Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hello there, I'm John Rhine and you're very welcome to the next edition of the Work Healthy podcast.
I love when people do things differently, when they reimagine a way of doing something that is better. For so long, the only way of designing a business was seen as operating as a hierarchy. Well, today's guest tried something new. Nicholas Hedden, CEO of Sentiro in Sweden, decided to operate his business as a holacracy with self managing teams. Many thought it might work in a small business when he had 60 employees. But Sentiro is a leader in their industry now and currently employs over 650 people across eight countries. They're pretty unique. They have no growth targets, they have no financial budgets, they have virtually no managers as we know them, and they have very few controls. So today we get under the bonnet of Sentiro and chat about sustainability, unlocking employees, skill set, building trust, inter organizational connectivity and the importance of Fika. I first asked Nicholas where his passion for disruption came from.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: I think if I can only say one thing about myself, it's a core of curiosity. I've always been curious to find things out and I'm not sort of stopping until I can. And I always find the next question in that. So for me, when I started out in tech, which is, well, about 30 years ago, 25 years plus, I realized fairly quickly that it was never about it or the technology itself. It was always about whenever we looked at a success or something that was not successful, it was always about people. That made me curious, how does this thing with people work? And then started to sort of dive into that, which is an enormous space, of course. So I would say curiosity has been my driver all the time and it never ends. There's always something more to be found out, always something surprising to learn.
So there's a curiosity and learning mindset belongs together. Right. So there's always the next thing to explore and to see how we can uncover an idea or take it to the next step, et cetera. But people have been at the core for what I've been doing in the last sort of 20, 30 years or so.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: I'm trying to remember the last time we spoke. I think you mentioned your dad did some writing in this area too. Did he? So has he been a big inspiration for you?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: I think in several ways, yes.
So when he retired, he wrote 12 books. I don't know if I'm going to repeat that feat. But he was curious about what made in this case, Swedish great, companies great. So he wrote about things that we know well, now, the flat package from ikea, the Allen wrench, there are a number of inventions that come from.
And the roller bearing with skf, things like that. Right. So he was curious to find out what was the story behind who were the people involved and what did they do.
So he was a journalist at heart, a trained journalist at heart, and he then went on to have several different aspects of his professional life. But I guess that what I take from him as an inspiration is to don't let the curiosity, I mean, let the curiosity carry on. If you need to call somebody to find out what happened or what's going on, just pick up the phone, don't make it. And he kind of, I guess both him and my mother instilled in me, how do you say, a lack of fear to contact somebody. Which means that if you work in a global setting, if you work with people in various degrees, I'm never scared to talk to people, which is a real benefit in many, many, many, many cases. So there are a number of things I take as an inspiration, but I would say that is one of them. The fearlessness of. And the thought that you can always reach out and you'll find something out.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: It's an interesting one because one of the things we find from talking to a lot of CEOs who are running businesses is that they actually privately will tell you that it's quite an isolating role in some ways. You know, you get to the top and you can't kind of maybe have conversations with everybody that you used to have conversations with at those relationships. And they struggle to connect with other CEOs. And more than ever, I think I'm sensing with the speed of change in the marketplace that they need to do that more. They need to build their network and they need to talk to touch base with people to find out what's. What's going on.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah, And I talked to a. I had the benefit of talking to a CIO COO. He's running an operation with 100, 150,000 people or so in it, so fairly substantial footprint. And I asked him, so how do you stay connected? How do you, like, keep yourself grounded and learn?
How do you get things sifting through your fingers, so to say? And he then said, well, I. When I walk the floor and I talk to people, that's when it happens. And I think that's true. And you're absolutely right that in the C level role, you can absolutely. Either you have a design already or you put a design in place which shields you from A lot of things.
So you get what I would refer to as negative filtering going on, which means that you don't really see the signals, you don't hear the signals of what's going on. And people will then also perhaps sort of in good spirit, they will protect you from signals as well. Which means it gets awfully difficult to know what's going on if you're in that role. Which is exactly why you need to talk to people. You need to.
