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Before a strategy becomes a success story, it's a judgement call.
Now in its second season, Founder's Mentality: The CEO Sessions gets inside the decisions that defined some of the world's greatest leaders - a bet the market couldn't yet see, a crisis that put the organisation's purpose to the test, and the courage to keep showing up even when you don't have the answer.
How do you stay close to the frontline as the organisation scales?
What does AI mean for the thing you have spent years building?
How do you transform the company without breaking what makes it great?
Hosted by Jimmy Allen, Advisory Partner at Bain & Company, bestselling author and leader of Bain's Global CEO Forum, each episode is a candid, in-depth conversation with leaders from Mars, The Economist Group, Khan Academy, and more.
Each episode is built around one real story, one defining moment, and the lessons that come from living through it. Dense with insight and designed for leaders who listen with a pen in hand, the series explores the outer game of markets, technology and growth, and the inner game of energy, humility and courage, and what it takes to master both.
The question this season isn't just what the CEO should do.
It's who does the CEO need to become?
Join the Conversation:
https://www.bain.com/founders-mentality/
https://www.bain.com/insights/topics/ceo-agenda
Links:
Bain & Company LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/bain-and-company/)
Bain & Company X (https://x.com/BainandCompany)
Jimmy Allen LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-allen-3442b/)
About the Host:
Jimmy Allen is an Advisory Partner at Bain & Company with over 35 years’ experience advising leading organizations. He’s the author of multiple best-selling books on growth and leadership and the host and founder of Bain’s Global CEO Community Forum. Jimmy is a regular speaker at global business events, including the World Economic Forum, and serves on the Botswana Economic Advisory Council. Outside of consulting, Jimmy started his own record label (Abubilla Music) in 2008 and supports Singing Wells, a project dedicated to preserving Kenyan village music.
Bain & Company:
Founder’s Mentality: The CEO Sessions is brought to you by Bain & Company, a global consultancy trusted by the world’s most influential business leaders. With decades of experience guiding organizations through growth, transformation, and leadership development, Bain’s executive insights offer what it takes to lead at scale.
- [Peder] When you talk about values,
if you start to even the
slightest alter that,
then everything can be altered.
Strategy and, you know, acquisitions
and the products we create, et cetera,
full freedom to everybody, but the DNA
of the company is not for discussion.
(dramatic music)
- [Jimmy] We live in turbulent times,
so much so that our daily
news creates anxiety.
(Jimmy scoffing)
Well, at least for me.
Some of us even skip
the news to stay calm.
But CEOs, they don't have that luxury.
And in turbulence, they
face a fundamental question.
"What do I keep the same
in the name of consistency,
of resiliency, of calm for my people?
And what do I change in the
name of adaptability and speed?"
Well, this episode focuses
ruthlessly on that tension.
And naturally, it's all
about cows and milk.
Always, always cows and milk.
(lively music)
I'm Jimmy Allen,
and this is "Founder's
Mentality: The CEO Sessions."
(lively music continues)
Peder Tuborgh is CEO of Arla Foods,
one of the world's largest
farmer-owned dairy cooperatives.
He joined the company back in 1987
and initially built his
career in marketing.
Since becoming CEO in
2005, Peder has led Arla
through more than two
decades of relentless growth,
landmark mergers, and intense geopolitical
and economic shocks.
He's become a student of turbulence
and how you strike that fine balance
between consistency and change.
Look, I know what you're thinking.
What can a CEO of a firm
learn from a milk co-op?
Well, the answer is a hell of a lot.
First, because Peder is
an extraordinary leader.
And second, because co-ops matter.
In a firm, we rely on
boundaries and tight governance.
We have rules to keep
people moving together.
But in a co-op, that won't fly.
The leader has to convince hundreds
of entrepreneurs hundreds of times a year
that they are better
together than going it alone.
They have to build a shared conviction.
And that turns out to be
a pretty interesting way
to think about leadership,
especially now when the walls
of the firm are becoming
increasingly porous.
When Peder became CEO, Arla
had more than 100 brands.
So what's the next marketer to do?
Well, it turns out it's
not what you'd expect.
