In times of change and difficult circumstances, the show must go on. Sourcing is no exception. Clients with sourcing on the agenda often need what we can provide – frameworks, templates, and checklists built on a foundation of practical hands-on expertise. Given the situation where we all find ourselves working remotely, with less direct interaction with co-workers – we have enhanced the Opticos Sourcing Framework.
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Unbeaten together
Creating value for people is to create value for the organization
Opticos / Unbeaten together
Creating value for people is to create value for the organization, not the other way around. That is really how I see it even in an ERP-implementation or with IT-sourcing. But, let’s take a closer look.
A few years ago I had this client assigned to leading a large change project. Let’s call him Peter. The assignment was vague and stakeholders had contradicting views on what should be achieved. Peter was about to panic when I asked him to calm down sit down with me in a gloomy HQ conference room.
This is what I did to help Peter to sell a completely new approach, take back the initiative and unite the stakeholders.
- Identify “what good looks like” – paint the picture of where we want to be.
- Simplify the message by crafting a storyline that people (actually) can relate to
- Break it to the main stakeholders gently – Start with the simple stuff to get traction and momentum – wait with the hard stuff (only detail things that need to happen early)
- Find good examples from other corporations where they faced similar challenges and what they did to tackle them
- Plan for an early pilot or a proof of concept (POC) to make the first steps look reasonable and easy to understand – present sketches and do not work for perfection
- Identify and describe the pain to the people we solve the problem for – if we can make them validate the problem – we will get the buy-in for what we can do – to make it happen
Why did all this work?
I helped Peter by understanding him and his challenge to unite his stakeholders. I helped him to break down complexity into pieces and put the focus on activities early on the timeline. The pilot did exactly that. By only promising a low complexity pilot very early and not describe a flagship in the distant future made it easy for the stakeholder to buy the direction we wanted to take. They could almost feel the pilot. They loved it. Peter loved it.
What I did for Peter from a people perspective
I gave Peter the tools and confidence to facilitate exactly the right discussions with the stakeholders. The steps above made the scope clear and most importantly; the first few steps created results.
This is what makes it fun to work with people. Making Peter the hero and making him grow is a sustainable way of growing the business. It’s also something that tends to make the business come back. To pay it forward. Peter knows how I work and often talks about how much pain he avoided through this approach.
Creating value for people is to create value for the organization, not the other way around. Value creation starts and ends with people. That is why connecting with people and creating value for people is our core business.
Håkan Liedman & Martin Steffen
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I have to be honest – for me, the most important part of our organization is my colleagues and I care about them. Only a few years ago we were small and I knew everyone in the company. But, with new offices and an increasing number of colleagues, it’s difficult to maintain a sense of “One Opticos”. Especially in today’s technological and always-connected environment. We can all work from anywhere which allows for great productivity. However, it could potentially isolate and take time from the face-to-face experience. Why not combine something that is healthy with something we can do together?
Opticos supports a healthy lifestyle and we have found that a good way to connect with each other is to exercise together. May it be a joint workout at the gym nearby during the lunch break? A morning run before work, or in this case, train for and run a race together. We believe running is a great way to step outside of the formal environment at work. It’s a great way to get to know each other and informally discuss what is on our minds, whether it is work-related or not. Many of us meet on a weekly basis, but still, we don’t necessarily know a lot about each other. Running enables us to foster deeper relationships and to show a different side of ourselves. Our incentive for this challenge is to engage with each other in a way that isn’t related to our day-to-day work.
That’s why I and a group of colleagues decided to train for the New York Marathon. Well, that was before it got canceled. During the time leading up to the race, which normally takes place in November, we planned not only train individually but as a group as well in order to encourage each other, as this was the first marathon for many of us. We planned to have structured training sessions following training programs that are individually adapted to each colleague’s goal for the race. Some of us have long experience of running and have a target time in mind, while some of us are relatively new to it and are fine with running the 42-kilometers at an even pace. We are all at different levels but it’s something for us to bond over. That’s the great thing about running, it is not only a personal challenge but also very sociable. As you know the Covid-19 pandemic prevented us from going this year, but it did not stop us from training for it! Now we have gained an additional year of training and we look forward to standing on the starting line 2021 instead.
We are using an app as the main platform to log our training sessions. The idea is to follow each other’s progression, get inspired and encourage each other. Research shows that exercising with friends, colleagues or even strangers is contagious (pun intended), so by spreading information – we hope to see the team grow. That is still a good idea – even due to the cancellation of not only Göteborgsvarvet, but also New York Marathon 2020.
At Opticos, we want to go from being individual runners, running to stay fit or as a hobby, to start running together and as a team at different races. As Christopher McDougall wrote in his book Born to run – “The reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other,… but to be with each other.” For us, it’s not so much about the race itself but the journey to get there.
In times of change and Covid-19 we need to inspire ourselves and others even more, we will be posting updates in the future about our journey leading up to different races, so stay tuned to find out how it all went once we have crossed the finish line – wherever that finish line is.
Richard Orrebrant
Fun facts: Opticos, founded 10 years ago in Gothenburg. The city is well known among other things for hosting the most popular half-marathon, and second most popular road race, in the world; Göteborgsvarvet (also canceled in 2020). We thought it only fitting that for our 10th anniversary take on the challenge of participating in the most popular road race in the world; The New York Marathon. It is a bit ironic that the marathon never did make it to the 50th anniversary this year but we are looking forward to next year instead.
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Already from day one, we aimed for building a premium brand management consultancy firm. Not to build another one – but to build one that could listen more to our clients than talking to them.
Looking back – thinking about Anders and me sitting at that coffee table 10 years ago and how we talked about managing pretty complex sourcing programs – it’s good to reflect on what we did to make all this happen.
Back then, we knew it would not be enough to bridge that gap between the buyer and seller of complex services – representing the buyer. No, we would need to facilitate and enable win-win situations to build long and strong relationships. Just like in any personal relationship, a partnership needs to be built on transparency, joint and known objectives, an understanding of priorities – to enable a long and prosperous relationship. We could see a need for a new sort of sourcing advisory firm – and we started Opticos.
We wanted our clients to know us for listening more than talking. Aiming for what was right for them. Succeeding we made things happen. We called the way we helped our clients “the Power of knowing” and with “Make things happen” – they became our taglines. This grew into our values of Excellence, Collaboration, Integrity & Humbleness.
Having a strong belief in that we all need to contribute to a better world beyond talking about it – we decided to be a company taking on social responsibility, promoting diversity and integrating sustainable practices in everything we do.
Today 10 years down the track, we provide IT-enabled business transformation and sourcing advisory services, making it happen to our large base of clients in the Nordics. I think we can be really proud to say that we are delivering on our promises second to none and in accordance with our values – and having fun together doing it!
This was our #unbeatenAmbition looking back. Looking up and into the future – Let’s Make it happen for the next 10 years as well!
Fredrik Hallberg & Anders Gullbrandson