I love to walk around. I love to just hang out at the coffee machine and talk to somebody who's walking by and combine the formal moments with informal moments because that's how I get in contact with what's really going on.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: And that obviously is a good lead into where I would have come across you first was your passion for sort of saying we got to think differently about how we do business and how work gets done. And that started off with a discussion around organizational design and sort of saying does everybody have to run a business by hierarchy? Is there another way to do it? So could you talk a little bit about your findings in that regard?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Absolutely. This is a passion because I found out that what was a very good idea to lay rest railroad tracks in the beginning of the 1900s across the US is perhaps not equally good idea this century in a knowledge based industry or another. Well, a lot of industries are knowledge based these days. It's not the same thing. So the functional divide which the Ford factory in those times became famous for, the time optimization functional breakdown we optimize on a functional very detailed level led to departments and we can hear in the name department depart ments. So we depart things from each other. Right. And now we're in a time where we need to collaborate for many, many reasons. Being an interconnected world with high speed market development is one of the key reasons, I would say. And so much uncertainty going on that there is no single person who will have all the knowledge. You really need a combined set of knowledge. I think a lot of business leaders would tend to agree. And yet we have this hierarchy concept from which is very, very old. I mean it's as old as mankind in fact. But if you look to more modern organizational theory, hierarchy is just one of the five, six various different ways you can design an organization around. And yet it's the predominant. It's the absolute dominant when it taught at business schools and how people are trained and grown up in enterprises. It's the hierarchy they see. So you get a value system where you connect competency with rank and Pay and importance all combined in one concept and that is your placement in the hierarchy. Whereas I'm a firm believer you should disconnect these. You can be equally important if you work in an organization. You can have a different impact and role and different competency, but that doesn't have to translate to your level.
I guess when you combine these things, it's easy to spin up a hierarchy, but also you get things with that design which may or may not be beneficial to what you're trying, trying to do.
But it's not the only concept out there.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: You talked about Holacracy, didn't you?
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Yes. So the idea of self organizing and self leadership based, which is, if you think about it, so you have your military, special forces is designed around that concept. The surgeon's operating room is definitely a concept where you need all the competence in the room to make the split second decision on what to do. So there are many places where you can actually see self leadership in a lot of various different sort of industries, corporations, et cetera. And I think what we've done is we've created an industrially scalable version of it.
But yes, at the core is self organization and self leadership and the fact that we do believe people want to.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: Do their best at work fundamentally. When we met first you were a much smaller organization and many people probably when you joined us in Dublin for a speech at a conference, they were sort of seeing, you know, okay, so this is, yeah, I can see how it works on a small scale, but now you've grown. I mean, how many people are you employing right now?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: So right now as we speak, John, we're at 650 colleagues spread across eight countries.
And some would look at that and say, well, that's a fairly small organization. I would say it's fairly large, at least operates 24,7. It has mission critical tasks to solve for all of our customers all the time. And we've taken it from when we met in Dublin at that time, so we were about 60, 70 people or so.
This is 10 times more. Right.
How do you retain employee satisfaction, economic growth and profitability, all of those metrics at the same time, while sort of working on your market leadership position? So that's an interesting problem to solve, but I think it shows that it can be done. And we have all of the challenges that any large scale corporation would have. It's just that, I mean we're not 90,000 people yet, we're not 10,000, but we could definitely scale this to become a couple of thousand without Problem.
[00:11:04] Speaker C: And that piece around the scaling, I know straight away people listening to this will kind of. Because I remember the discussion at lunchtime after your speech was like, yeah, yeah, at a small level I can get it. But at a big level, I mean, surely you need to have performance management systems and you need people to implement that and you need managers and roles and regulations and rules. But you, you were sort of saying, just be careful because that's many of those things are actually going to demotivate people and frustrate people and people will resent them. So how have you managed to create, you know, a successful business in a really complex environment that we're operating in now by having that sort of different approach?