(lively music)
- [Peder] Back in 2005,
Arla, there was a name,
but it was not a brand at all,
and all were small brand
kingdoms around the world.
And I knew that we would not
survive not having any branded
or value synergy in the company.
We needed to unite, not all of them,
but most of them under the Arla brand
and into this new world of Arla Foods.
- [Jimmy] How difficult
was that journey for you?
Each of those brands
would have been a legacy
of a local farmer, a local co-op,
a local member that
believed very strongly.
- [Peder] The farmer owners,
they loved it immediately
because it gave them a sense of pride
and an identity which they owned
and could feel attached to.
And employees loved this,
apart from one group,
for the same reasons, right?
They felt attracted to it.
"We know what this company is
about. We know the values."
The marketeers didn't love it.
And they thought that
I was Judas, of course,
because here came the old
marketing guy, finally the CEO
and then he kills the brands.
What the hell is going on, right?
So we launched the Arla brand in 2008,
and then in '14, it started to work
and clicked for us internally.
But there was, of course, resistance.
Intellectually, they understood it,
but I felt a lot of resistance.
And then I said, "When you leave now,
you have to think about this
as that you are leaving with me
and the rest of Arla Foods,
like shooting a rocket to the moon.
And the only thing you don't do
is that you don't try to steer yourself.
When you fly to the
moon, you work as a team
and you do not, you know,
take a detour to Mars.
You just sit and enjoy the ride
and help us go to the moon, right?"
- [Jimmy] What you'd expect
with a marketer coming into the CEO job
in a company seduced by
and in love with brands
is you could easily imagine a story
of unleashing the power of marketers
to create brands everywhere.
And the story is the opposite.
It's such a Steve Jobs moment.
He was the innovator taking
control of an innovation,
walking into a group of engineers,
he tells them, "We're not gonna innovate.
We're gonna focus on a few products."
You walk in and say, "You can't
steer the rocket ship, guys.
There's a single brand
and we're gonna take it."
You arrived very clearly
understanding the company needed this.
But was there a moment when
you said, "If I take this job,
this is what I need to do?"
- [Peder] No, no.
The summer when I was announced the CEO
and then I went on summer holiday,
and I read one book that was
by Jack Welch called "Winning."
There was one thing that really struck me,
and has been part of my
journey all the time,
you know, bet on people.
It's people, it's teams
that brings things together.
So I hired an HR director, Ola Arvidsson,
and he's still with me.
And the first thing we did
was that we in 2006 and '07
sat down, and over 10 evenings discussed
what was actually the value proposition
that was in the walls of Arla Foods,
and framing it also towards
our people agenda, the mission,
the vision of the company.
- [Jimmy] I love the expression, you know,
what sits in the walls.
And as you reflect on that,
what did sit in the walls?
What were the things you
seized on in terms of Arla?
- [Peder] There was clearly,
and still is a growth gene in the company
that comes from our farmer owners.
So a farmer is per
definition an entrepreneur.
You know that if you met farmers,
they want to build their farms,
they have dreams for the future.
There's not one farmer in the world
who doesn't want to have
one more cow, right?
That's how it is.
And that's also how
they see their company.
They get scared if the
company doesn't grow, right?
Then something is wrong. Then
the company's not competitive.
And they're right, by the way,
because when you're in decline,
you stop attracting farmers,
then you stop attracting new employees,
and then, you know, the wheel
starts to spin backwards.
So there is a very clear
growth DNA in the company.
And how does that evolve
through the values that we have
as individuals when we do our business?
Because growth in itself is, of course,
something we all understand,
but there has to be a purpose behind it,
something that's meaningful for the people
and not only meaningful for the owners,
but also for the people who
are involved in the business.
And a co-op is about people actually.
A co-operative is a group
of people on the owner side
that comes together
and have one firm belief that
together we are stronger.
It's a very open governance
model where people speak
to each other, where they
have a dream about the future.
And in that cooperative,
that dream is often the same
because that's what has united
people on the farmer side,
but also on the employee side.
And a co-op is also a place
where you trust each other.
Without trust, the co-op breaks
down, that goes very fast.
