Culture and Behaviours at V.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, and welcome to season two of V Conversations, the podcast from V about the way the company is changing and the work colleagues are doing right across the company to put V at the forefront of innovation in ship management. In this first episode of season two, your CEO, René Coford Olsen, talks to Katie Overy about culture and behaviors at V. [MUSIC PLAYING] Let's talk about then culture. Culture in the organization, why it's important to you first and foremost, and then why are you trying to then make it so important within your organization? To me, sort of a company's organism, you have the brain, which is all that, right? And you sort of have your documentation, your processes, as I just described. Then you have the muscles that ensure us that it all happens, right? But the heart is really that pumps the blood around, the blood flow. It's, you know, I don't know, 100,000 beats a day, or something like that. And so that has to be kept going. It has to be kept healthy. It has to be nurtured. We talked about coffee not that long ago. And so maybe you have enough coffee, but not too much coffee and so on and so forth. And that's the same with culture. So look after that heart is the pulsing of the organization. And that's important to me. And it's not something you can ride. I mean, you can ride elements of how you would like to support the culture. But it's not something that you can demand. It's something that you can only urge forward. And I think that's why it's so important for me. It's the human soul, sort of, the heart of the organization. You've been in this industry for a long time. Has there been something that has spurred that within you? And that's why you want to then bring it to this organization. So you made that conclusion based on my age, or based on what I said, your experience. No comment, you're on that. Absolutely no comment. So I love shipping. I grew up next to the waters in Denmark, which is a very unassuming small country. But shipping was very important. I'll share with you an anecdote for my own life. So as a very young man in my 20s, I was sent to Africa. And I remember we had a big challenge, not long after I came there. So I called home, home being Copenhagen with a headquarters of the company is, as I said, listen, we have this challenge and how do I proceed? And the answer was, well, we don't know, you'll figure it out. And so I often think about that. Because to me, I had now to rely on my in a compass that I had received from my parents, from my upbringing, from that part of things, but also had to rely on the values of the particular company. And so I knew what those values were. So I feel, well, this is then how I have to solve it. And I didn't know whether this was the way to solve it. But I felt that this is where the compass is going. And to me, therefore, it's so important that you're having role models. You understand the values of the company. You invest in understanding it. And then you apply it. That's the best you can do. It's so lovely that you've touched on the word values. Because you have kind of worked on four specific values or behaviors, should I say, to bring across to this new culture within the organization. I want to know what they are, first and foremost, and how you land it on those four particularly. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure that I can tell you academically how we landed on them. But I think logically I can take you on the journey and how we landed on them. So as I mentioned earlier, we have impeccable processes and procedures. And that being a side, everybody, including me, would be able to find them on our channels and so on. And we have educated a lot on that. We have values, but values sit there. As I mentioned, they are how we would like to engage. That's how we would like people to think about us as a company. So they live there. They are omnipresent. We can put them on billboards and so on. And we believe in them. So that's fine. But in terms of the behaviors, which is really what is the foundation I feel of the culture of the company, I thought long and hard on those. And I think they are individually separate, but they are also just sort of intrinsically connected. So the first one is decisiveness. We are running hundreds of assets of shipping assets around the world. We have people working for us from all cultures. And so that word may mean something different for the various places in the world, but still decisiveness is sort of how you act. And I can come back to that in a minute. Accountability, both to yourself and others, that you feel accountable, but also that you feel empowered to be accountable. So in my story from Africa, I felt empowered to act. So it's a very important behavior and it's important for the organization to give that empowerment. Customer focus. Other calls it cost of a centricity. But for me, that is why we are here. There is not a company or an organization that would be there if you don't have actually the customer who wishes to trade with you, shop with you. So that's just, it's a given, but people should never take it for granted. And there's a big difference. There's a big difference. And then simplicity. I like simplicity. If you can break something down in fewer words, in fewer instructions, this world would be generally in a better place. Certainly, I believe our company will be in a good place when we do that. So that's how I landed on those fours. So why do I believe that they are intrinsically sort of also connected is that if you look at a true customer's interestity or customer focus, you'll need the three others. If you look at simplicity, how do you make something very, very simple? Well, you need to be decisive. So there are connectivity between them, but they also stand alone. As a member of your team, of which there are many globally, what's the one that you want people to really kind of is and still with them? Because I think perhaps sometimes it's a bit intimidating when these values and behaviors come across kind of globally and across the board. So if there was one that they should really, or two, if there was one or two that you really want people to kind of live and breathe by which one with that. That's a great, that's a great question. It's very difficult for me to select, of course, but because I think, no, I would say, I think I have to say customer focus and here's why. So closely followed with simplicity, but I think to have customer focus is caring, is understanding that if this is a customer that trades with us, you understand what is it that they need for their success? If it's an internal customer, a colleague. So a customer focus can be a code work for collegial focus. So how do I ensure that I