[00:11:49] Speaker B: So let's just start with taking one myth off the table here. So there is. Because people in highly regulated industries or companies would say, oh yeah, it's fine for them, they can invent whatever they want. Now let's remember that we operate on a very strict scrutiny. We have nine ISO certificates and the strictest regimes around cybersecurity and whatnot and compliance at a very, very high level. So there's no excuse for not operating at the highest quality level, so to say. But it's still the fundamental question is, do we create a system based on trust or do we create an organization structure based on control? And we separated those two. So we operate on the basis of trust. And then somebody out there will say, well, surely you must check every now and then, right? You can't just let people run around. Well, see, this is what we explain to our auditors, and they've spent a long time looking at us. The fact when you distribute the ownership so you don't have a single name in the Excel spreadsheet, to say who's responsible is actually a very good thing because it creates a more robust ownership over any topic area. Our whole design revolves around one thing. If one person gets sick, needs to move, whatever the reason is, we shouldn't fall apart. Which means that there is not only a redundancy, but actually very robust ruggedness that comes with designing an organization like this. Then of course, we know where we are. We have 138 KPIs automated in a model somewhere. We can look exactly how we're performing. So it's not about not knowing, but it's allowing yourself to what controls the conversation. So first of all, let's just observe that looking at finance, then you're looking too late. And some organization would look at the finance metrics. And I would say, well, then you're at least six to eight months late. So we'd rather look at metrics that would inform you of what's going to come later. So, for example, how people are engaged and how they feel about things.
Much more important to know, because if they're falling in conviction, falling in passion of what they're doing, you will get worse economy later.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: And there are people who have been studying this very closely, who have been in the finance industry for a long time and created what's the correlation between engagement and economic outcome? And there are actually models to suggest that that correlation is very high. So again, what we're trying to do is spend time and energy on looking at the things that matter and you will get a financial outcome that is beneficial. Whereas, so in our case, finance is not the goal, it's an outcome that comes from working with something else.
This sounds counterintuitive for a lot of people, but we don't do budgets, we don't set growth targets, and there's no such control in our system. There are other sets of knowing if we're on track or not. But we don't drive the organization to achieve a plus 15% or whatever that could be because it's completely uninteresting. It doesn't wake people up. So we're trying to work with things that are engaging, motivating, that will also connect with what is beneficial for our customers. And that is then what creates the value, the growth and the outcomes.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: So this is the difference between lead and lag indicators. Most organizations are operating with lag indicators, but we'd see health as being a critical lead indicator that will tell you where things are going to go in the future because it does play out in people's health. And I remember that last time when you said that, that we don't have any budgets. I can just imagine finance people kind of just shaking their heads, going, how is that possible? I mean, even with regard to, have you been tempted to sort of say, maybe we'll try for 10% growth this year? Or you just don't put any figure down there?
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Nope, we don't. And it's so important to stay away from it, because if you start in that end, you will drive. Then you will start to drive the organization, call it backwards. For many, that's still running forwards. Right. But I respect that. I'm not saying that. I'm not suggesting that everybody should try and do what we do, but you could take some of it as inspiration. I do realize and acknowledge that there are a lot of different organizational thoughts and ideas, how to do things. What I would ask as a question, as a starter, for those who are listening to this, is that if you think about the fact that you have 100% energy as a sort of fuel base in your organization, how much of that are you burning to just run the thing internally? How much is spent on meetings and control systems where you can actually question if you get any value out of it, and how much is spent in creating the real value, which for most organization is with the market or the customer, the end user or whoever that may be. Right. So if you have a large percentage just from your general feeling that you're spending a lot of time internally just to navigate the political landscape, to navigate the control systems, then you should probably take a hard look at that and say, is this really beneficial to us?
So, and again, for us, it starts with the person. It starts with trying to get all of the energy we can out of one single person, and then ask ourselves, what is inspiring and motivating and what story does this person want to be part of? This is why we invite our colleagues into the conversation of where they want to go, because it unlocks so much power in the organization and the rest then will follow. So it's a paradigm shift in what you put first and what comes second, and it's almost annoyingly simple when you get it. But it's because we run without a lot of the frictions that you would see and sort of call it classical organizations, if you will.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: In what way? Give me an example of those frictions.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Well, since we're not doing budgets, we don't have any deviation controls on finance. There's no interest in doing that. There is an interest in understanding how value is created and how that we're staying healthy. But we spend almost 0% of our time in trying to explain why it didn't match up the guess we made three months ago.
Because again, the market is fast moving. If you become serious for a minute and talk about, well, let's make a strategic plan November 2022, before the release of ChatGPT, imagine that you would make a very different plan if you then made the plan in February, March 2023. Right. And that's just an example. There are many macroeconomic happenings just during the last three to four or five years, which would tell you that it's almost pointless to try to have an educated guess of what's going to go on.