So trust and honesty is a very clear value
that must be very strong in the company.
(lively music)
- [Jimmy] This isn't really
about the Arla brand.
This is about what sits in the walls.
So Peder asked the fundamental questions.
What is the purpose of this co-op?
Why are we stronger together?
His answer? Growth.
Because what farmer
doesn't want another cow?
And for Peder, leadership is about people.
It is striking that he starts his journey
with his HR director, Ola Arvidsson,
who's been with him from day one.
The goal was to find what united
Arla, not what divided it,
discovering shared dreams,
creating shared values,
and this demands 1,000 conversations.
Of course, as a marketer,
Peder was sympathetic
to the desire for more
brands, more opportunities,
more spaceships to navigate.
But as a CEO, he understood the power
of keeping things simple,
one brand that stood
for unchangeable values
and dreams, no question.
And Peder knew this because
he'd seen this movie before.
(lively music continues)
- [Peder] Five years
before I became the CEO,
we had merged a big
Danish company together
with a big Swedish dairy company,
and both of them were cooperatives,
but they had taken a different approach
to what good growth actually means.
The Danish side of the company
was very much about size,
how to become a bigger
company, be traveling
with the customers throughout the world,
internationalizing itself.
On the other side, our Swedish colleagues,
they were not international,
but they were super big in Sweden
and they were very good at
ideation, creativity, creating,
innovating, and uniting them was one
of the first things we talked about
because they were living along each side,
but they were not really
fertilizing each other,
these two sets of cultures.
And that was what we brought
because, you know, just being creative
without building a company,
it's fun in the beginning, but
really where does it lead to?
And then on the other side,
just growing without really
having a purpose around it,
that's also not fun, right?
So this was very important.
It's what we call our inner values today.
We described them as the character
of the company back in 2005.
We also had our leadership values,
so what does it mean to be a leader?
And that was not only an executive leader,
so that was leaders and
also individuals can think
about themselves as
leaders, which led to us,
we call it envision, engage, and deliver.
And of course, you have to have
the three of them in balance
because if you're just
delivering and focused
and obsessed with creating results,
you might get it all wrong.
And on the other hand,
if you're super good
at envisioning the future
but have very, very thin legs
and don't deliver anything,
then nothing comes out
of that brightness that you have created.
- [Jimmy] One of the
themes of this podcast
has been, you know, CEOs
doing the right thing,
but doing the right thing takes time.
And there's that period when everything
hasn't come into place.
You've set everything in motion,
but it's not quite there.
You just talked about the fact
that you really got the strength
around 2014 on the brand,
other things took time.
How did you engage with your stakeholders
to keep them on board
with where you were going?
And I'll start with the farmer owners.
- [Peder] I'd say that
was almost the easy part
because, you know, I
don't have a share price
that goes up and down,
and 30 analysts that I have
to speak to every quarter.
I have thousands of families
and farmers who want to understand
what we are doing in the company.
So throughout the year,
I'm constantly in dialogue
with the farmer owners through all kinds
of mechanisms that we have.
And of course, we don't
always talk Arla and values.
They very much want to know the business
and are we making money
and what's the milk price gonna
be next month or next year?
They are no different from other owners.
But it's clear that throughout my time
when we've had mergers,
acquisitions, especially mergers
with other cooperatives, as
the one we have now with DMK,
of course, initially talking
not only about the business,
but as much about, so
what do we stand for,
what are our values,
how do we see leadership in the industry,
but also as individuals
because that's where you find out
whether there's a cultural
match between the owners,
but also between the
leaders and employees.
And it's all about
conversation, being vocal,
being transparent about it,
but making sure also that
all the talks on values
and purpose and things like
that match up with some results
that it has to pay off, right?
Because otherwise it's just
the CEO who's gone crazy.
- [Jimmy] And that's where
you keep coming back to the...
You know, it's envision, engage, deliver,
and the delivery is that you do have
to get into business
conversations with owner farmers
that are there with their families.
They need to know the milk price,
they need to know the volume,
and you need to deliver.
- [Peder] Yeah, and the
leaders also wanna see
that we're successful, right?