also take a step towards helping one of my colleagues in our company, our C-Ferris? Because they are out there battling the C's and we are sitting in the office supporting them whenever they need. But that they are not completely capable of navigating these phenomenal ships on their own. But we are there as sort of a bulwark to support them. And that to me, that's also a customer. So that's the customer of the people sitting and managing the ships, but they are part of that team to our service organization, whether it is our travel business or our digital wallet business or whatever. They all have customers, but they also have internal collegial customers. Maybe I'll take two steps to support this colleague of mine or this client of mine. And I often call some of our big clients. And the other day I called one of our top clients and I said, "I have nothing on my mind. I just wanted to say hello." And you know, I have no agenda. I don't want to ask you for more business, but how is it going? What's your focus on? And are there anything we can do for you that is different than what we are doing today? Because people sometimes tend to think silence is content and satisfaction. It may be. No news is good. But what if a call out of the blue actually is carrying it? You haven't been forgotten or displaced by another big customer. But how has that call received? I'm really interested to know because they must have been hang about. We've got Renee on the phone and he wants more business. It's a great question. It's very funny you should ask it because I actually filled the undertone of, "Hey, something will come." Nothing came. And so maybe the customer will feel next time they are considering to use a company like ours. They may feel a step closer to us. They may also feel indifferent, which is fine. But the notion that I actually believe that that call in hadn't really no other agenda than think, "Thank you for our business, for the business that you're giving us. Thank you for being part of our ecosystem. We value it." And so when I said to you earlier when we chat it that I'm a big believer in coming back into the office and talking and being collegial, it's a little bit the same. So if we are on a shoestring sitting after team call, after team call, after team call and it is planned, will our colleagues in the organization actually take that 10 minute to call their counterpart? So I called the owner of the company, which is my counterpart, but they call their counterpart and say, "Actually, we haven't spoken for a couple of days. How are you?" and so on. Will they think about sending a card when their counterpart's partner has a birthday or children or whatever it is or just a two-line email? For me, that's a customer purpose. It's actually just thinking a little bit ahead that we have forgotten in this busy world. And if we are all on a shoestring, we are only human beings. We don't have that time necessarily. And I think when humans are together and talking a little bit like we are doing here, This is not scripted, we have talked about what we wanted to do. discuss, but I think curiosity comes out of that. Calling somebody is respect its curiosity for them, for their well-being. And I think that's all embedded in customer focus. So if we delight a customer, either by this call or hopefully with the service delivery that we're delivering to them, there is a success factor in just that. And therefore, if we can bring the right culture, if we can bring the right behavior, if we can bring the right thought process, with all of our colleagues, starting from my office, I am as responsible, if not the most responsible, for actually ensuring that we have the right culture and how we communicate, how we decide conflicts, how we avoid conflicts. And all the things that belongs to a solid culture, that is a success on his own. And then it will just grow to become sort of stronger and stronger. It's so refreshing to hear you speak like that as well, because to lead from the front is, again, something that's becoming a little bit rarer nowadays. Are you an open door policy? Do you have an open door in your office? I definitely have it so much that it can hardly close. But I do have an open door policy. And it's important, right? I 100% agree. It's very important. I took over a company years ago and the company before this great company. And I remember in the offices coming in the first day, it was pitch and holes everywhere. So, you know, the left side of the office had no clue what the myths were doing and the right side of the office. And so we broke all that down. And all of a sudden, the company started changing because people were communicating, they were talking. They were not just having the fleeting moment at the coffee machine. They actually had a sort of a vibrant environment. So I'm a very open door kind of person. I'm open to discuss with anybody. And I think that's important that you are willing. You're also willing to put yourself out there. And it totally from from this company, when we started sort of to transform the company, we still had quarterly calls with everybody. And 95% of all questions that came in, and mind you, I was always encouraging questions were anonymous. And so we started actually being humbled towards that because you can say, okay, why are they anonymous? They not historically been replied. Well, enough have they ignored the questions. So I couldn't do anything about the past, but I could promise everybody that there would be absolutely no bad questions. There will only be bad answers. There would be no retaliation. There would be no harshness if the question was tough or so on and so forth. And we had quarterly call the other day three years later. I think there was one question of many, many questions that was anonymous. And by the way, there was by mistake. So I think the modern my colleague, he asked, would this such a great question? Would you please put your name and the person said, oh, there was a mistake and put the name. So the point is that if people feel that actually you mean what you say and you you ask about the open door policy, you cannot say, of course, I have an open door on them when people start coming that you're not open to discuss with them or you don't put you out there in town halls. So whenever I travel around the world, I would never go to an office without hosting a town hall because there will be something people have on their mind. And that's how it goes. And I think that's part of the simplicity if you will, that we should be simple enough beyond all the great documentation that I mentioned we have, that no, no, we put ourselves out there. We will reply. And if we don't have the right answer right now, we will be humble enough to say, you know what, that's a great question. I will