So a lot of organizations we see with the customers we're working with are trying to Become more agile and nimble and more following to what happens rather than trying to plan and control for it. Because ultimately there are forces at play which you cannot control. And you then need to be more fluent in how you can follow the trends and take advantage of the things that are happening, rather than be a victim of what's going on.
[00:19:14] Speaker C: And in terms of how that plays out, in terms of managers, do you have managers in your organization? Because I'm just interested to know, because the role of manager has just changed radically, as far as I can see. Because a couple of things like a manager used to have the knowledge, or rather the information, and controlling that information flow was a big part of a manager's role previously. Whereas now the CEOs just go direct to everybody. Obviously previously there was a degree of control over time and management of people and they were right in front of them. Whereas now the people are obviously remote and working in hybrid, it's completely different way. So that the powers and controls that they used to have tend to be gone. So those roles, you know, the manager role has to be reimagined in the world we're living in today. How do you see that?
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Well, to answer your first question, do we have managers? Yeah. Well, there is a title in our organization which is delivery manager, but it's a leadership role really, and we're trying to find a different name for it. But those are the people who worry about a scope of about 30 people or so, and their job is not to be managers over that part of the organization. They do take the formal responsibilities. Answering your earlier question about that. So, yes, we've designed formality around these roles a little bit. But their fundamental role is to make sure that the teams have what they need to succeed and have the support they need, the inspiration they need. Sometimes they need more structure, sometimes they need less structure. That's the ultimate question. And then to your question on how does this now change if I'm a manager, if I take the manager hat on three years ago and I take it on today, has that changed? I do think so, in many, many ways. I spoke to a leader of a financial institute institution and during the pandemic, they really struggled with the middle level managers because fundamentally, to be very blunt, they felt as if they were not needed because work could still happen while people were working at home. And their classical, as you say, the controls over time and all of those things kind of disappeared. They had to.
And I do think my encouragement to the manager out there is to think about the ways you Impact people not only with your controls, but actually you as a person. Because if we're now working in a hybrid model, you get to the core why are we here and what are we trying to do? In an organization you're stripped away from being able to as you say, control things. Right. And I think if you take a bigger. I read an article on the hybrid developments in the US recently and it's a clear message from people who are working in the organization. They are not coming back and they're not coming back easy. It's going to be a hybrid for a long time.
In that world.
The manager has to ask the question who do I want to be for these people and what do they need? Because the leadership role changes when somebody sits at their home. Some thrive from it and are absolutely very productive, feel well about it, but some are also exposed to risk of becoming lonely.
Not being able to control the psychological situation where you get the benefit from having colleagues around you. You, you're now isolated and alone. How does that work? So I think leader, the manager job just in part get more interesting and more human centric. It has to because you're kind of, you don't have your ordinary way of just gathering people in a room and running. Right. You need to operate on a totally different paradigm.
[00:23:01] Speaker C: And it's interesting because you mentioned there ChatGPT and the game changer. How much has that been a game changer for you and your organization?
[00:23:10] Speaker B: It is changing us in dramatic ways.
We're still playing with it, but playing in a professional way. And we can already see and it's not only we mentioned ChatGPT, right. But you have various different facets of augmented technology, AI and machine learning based technologies that is changing by the day and any knowledge intense industry have benefits to gather. I mean there are lots of questions on the table still on copyright and how things will play out. But to your question, we are seeing great benefits in augmenting skilled workers job. It's not replacing, but it's augmenting and we can cut a lot of the, the things that were, well, perhaps mundane or took a long time to do manually. We can shortcut that, but we're not replacing the human being. We rather see is a strong augmentation going on.
[00:24:14] Speaker C: Where's the biggest impact of that for you? Nicholas, can you give me a specific example of how you've been able to use AI to take out other maybe boring aspects of the job?
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Well, so for example, we're a tech company, right? So for those of you listening out There we build software and we operate mission critical cloud services and connecting supply chain logistics networks across the globe for high profile clients. So one of the things we don't want to do is to create problems in production. And how do we avoid that? Well, by having good tests. So when you write code you need good tests. And this is one of the examples where ChatGPT or the likes of it. So it's not only that, it's actually a number of tools that we're trying out that can really help you again, augment your skills and coverage by automating how tests are done. And that's without giving up any sort of intellectual property or exposing ourselves to risk or anything like that. We've been able to find a model where we can actually utilize and harness the power of these tools and basically have a friend to the developer that can actually help you create much better tests once you know what's going on. So that's a very practical in your hands kind of example where previously you had to write the test or generate them yourself, but now you have a much stronger ally in AI empowered tools that can both understand the code you're writing and, and are able to tell you and suggest that this is then how I would create tests for this situation.