And then that can't be measured
by us talking values all the time.
That is being measured through
our P&L and our market shares
and what our customers say.
So in that sense,
we are not at all different
from any other company.
We're just bound together with each other
through generations of leaders
by some very strong values
that are today in wording exactly the same
as they were written down in 2005 to 2008.
(lively music)
- [Jimmy] Given all the complexity
of a co-op with its thousands
of independent farmer owners,
Peder knows the job of the CEO
is to cut through the noise and simplify.
So he starts with the farmer owner
and their dreams to grow
more cows, more milk,
and a bigger, better farm to pass on.
Companies can become obsessed
with revenue growth, pricing,
premiumization, getting more
out of the units we sell.
But Peder's stakeholders
need volume growth as well
because scale matters.
And, you know, I've worked
with way too many organizations
where volume growth has
drifted down the list
of vital goals.
It becomes negotiated,
traded off against cash
growth, profit growth.
But when you lose the
dream of volume growth,
you lose the dream of scale
and ultimately market leadership.
When you lose the will to
lead, you doom your people
to the dreams of followers,
of those that settle.
You stop trying to disrupt
and lead your industry
and instead ride its cycles.
You become an also-ran
and you cannot call yourself
a people-driven leader
if you compromise their dreams.
Peder never loses sight
of the person his
organization exists to serve.
You can see it in the
Denmark-Sweden merger.
Denmark brought scale
and a global outlook.
Sweden brought consumer
intuition and innovation.
And together they bring
growth with purpose
for the farmer owner.
Volume growth is a
non-negotiable. I love this.
And I'd encourage each of you listening
to ask this about your own company.
Where is volume growth
in our list of priorities
and what dreams have we
compromised if we allow growth
to drop off our agenda?
For Peder, the dreams are unchanged,
but how you achieve those
dreams in turbulence
will change endlessly.
And here comes the turbulence.
Brexit, COVID, inflation, mergers.
(lively music continues)
You know, we live in very turbulent times.
Every CEO will talk about
the impact of Brexit,
the impact of COVID,
the impact of inflation.
All of those have been
extraordinarily turbulent for you,
especially in kind of
a commodity industry.
And yet, when I talk to you about it,
each time you come back to values,
you come back to the leadership
values, the corporate values
that have consistently
helped you navigate it,
not your 10-year vision.
And I'd love to just pause
because it feels like such an
important lesson for any CEO.
Just tell me how these values
have helped you navigate turbulence
because it's extraordinary
what you've gone through.
- [Peder] I think that the
volatility we are seeing,
whether it's Brexit, as you
mentioned or it was COVID
or it's the awful things
that we are experiencing
with wars on the agenda,
unfortunately again,
the values and the people values
and what we are trying to
achieve doesn't change,
and why should it actually?
How we navigate the
world changes, of course.
Having very strong values
embedded in the company
also allows me as a leader,
us as the executive team
to delegate much deeper
into the organization.
And that is important
in times of difficulty.
So during COVID, we were all
united on Teams and online
and spoke to more people than ever,
but we also had to rely
on people far away making
the right decisions
in that very difficult time of COVID.
I can safely do that
because I know that they are embedded
with the values of Arla Foods.
They know intuitively
what we want to achieve
through our mission, our
vision, our values, all of that.
And they don't have to look
up the book of strategy
and see what was it
that we had to do in Q4
that's different from Q3?
They intuitively know what
the right decisions are
and what direction they should take
and what they cannot take.
And that gives, of course,
management a lot of freedom
to delegate, and that's super important,
especially in times of volatility.
- [Jimmy] I think there's
something brilliant you have done,
and I just wanna get to it
'cause you've mentioned it a couple times.
There's a balance to everything you say.
It's balance because on
one hand, you are a company
that has grown three to
four times over your reign.
It's about leadership,
it's about globalization,
but then you've equally said,
"If we're gonna go into acquisition mode,
the first thing that matters
is do we share values?"
So I just wanna give you a
moment to talk about that.
That DMK is unique
in that it feels like
you got across the table
with their leaders and
instantly knew this will work
in contrast to many other co-ops
that you got together and
said, "This won't work."