have to come back to you, but then you come back. Now you gave us a fantastic anecdote, an example of when these behaviors have kind of worked and that's what you kind of instilled in you. Is there perhaps, and I don't want to turn it into a negative side, but is there perhaps an example where you wish you had these behaviors in place because they would have been very helpful in a certain situation? Yeah, I have many because you can't, you can't, as you reminded me, I have a long experience. You can't go through this sort of long shipping career without wishing that you would have had better sort of guard whales for setting that up. And that also goes for me. I think when hope becomes strategy, that's always where you let yourself down. So this is probably the thing that I have struggled the most with is that, no, no, I really believe in the authenticity of this conversation. I believe that we can do this. But when then you don't put the right guard race around it or you don't frame it in the right way or you don't put the right team together to do it, then you allow hope to become part of the success factor or part of the strategy. And I definitely have been too trusting in individuals or in processes that it would actually work and we could, we could do it to that extent. So that's why I think I have come through these four aspects as well because learning from all that is if we put the right behaviors in place, it will not negate the fact that we will let ourselves down, but we will be better guided. So decisiveness, for instance, gives people the empowerment actually to act. And when they don't feel that their counterparty is acting speak up or solve it yourself and say, hey, buddy, this actually doesn't work. You know, we have committed to coming back by the first quarter and doing this. And actually now it doesn't really work. We are letting ourselves and the team down. So understanding that your inaction have actually a lot of consequences. I have all found for doing that simply because I've been too trusting. So I don't think I'm getting less trusting with age, but my experience are telling me that, you know, I need to be the ultimate coach, but I also need to check that we are playing in the right way. And I think I'm getting a little bit more precise on the ladder to ensuring that, no, this is what it is, but I'm a sort of firm believer in empowerment. I'm never going to be a playing captain if you think about football. I will stand on the sidelines or further away, but I will have my view and quite different views on how we should play, which is also why I believe that these four behaviors are so, so important. Because they say, don't they, you should fire as quickly as you hire, right? Because it's a big ego thing. Isn't it when you hire someone and you know it's not the right hire? Yes, you need to be fast on that 100% agree. So for me, I'm telling people in leadership, say, if you end out today, you are in six months, better get it done. So I let go of somebody the year before last and took that part of it myself on my shoulders. And the reason why the predominant reason why I let the individual go, which was a divisional CEO was that I could see that we were demanding of him that was an impossibility for him. And I think he was getting sick and then his responsibility because some people would then say, oh, you know, the person can really not deliver, but no, the person cannot deliver because we put him in an impossible situation from the beginning. Job was way too big and now the individual is getting is getting sick. That's just not okay. And so it is your responsibility actually. So I've always said, I think I've said that to you as well, Marion, that I think the amount of people, if you are 30 years in business like this, you would say goodbye to a lot of people. But I will wager that most people will come and have a cup of coffee with me. And that has always been my sort of little yardstick that you got to do this with all the empathy, all the correctness, all the care for the person because you know, most people have just been put in an impossibility. And then they will find that they will be happier somewhere else. What is your dream vision then for how these four behaviors are going to be used in a year's time, five years time, ten years time within the organization? That's a great question. So if an individual feel empowered, as I used before, feel directionally guided towards what would the right end goal be for the organization that I work with? I mean, I think then then there's no end to the success we can have. But most importantly, there's no end to the success that that individual can have and motivation, satisfaction, you know, job pleasure, I feel. And when you have that, then magic can happen. And so if you are an individual, so me as a young man, as I described in Africa, if you are a young man or woman in the company, feeling that I have this challenge, but if I put part of these behaviors or one of these behaviors or having had a conversation where they feel robust enough in where they want to take their decision, that's magical. So you can't ride yourself out of that. You can live that. People can feel that actually, hey, that worked or it didn't work. And there's no repercussion. That's another thing. I think when you're giving people accountability and decisiveness, you can't hit them over their hand and say, you made a mistake. Now you can do that if they make the same mistake twice and you can say, hey, you know, let's talk about this. But you got to follow through. If people see it and they own it, it's theirs. Let them go with it. But trust that you have put a robust cultural perimeter around it, that people say, hey, you know, I got it. This one I'm going to do. Then I think the organization would go to a place that we can't even understand today. And I think people will feel delighted to come to the office or to the ships every single day. And I think it's my responsibility to at least put out there that there will never be an end goal because a company should be there. It should be our children who takes it over in the future if they want to go into the but the point is that where people feel empowered, they feel accountable, they feel when they find sort of roadblocks that they can remove them and they can go to the next roadblock, they can remove them. And then they can feel that they're doing customer satisfaction or colleague satisfaction. That's magical. I think that is an absolutely perfect place to end the conversation. I never thought I would say these words. I'm really excited about the future of the culture within your shipping organization. The company is open. Brenna, thank you so much. It's been amazing. And cheers, here's to the future. Thank you, Jason. Thanks for coming.