[00:25:59] Speaker C: You're talking to a load of CEOs all of the time. So what are you sensing? Are people fearful? Are they confused? Are they worried that something's going to happen that's going to undermine their business with AI? Are they excited about the potential to bring efficiencies? How are they responding?
[00:26:18] Speaker B: I think first of all, the awareness is now there. Again back up to November 2022, most didn't have an awareness. We were talking about machine learning, data science. Yes, but that was for most people on C level, something that was kept in a compartment somewhere. It was a highly specialized skill that you either had in your organization or utilized or thought of utilizing. But it was contained over there. Now it's everywhere. It's on your phone, it's on your desk. There's not a C level person I haven't talked to that haven't used one of these tools to try things out. So the awareness is there. And then how do you then I guess to varying degree people are then applying this in their own organizations. Some still haven't done it.
Some have it definitely on a strategic sort of initiative track to explore, try things out and materialize on it. Various different degrees of that. But I think it starts with a very, very strong awareness on the fact that it's not going to be the same. And I don't see what I don't hear at least is the fear factor. So to say that we're done and this is the end of the road or anything like that. Most of them that I hear are very optimistic. I listened to somebody who trained CEOs in AI actually, they run a circle of trainings with C level people. And it's quite positive in the sense that this is a thing that will change many organizations. And I think there's right now a positive, careful appetite around it.
At least that's what I see and what I hear. And some have come to great lengths already in applying and doing things with it. So that's what I would encourage is to don't make it into a big program, just let the organization go. I believe we have 15 or 20 different initiatives going and I didn't ask for any of it. We just said that this is important. We allowed people to experiment and then we got the power of this organization going. And now we have at least material impact in five to 10 areas that we can see already.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: Yeah. It's funny, you know, I remember when technology started to come into business and in a big way, there was a sense of, wow, you know, we'll have so much free time because technology will do everything. But obviously it didn't play out quite like that. You know, burnout and just trying to keep on ahead of the game has been tough over those years. But life just seems to be getting faster in every aspect. And AI again is, you know, because the competition is doing it too. So you've got to do it. So everything is moving faster and there seems to be a move to higher value tasks. So that, that's obviously in the new world of work. That's where, you know, your people become the critical differentiator is, you know, can you give them more time to elevate themselves to be in that space where they can think, where they can collaborate, as you said, but create and be innovative? So what way have you kind of restructured your organization to allow that to happen more.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Right now? We haven't restructured anything. We're allowing the organization we have in place to explore and to work with this. Will it change job roles? Yes, I think that's already in the making. And I think what we described as a job description two years ago will not be the same this year or the coming year for that matter. You need a different skill set.
I'll just take another example also from a different world than us. So I know a photographer very well and he's working with high profile brands, et cetera, and his work is scrutinized to a very large degree. And when he now creates his prospect. So when a client asks him for a job, he creates an outline. A year ago, AI was not sort of on the scene at all, Generative AI and photography was really not a thing. And right now any creation he makes, AI is there. So he's using generative AI to create the backgrounds and the places where this product or thing that he's going to take photos of exist as a suggestion. And it's gotten so good. So his clients would say, well actually that was a really good picture. And he would then respond and say, the problem is it's not been taken yet. This is the picture I'm going to take and I'm going to add my human skills to it. This is just an outline. So I think that's just the role of the photographer changes with augmenting with AI. So there are many job roles that will be augmented and changed. And for sure, I don't know what job roles we will have in two years time, but for sure the ones we do have are different already.
[00:31:19] Speaker C: Yeah, it's Matt behind you on the wall obviously is one of your values, Relaxed Seriousness. How do you get this balance right? Because obviously it's pretty important that we make fun or sorry, make work fun so that people can kind of connect with a purpose and get a sense of passion out of what they're doing. How have you managed to do that?