Even the scale is values driven.
- [Peder] Yeah, it is spot on actually
what you're saying here
because in the case of
the Arla-DMK merger,
which we are unfolding right
now, we have a history.
They had a very nice joint
venture with each other.
And through real work, understood
that we could overcome
challenges together.
There was a lot of
commonality in the culture
of the two companies or
the values of the company.
They might use different words,
but in the inner meaning of the values,
it was more or less the same,
which also meant that now
the merger is happening
and we are not trying to
envision the future together.
We are actually engaging our people.
And I actually gave a speech not long ago
to all of the employees,
also the new employees
and other folks from DMK that now we are
into the engage part.
You know, it's all about people.
It's all about making teams work,
getting to know each other,
paying respect to each other,
understanding each other's similarities,
but also differences
because we are, of course,
not clones of each other.
And it's not time to deliver
a lot of synergies right now.
That will come in the beginning of 2027.
You would always expect, you
know, that you blend blood
and you create something
new together, et cetera,
but I don't believe in that
for a second value-wise.
What I said was that we can
create a fantastic business case
out of this and make a great strategy
and we can even execute it.
But what cannot be discussed
is the whole value proposition
because the value proposition
is what glues the company together
and is superior to any
strategy that we can make.
- [Jimmy] Is there
anything that has changed
or has it remained unchanged?
- [Peder] Completely unchanged.
- [Jimmy] Amazing. Okay.
- [Peder] When you talk about values
through all the lenses
internally, externally, et cetera,
if you start to even the
slightest alter that,
then everything can be altered.
Then suddenly the prairie is full
and then we are back to
the 500 marketeers in 2008
who thought that they could
rule the world, right?
And that doesn't work.
Strategy and, you know, acquisitions
and the products we create, et cetera,
full freedom to everybody, but the DNA
of the company is not for discussion.
- [Jimmy] Your values
that you talk about has,
I think, built in a
interesting resilience.
And let me just describe it,
which is when you talk about values,
you interchange, you know,
how are we gonna do things?
How we lead.
But you also say
relentlessly global mindset,
a leadership mindset,
absolute focus on growth
because the farmer owner
needs not only premiumization
of the product, but also
just pure volume growth.
You've built in a
future-oriented set of values
that I think helps you
navigate day-to-day,
you know, meaning it's not pure values,
it's not, "We will always
do the right thing."
It's also, "We will always
grow. We will always lead.
We will always be stronger together."
That must make your people
better able to handle turbulence,
better able to respond to the
future than average leaders
because you've weathered a
huge amount of turbulence.
- [Peder] Yeah, you may be
right. You may be right.
I can tell you as a little small example,
our leadership values,
which are, of course, more
complex than what I say
to you now, but it's about
envisioning the future,
engaging teams and delivering results.
There's much more to it.
But of course, during COVID,
it was very easy for me to say
to people that, "Listen, this
is not now where we are trying
to envision the future and
making big strategic processes.
This is all about surviving
and making sure that we can
get products from A to B
and serve our customers.
So we are all from top management, CEO,
way down to the youngest,
we are all in delivery mode right now.
And we are also all in engaging
our teams, working together.
But forget about the future,
forget about, you know, the next product
and the things that you can dream about.
It's not time for that."
- [Jimmy] And what's brilliant about that
is you're also saying,
"And there will be a time
when we go back to it.
It's inherent that we
will go back to growth.
We will go back to envisioning.
Right now it's delivery."
- [Peder] And when COVID,
during '22 and '23, left,
it was time, big time to come back
and say, "Okay, so we
lost some years here.
Everybody, society lost some years.
We better get our act
together and envision,
you know, what's coming
around the corner now.
How can we up our innovation?"
So actually moving it back
and moving, swinging the
pendulum forcefully back.
(lively music)
- [Jimmy] I find Peder's
idea of envision, engage,
deliver absolutely fascinating.
As a management concept,
it remains unchanged.
It's in the walls.
All three words matter.
But at any one moment,
they don't matter equally.
When COVID hits,
he tells the whole company, from himself,
right down to the youngest person,
"This is not the time to envision.
