as the right way to go, right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And then, and maybe there's even more than 50%, and maybe, I think because as things are getting more and more complex, you gotta onboard more people. More departments have to see. How to interpret it. So it is doing this work on actually helping other people to see things the way you see it, and that they actually. Absorb and internalize your point of view, your way of solving the problem as their way of solving the problem. And I think that is often, that's easier in, in smaller environment and startups where, where everyone is just looking for solutions and everyone is just craving for, let's just try. But in. Established corporations where divisions are and departments are involved, or departments have to have certain responsibilities, who have certain KPIs to fulfill that, that might be a much, much bigger challenge. So I think there are, maybe to wrap this up, there are two perspectives broadly, I think one is your own internal perspectives, how you can see things, how you can see yourself, how you can see your role and your capabilities, and. Your shortcomings. And I think the more you get aware of your shortcomings, the better you can work on them and actually become better in what you're doing. And the other thing is the organization that you deal with, the challenges that organization has and yeah, and how you actually can engage their organization in helping them to overcome their problems in order to actually realize the solutions that seem to be maybe easy for you, but very difficult and hard for them.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah, very nicely put. I think there's, particularly in the second area, and AI is maybe clouding this area a little bit too because it's not so much the problem space that is being explored. It is more solution orientated and it's a bias towards doing, over understanding the steps that would lead to the solution, as you were saying. So. If it can be done in five seconds as opposed to five weeks or five months, then people are gonna try it just to see, oh, I'm a little bit curious. I'm gonna see what it says. I'll pop it in and and see what comes out. So I, yeah, I wonder how much appetite there, there still will be for understanding the problem space and also. Not the problem space for in relation to the solution. Maybe it's a custom problem or the solution that you're trying to create, but also the problem space that sits within the organization and is, it's embedded and it's ingrained within that culture and really knowing if I've got this solution, then how would it successfully roll out? Interested to hear your thoughts. Maybe finally as we wrap this up, just around the strategy and what makes strategy work and how to bring about that, that feeling of, yeah, we're all in this together and the strategies. Strategy's gonna be great and it's, it's being lived and breathed by other people other than you or I, because people are on board with it. So what do you think works?

Andreas Moellmann:

Yeah, good question. If only I would know.

Chris Hudson:

Still finding out.

Andreas Moellmann:

So I, so I worked in, I would say in, in in markets where strategy is, and strategic planning is highly regarded in the uk and I worked in markets where I think there's no. Comprehension really what strategic planning is. And that for me would probably be Japan of all places. And then there are a lot of markets in between. Germany, weirdly, particularly when it comes to marketing, is actually not very strong in my point of view. And I was pondering about why that is. I think one reason is that Germans. German culture is very engineer driven. They love, and this is similar to the Japanese way because they just love to touch things and strategy is difficult to touch. Yeah, it's, it's something intangible, virtual, theoretical, and. If there would be a nice way to make this practical, I think certainly Germany and probably also Japan would have much better access to it. But Germany and Japan deal very differently with this dilemma. But I can come to this in a second. I think the, first of all, I fear that strategy is very hard. To understand. Everyone has their own definition of what that actually is. And so have I have my own definition? I thought you might, and my, my, my definition is try to make it as simple as possible is to basically solving a problem, right? That's the strategy. It's a way of how to solve a problem. And the problem for me is something where you hear and you want to be there. So if you want just A to B, so strategy for me is a way of getting from A, which is your current situation to B, which is a future situation, right? Usually there's something. That prevents that to happen because otherwise it would already be and B, but this is why you're an A. And so strategy is a way of how to get to overcome whatever prevents you from getting from A to B. And a good strategy for me is doing this particularly well. A particularly well means best time, less resource, cheaper, faster, easier, whatever. Right? For me, in a nutshell, is good strategy. That seems sounds easy, but once you drill deeper, it becomes actually. Everyone would probably, if you go in a business environment, everyone would say, do you have a strategy? You say, of course I have a strategy. Do you need a strategy? You say, yeah, of course we need a strategy, but then they wouldn't really know what that is. And for me it's finding a way of getting from A to B and then having A and b. Fairly well defined as objectives, measure objectives, and then actually here it becomes debatable. Strategy is, for me, a way of working. So you have a team actually agree and line up to go from A to B, right? And determine what their role is in order to get from A to B according to the strategy that you have agreed. Sounds easy, but I think in reality it's really not because, and that goes back to larger organizations, particular, but also individuals. Everyone has their own objectives. Everyone has their own metrics. Everyone has their own, maybe even contractually defined, uh, KPIs in order to get their bonuses and so on and so on. So if the team is not aligned. That they're here and A, and they want to get to B and that this is the way how to get there, then the strategy is not going to work out because they will all try to get from A to B in their own terms. And and, and maybe they even define B as C or D and E rather than b. I think that is fundamentally a big challenge in Japan, for example. My experience was this doesn't work very well because the way Japanese businesses make decisions is based on relationships. Japanese businesses want to maintain their relationship. They don't want, they wanna maintain the status quo and therefore the relationship. And so when they see. They're in front of a decision. They're asking themselves how would that impact our relationships with the infrastructure that we are having? And if it has an impact, that's not a good decision. It might be a good way from getting for A to B, so it might be great strategy, but it endangers my relationships and therefore I'm not going this way, which means relationships are much more important. Achieving objectives in Japan is my overall learning, and that makes it so hard to work strategically in Japan. So I think that is, and. That class a certain, in particular in Asia Pacific. My impression is still businesses are very tactical rather than strategically, so they're looking into shorter midterm results and, and, and focusing, particularly now it seems to be everyone is again, scared of recession. We've been scared of recession for, I don't know, three years now, and still not here. Everyone's waiting. When is it? Finally happened. I think that would be a big relief if that finally recession, so we can be done with it, but it's just not happening. Businesses are preparing. There's again, this maintaining the status quo rather than, and actually having short-term incremental gains rather than doing strategic leaps into the future or building something for a long-term future.'cause they wouldn't really know whether the CMO is still there in three years time. So this is short term, quick success in order to have something to show. I think that is one of the issues when it comes to strategies and how strategy actually. Works or doesn't work within the region.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Great. Thanks so much. If people wanna get in touch with you, ask a question, have a chat, what's the best way to reach you?

Andreas Moellmann:

My best way is probably LinkedIn. Yeah. I'm not so much on social media. My only poison is Reddit, but I'm not on Facebook and Reddit love, I must say. But yeah, I think when it comes to business, LinkedIn is probably the best way.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Great. Thank you very much for the conversation, Andreas. It's really appreciated you coming onto the show and, and sharing your views from all the countries you've lived in. And yeah, hopefully get a chance to talk again soon. And yeah, if you haven't met Andreas, then feel free to get in touch with him as well. So thanks everyone, and we'll leave it there.