[00:31:43] Speaker B: So there are a couple of things going on with relaxed seriousness. First of all, it's the idea that every single human being in an organization has a huge power unlock to be made. So that's the curiosity, what can we possibly do? And that comes from the relaxed part. We allow people to be themselves because the highest end performances does not come from people being sort of squeezed into a role or trying to behave in a certain way. It's when they are themselves to the fullest. So that's the first part. And then with that then comes seriousness. So relaxed seriousness. It's not serious relaxedness. That's number one. It comes in a different order. So it's our idea of how to create the conditions under which you can be at your peak more often and stay there for a long sustained period of time and stay in the organization for 5, 10, 15, 15 years and still be at your peak. So it really has some, it has some nice catchiness to it, which is in the short you can enjoy it, but it has a depth to it and a longevity which I believe we've proven. And for the ones out there that are still confused and listening to what I'm saying, there is a lot of structure in what we do. It's just not the ordinary structure. And we also mind very carefully the balance between structure and unstructured. And at the heart of relaxeriness is exactly that. So it's making sure that each individual get the condition to succeed. And by that we're getting more as a percentage out of a person than if we were just strap a job role on them and say actually we're only interested in the rational parts of you. 30% we can see on the desk performance or the 60% or the 70%, whatever that number is.
The rest of it, the fact that you're a musician or you love barbecuing or you're a meticulous collector of flowers, whatever, we're not interested. Sorry. As an organization we fundamentally don't care. Well, what if we started to care and understand what your true drivers are and what you really want to be good at and if you could then unleash that into the target area. Which means the jobs at hand, the things we need to do to stay relevant for our customers. Because again, we're not inventing the things we're doing, we're. We're solving important things for our clients. What if we could combine these two? That's sort of the curiosity and relaxed seriousness is the fundamental core of that. That's sort of the pillar on which everything stands in our organization.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: I love it. I mean like also you were talking about how you recruit people. The thing you absolutely look for is somebody who isn't going to try and get their own success on the back of somebody else. So recruiting people into your environment is crit important. Do you take a hands on approach with that still?
[00:34:40] Speaker B: For certain roles, yes. And for most part I don't.
My life would be unlivable if I even tried.
I do trust my dear team. We still have a peer hiring scheme which means that people who you're going to work with get to have a say about if you should work there or not. So we try to stay very relevant to our findings on the core and what we've learned throughout the years. I spend time with the ones where, who are going to either work with me or who may have a material impact where I can play a role in the evaluation. Yes, but for most part I don't so.
But we encourage, I mean Leaders who are going to work with this person are involved.
We don't call it allow a leader to outsource the hiring, if you will. And with outsource, I mean internally. So in many companies you could probably see a pattern where you put I want to hire somebody and you put it on a wish list to go into some process somewhere and that's fine. But you get a different level of involvement and ownership if you involve the person who's going to lead this person and own that relationship. And yes, there's more time spent in that equation, a lot more time. However, the benefit is fluency and less friction later on because you did spend time, you did add the extra attention to somebody who's going to work here. And that means a lot. It means a lot for the person who is joining. It also means a lot for the people around that person.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: One of the things that always sticks in my mind the Swedish approach is fika. Are you still doing fika? Have I forgotten?
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Right. By the way you do and fika. I'll explain that in a minute. What we do have fikas in Montreal, in Mumbai, Pune, in Boston and in Barcelona. So Swedish fika is everywhere now. And the Swedish fika at the core is a couple of things. So first of all, there is the beverage part, which could be coffee, tea or whatever works in your setting. It's a little nibble of sorts. It could be a cake, it could be something that you nibble on at the same time. And then there's a social element that is what creates the fika.
And the fact that you do take a break from work. And this also has two levels of depth to it. So one is of course the importance, well, the fun part of sitting with colleagues and having a chat. But there are a couple of serious things going on as well, because especially when we now have this high pressure, almost break free world of working hybrid where we're working through to do lists like crazy. You actually need breaks more than you think. And it's vital to keep the energy going. Your creativity and all that. Plus what happens with the fika is, and here comes a sort of more formal word, the inter organizational connectivity. So spending time with people who you not normally spend time with and have a chat with them in informal setting does wonders to your connectivity in the organization. And I think that is one of the things that's gone amiss in this whole work from home hybrid debate is the fact that the inter organizational relationship have shrunk in this period. And with that also shrinks innovation and other things that. Where you're talking about the unexpected. So FIKA has a real. Actually has a very central point here. And it doesn't have to be. It's Fika because we're from Sweden and we do it in our culture. Yes. But the encouragement for somebody to step out of their work for just a few minutes and do something else with somebody else works wonders. I love it.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: How do you recreate that in a virtual world?