Forget the next product.
Forget the far off dream.
Right now we deliver.
Get the milk from A to B for our consumers
and keep the business alive."
But when it comes to the
DMK merger, it changes.
This is not the time to chase synergies.
This is the time to engage,
to bring two sets of people together.
Delivery can wait until 2027.
Peder's idea of envision, engage, deliver
is hugely important in turbulence.
On one hand, it doesn't change.
On the other hand, it's
endlessly adaptable.
In fact, in turbulence,
leaders shouldn't ask,
"Am I doing everything I can possibly do?"
Instead, they must ask,
"What does the organization
need right now?"
Well, at this point, as a strategist,
I was now expecting a conversation
about how Peder does a
long-term strategy, future back,
see around corners, look out decades.
You know the drill.
Well, we don't get any of that.
What we do get is something
far more interesting.
How do you commit to a
future-oriented strategy
when you can't predict the future?
I've not heard you talk about this before:
the idea that the danger of a vision
that looks too far in the future
is it doesn't guide daily activities.
And you wanted to create a vision
that made people think
about the future every day,
made the people see around corners.
Is that the distinction you
were trying to draw by saying,
"I wanna bring it to the
daily activity of my people?"
- [Peder] Yes.
I have met a professor at a university
who told me that "you got it all wrong.
Your vision is not a vision
because a vision points
at something you wanna
be out in the future.
What your vision is about,
a mindset at the moment,
and that is very deliberate."
I wanted to create and infuse an energy
into the organization on a
daily basis, on a yearly basis,
which is about creating the future,
constantly being curious about the future,
whatever that future is.
I do not believe that I can
or anybody can create a picture
of where we wanna be
exactly 10 years from now.
The world is changing so fast
and we live in a volatile
world where, you know,
everything surprises me every day.
So I'm thankful that I'm
not trying to say exactly
where Arla is 10 years from now,
and you'll never get me
to say anything about it.
We've had many mergers in my time,
and we're a much bigger company.
We are three times,
four times as big today.
And that comes because
we are not just sitting
at the back bench and being
swallowed by somebody else,
but actually being the one that leads it.
I have a painting here in
front of me at my office
where it says in the
middle, "What's next?"
You know, when curiosity stops,
then the company stops developing itself.
- [Jimmy] So Peder, you've convinced me
that getting that culture right,
getting those values right,
keeping them unchanged
in a turbulent world
has helped you navigate.
How have you changed? I'd
just be very interested.
It's 20 years at the job.
What do you now do differently
that you didn't do in 2005?
- [Peder] Well, for sure, I can tell you,
and my five kids can
confirm that, even my wife,
that I've not changed as a person.
Maybe I'm a bit older, of course,
but Peder Tuborgh is still the same.
I'm still curious.
There's something in there
which has always been
there, never leave me.
I still get my energy
from growing something.
There's clearly a DNA of Arla
Foods, the good growth DNA
and is also an inner DNA of me.
What has changed maybe is,
and we just talked about it,
is that I have, over the
years, been very observant,
more that there's a time
for everything, right?
And you can't do everything at once.
And we just talked about,
you know, there's a time
for envision, there's a time for engage,
there's a time to deliver.
And striking that balance between some
of these leadership values is
super important to understand.
The younger Peder Tuborgh probably wanted
to do everything at the same time,
but that's how it is to be young, right?
- [Jimmy] When did it switch on
that it's all about the owner farmer?
Was that pre-2005?
- [Peder] Yeah, for sure.
Remember, I've been in the
company 39 years, right?
So I grew up in the company
as a young marketeer
right out of university, 24 years old.
So I've experienced a lot
of things with Arla Foods,
but I'm also very thankful
for Arla Foods who've given
me the opportunity to work
with something that really matters,
and as I said, which is meaningful.
I think that the important
was that on my first day actually,
and I think that you've had one
of your CEOs in there
talking about the loneliness
of the CEO, I was struck by
that feeling, by the way,
tremendously the first year.
I was very young. I was 42.
