Still a long road ahead Dear colleague We came through the first half of the year with modest sales growth and doubled earnings. The growth was less than planned and budgeted – primarily due to the situation in Russia – but we have still achieved our most important goals. We turned around the earnings curve, we at least maintained our global market share, and we began rolling out our strategy in earnest throughout the company. So we have taken the first small steps on our journey towards 2020, but there is still a long way to go. We have said we must have solid ground under our feet, so our company can be more customer focused and simpler to work with and in, and we have to be close to our customers. A number of initiatives have been taken, and these have already begun to show tentative results in our financial results for the first half year. We need to accelerate the initiatives in our new Group strategy. These focus on creating a solid economic foundation, getting more from our value chain, innovating the best products and technologies faster and better, developing a stronger service business, putting the customers in focus, and creating a more flexible organisation which collaborates and makes decisions laterally, without silos and bureaucracy. To succeed in this, we need your contribution. Put yourself in the customer's and your colleague's shoes, and think about what you can do better for Grundfos, and not vice-versa. We must also learn from our successes and our mistakes. We had to recall the CONLIFT product due to a safety risk, and our flagship MAGNA3 product has serious quality problems in the market. We are not proud of these things, but we have taken responsibility for resolving them and learning from them. We are honing our processes, and reminding each other that quality always has been and will be what differentiates us from our competitors. You can read about your colleagues' reflections and actions in these two cases. Doing so helps give us insight and to appreciate that responsibility has been taken, and useful knowledge has been garnered, which can and must lead to improvements. We are doing many things very well. And there is a lot we can do even better. If you see possible improvements, or learn something new about our customers or from one of our own mistakes during your daily work, do not hesitate to do something yourself. At Grundfos we have the best employees, and have reason to have confidence in each other. Do not wait for someone else to solve the problems for you. Become part of the solution and the growth of the company. Take the responsibility and initiative upon yourself, and remember that the only thing worse than a bad decision, is no decision. But to avoid silos, we have to all get better at thinking about and discussing how our decisions impact on other parts of Grundfos. Cooperation is not about endless coordination and bureaucracy, but about us all taking responsibility for the whole. Welcome on board for the next stage of the journey! Best regards Mads Nipper CEO 2 Gmagazine October 15
Download PDF file
Cookie policy