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Oh, that's not easy. I've seen all sorts of examples. I think we all have. Right.
I think we've seen the digital ficas.
We still do encourage people to huddle up every now and then.
We don't have a strict regime on how many days you should be at the office and how many days. It's varying depending on role and what your team looks like. The one thing we encourage the teams to do is to respect either everybody is physical or they're hybrid. Right. So we don't want teams to go half and half. We want them to respect their environment. So if a team is physical, you're going to have to come in. That's respecting the team. It has nothing to do with rules or policies. It's just that how do you honor the respect for your colleagues? Right again. Various inventions I've seen and anything from making it informal over teams or zoom, but at least placing effort on doing non work. I think that's the important part. And then whatever you do that gets you going is fine. Right.
But don't mix the work with non work.
Let's be careful to protect the non work because that actually builds into the work eventually anyway. It's not.
[00:40:03] Speaker C: It's social health. Yeah.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: And it's not from a manager's perspective. It's not non productivity.
Don't label it as that. It's just that it's not your normal productivity. But it's vitally important to make the other things flow over time as well.
[00:40:18] Speaker C: 100%. And I'm not sure if you still do it, but I remember was it every Friday you used to take an hour and you nearly became a DJ yourself. And you'd interview people and you do this with your workplace all over. Do you still do that?
[00:40:36] Speaker B: So I've done 100 episodes of Town Hall. We celebrated the 100th episode just a week or two ago, which started as a thing during the pandemic. So, yes, every Friday or every Friday that I can. I have to add, because it's not every Single Friday at 1:00. We're on air for half an hour or 45 minutes, whatever that becomes. And it's not your CEO newsletter of the week.
I try to maintain entertaining format where we blend in serious stuff.
It's a great way to listen to guests from other parts of the organization, to have them showcase what's going on in their world so everybody can see it. It's also, and I try to stay on point with two of my promises. First of all, it's in that forum that they will hear it first. They will not hear gossip from anywhere else in the organization. If there's something to be said, could come straight out of the boardroom. Could even be before the board knows in my case. Really? So. Yes, really.
[00:41:39] Speaker C: So the board tune in too, do they?
[00:41:42] Speaker B: Well, so yeah, we run our board differently too. And that's another podcast. But I'm straight to the point with my colleagues. If there's something to be said, they should know it from me first.
So transparency you can see behind me as well. And we take that seriously. I take it seriously and personal. The second one is that I'm always available for questions.
So in this 30 minutes. So it's not so much a show where I broadcast, it's rather a well choreographed conversation, you could say where questions come into the forum. They can be anonymous, they can be in name and it could be about anything. And I tried. As long as the question is well formed, if you will, I'll answer every single one of them. And throughout the couple of years I've done this, there's only been one or two questions which I couldn't really go on air with the rest I've answered every single one of them. And knowing that that promise is there and it's being fulfilled has created that. Of course we could see in our numbers that boosted trust immediately during the pandemic by 8 percentile units. Even so it was very measurable that the trust in what we do just spiked and it's become a tone setter for the weekend because again, as you pointed out, my ex DJ background, yes, I do get music in there. I do get stuff in there which works for me and works for the crowd, I guess.
[00:43:11] Speaker C: Right. I love it, I love it. I think it's. Everybody should do it before we come to the end. I just do want to chat a little bit about sustainability because one of the things obviously you were very kind to invite me to, to speak at your event. I think that was last year. Was it? I lose track of time. But I, I didn't actually get to your hq, because you were off site for that event. But I remember you talking about it and then I went online to have a look at it. And I mean, like it is one of the statements we have in the Healthy Place to Work assessment is whether or not the organization is an energizing place to be. And I have to say, looking at it, I mean, phenomenal. Could you just talk a little bit about, you know, the importance of design, environment and sustainability as a driver of business today?