Everybody reported to me, apart from one,
had been my boss previously,
so I needed to find my way
in that, a little bit odd,
and bring something to the table
that was needed in the company.
- [Jimmy] I mean, we've all as coaches
with our people said, "Yes,
of course you can have everything,
just not everything all at once."
You've taken on probably one
of the hardest jobs in business
because managing a co-op
is about incredible engagement over time.
You are corralling, you are motivating,
you are launching 1,000 conversations.
Where do you get your energy
to do that year in and year out?
- [Peder] One place. It's meaningful.
It's simply meaningful.
So what I do, what we do
as leaders in Arla Foods
is that it matters to
not only our employees,
but it matters to thousands
of families on farms
in seven different countries
in Europe, and beyond.
If we are successful,
then they're successful.
If we go through hard times,
they go through hard times.
We share a lot of destiny.
It's simply meaningful to
be the CEO of Arla Foods,
or for that matter, another dairy co-op.
- [Jimmy] You've seen it. I've seen it.
How many companies are lost
because they forget that?
Whatever that is, put customer in there.
You've kept that singular focus.
- [Peder] If we're not successful,
we're not always successful,
but if we, by and large
mostly, are not successful,
then that farmer who dreams
of getting from 20 cows to 100 cows
to 200 cows will not
be able to afford that.
And that you can see in
his eyes or her eyes.
(pensive music)
- [Jimmy] Just listen to Peder.
In turbulence, dreams matter most of all.
And to protect them, the
leader must prepare for
and respond to the future.
But for Peder,
this isn't about predicting
the future 10 years out.
Ask him directly where Arla is in 10 years
and he'll tell you straight,
"You're never gonna get that out of me."
Instead, he builds the
future into daily work.
If our job is to deliver future
growth to the farmer owner,
our daily tasks must consider the future.
Envision, deliver, engage, deliver.
The future is now.
To grow sustainably and profitably,
we must constantly adapt
to the changes we see around us.
We must deliver today and
develop solutions for tomorrow.
Envision what might happen.
What are we learning?
Where should we build?
What should we build?
Engage. Bring people into the debate.
Build conviction.
Deliver, choose, commit, act,
and then rinse and repeat.
You know, I came into this conversation
thinking we'd be talking
mostly about envision,
but in fact, we're talking about engage.
And throughout this season,
CEOs keep returning to this point.
Kevin Lobo's conviction
that robotics would change orthopedics.
Lara Boro's definition
of what won't change at The Economist,
which then led to 100
adaptations in digital.
Poul Weihrauch rediscovery
of the purpose of Mars
as an inspiration to enter new businesses.
Here's a final lesson from Peder.
This is why I wanted to talk to him.
Strategy is not just about what happens
inside the walls of the firm,
it's about the people outside them too,
especially in turbulence.
We have got to think beyond
the boundaries of our firm.
Consider our customers,
suppliers, and partners.
They're critical to our future success.
Engage them, bring them into our journey.
Build conviction that
we are better together
than each pursuing a slightly
different path to Mars
because increasingly, the
people who will help you succeed
are sitting outside the
walls of your firms.
And that changes what strategy means.
It's not just about the plan you make,
it's about the people you bring with you.
I came to this interview
thinking that in turbulent times,
envision would matter more,
maybe even take primacy.
But I left this conversation
with Peder thinking engage
matters more than ever.
Keep the dream simple,
build adaptation into daily
activities, the future's now,
and then deliver with conviction.
Commit as a full organization,
one journey to Mars,
not 1,000 different journeys.
There's a lot of seeds of thought here
'cause after all, the best
lessons come from farmers.
(lively music)
Everything from today's
episode, and every episode
is at bain.com/founders-mentality.
We'll be back in two weeks. Stay curious.
Next time on "Founder's
Mentality: The CEO Sessions."
(lively music continues)
- [Interviewee] My first day in his office
after taking over from him,
I logged onto something called
Net Lego User Group Network.
This was before Facebook even existed.
And they told me, "Why have
you retired the color old gray?
And secondly, what are you,
idiot, PhD in academics,
financial guy going to
do to destroy our brand?"
That was my first day in the job.
(lively music ending)