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think this is, this is opening in an already open door for many because post pandemic and how do we make hybrid work? A lot of organizations are actually changing their office footprint. They're changing the way it engages people. Maybe realize that the cubicle format is not engaging and people will not show up for that anymore. And rather we look at collaborative surfaces, etc. And we've been there for the last 13 years or so. So for us it's not new. We knew that was working all the time. And again, it follows the equation. So if people are important to what you do, then what environment do you create around them to create success? And I don't mean success in the pure strict economic term because that's just one element. You talked about sustainability. How do we make this sustainable for the people who work here, for customer relations, for being innovative? In our case, we're celebrating 25 years now. How do you stay innovative in 10 years time? Well, I think the environment, you cannot. If you take environments where people work out of the equation and say it doesn't matter, you're missing out on something for us, you can't remove it from the crime scene. So to say it absolutely plays.
And I'm not talking about putting gold on the walls here. I'm talking about creating something that inspires. I'm talking about when we talk to the architect, it's having a sentence where we say you should feel invited. You should feel like it's a vibrant environment. And most of the people who are listening, if not all of them, I'd say all of them know what it feels like to go into an environment where you feel that something is happening here. You feel an energy, you feel something that is advancing. And then when you talk to skilled architects, how do you create that? Well, that sits in a ton of details for sure. But it has been the most important sentence when we talk to our architects about how do we create the environments is what does it do to you when you come in there? Is it a place for work only? Is it a home like environment or is it something else? And we're on the something else part. Yes, you can find desks at our office for sure, but it's also not exactly like a home, but it's also not exactly like an office. And we're striking a balance in between, which inspires people and creates an energy.
And again, for those of you listening who think we're just wobbling around here, we're one of the highest performers in our industry and there's no shortage of formalities that we follow, but it's just the way we arrive at that, which is different. And the environment definitely sits at the core of enabling people to be successful. Not one year, not one week, not a month, but over year after year after year.
[00:46:45] Speaker C: Yeah, amazing. Even the hotel that we did the speech in, I was using the stairwell and it was full of art. And I just thought to myself, it's cheap, you know, photographs together and blown up and put them around your workplace. That inspires people. And it just takes a little bit of thought and effort. But I think art definitely is the way. But hopefully, Nicholas, I'll actually visit you in your wonderful, sustainable workplace in the future. Just finally, what do you think going forward? What are the biggest challenges going to be? What are the most exciting things about work in the workplace that we should be keeping our eye on for the next 24 months?
[00:47:29] Speaker B: I think on a general sort of macro observation, is that we're going to still see disruption for many years to come, whatever reason. I can't guess on the reasons. Your guess is as good as mine. But we will definitely continue to see disruptions in various different ways that will impact economy, that will impact the way we do business. That where we can do business and how successful we can become is going to be determined by forces that we not necessarily control. We could call that disruption if you want. Could be technological disruption, like generative AI, for example, is definitely on the scene right now. It's going to change a lot. So I would stay curious as to how do I create an organization and a readiness to surf the wave when it comes and I don't get drowned by it. So that's my sort of favorite learning from when I was a kid was that a good sailor doesn't ask for wind, he learns how to sail. Right. So how do you catch the wave when it comes, and how do you set yourself up to be able to reap the benefits from something that looks threatful? Initially, yes, we can all be scared by it. A disruption is like that. But eventually, how do you survive that and overcome it and still stay fresh and on top. So I would start with that sort of.
Well, your guess is as good as mine, but I think that's going to be a true observation for many years to come. That disruption is going to be on the scene. How it impacts your business, your organization. Well, that's to be seen. Right. But how do you create a readiness in your organization to tackle these things and turn them into opportunities? That's what I would look for. Yeah.
[00:49:09] Speaker C: I think the only way you do that is unlock the brains of everybody to help you on that journey. And that's what creating the environment that you have in Sentero. I just think what you do is fantastic. You're inspirational. And the fact that you're celebrating 25 years next week, is it? Or this week, later on.
Absolutely. Congratulations and keep up the fabulous work.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: Thank you, John. And thanks for inviting me. And please come over. You need to see the place.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: And I promise the next time I'm in Sweden, I definitely will. Such an inspiring guest and such a wonderful company. You know, the truth is, in the new world of work, we need to rethink everything and challenge everybody to redesign systems and processes so that we can make work healthy.
[00:49:57] Speaker C: Thanks again to Nicholas.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: Up next on the Work Healthy podcast, I travel to London to meet with Harvard professor and world's authority on psychological safety, Amy Edmondson. Join me when we deconstruct failure and we learn how to fail. Well, until next time, stay healthy.
