SSONext

Simen Munter joins us and discusses his background as both a navy diver and son of hotel owners. From the former he learned that most things seem scarier than they actually are and from the later, he learned if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s not a business- it’s a lifestyle. The hotel also informed Simen as to the importance of a customer. And the importance of being cost focused. He learned how hard it is to make money- something that he says is- tough to understand in a large corporation. In a shared services organization, when incentives are built around getting a bigger budget Simen suggests that the incentives are the wrong way around. Measure what’s best for the customer which is what’s best for the company. And on efficiency- Simen notes that if you’re not in the top 5%, your most likely not far from the bottom 5%.

Recorded at SSOW Filippo Passerini joins us and takes us through his history from Rome to Istanbul to the UK to Latin American to North America to line management in Greece and eventually to GBS. At P&G, the baseline cost and service models wasn’t clear so when they had a few glitches there was a lot of noise. They had tried outsourcing, monetizing and then called Filippo. He realized that he and the organization needed to move very fast because the unit couldn’t continue to be in limbo. He brought in his line management mindset, strategy and approach which was transformational for GBS. He also was CIO so he discusses reporting into CIO, CEO and CFO and the implications of each.

Recorded at SSOW Tomasz Brzostowski joins us and discusses the keys to managing his millennial team. He has learned that other generations have politics inherent in our communication. He’s learned to put politics away when dealing with his team which contains mostly folks in their 20s. If you’re not real, you won’t be heard. Regarding his history, after spending time in tough job roles the Netherlands and Kuala Lampur building his global people management skills, and utilizing Dutch directness he he went back to Poland in another difficult position in shared services. Overall, Thomasz found that in managing people, especially non Gen X, non boomers, the best question is always why. 

Cindy Gallagher joins us and shares that when she joined Discovery she immediately focused on the low hanging fruit. Based on how rapidly the brand had grown, Cindy was able to come in and look at the underlying foundation of the enterprise. She realized that trust needed to be built internally to ensure that end customers were appropriately serviced. She began by asking why. Why did internal customers feel the way that they did about shared services? And from there she could focus on adding technology and ultimately through metrics giving those internal clients a dashboard filled with value for them.  She gained visibility into the organization and the organization gained trust in the shared services enterprise. 

Recorded at SSOW, Manny Korakis joins us and shares that as a CFO, his approach is to have folks that report to him, focus on something he doesn’t know. A self described typical finance guy, Manny’s thought is that with a good team, that’s all that a CFO really should need to know. Manny shares his history including his experience being at Arthur Anderson during Enron. Regarding communication with a CFO, Manny urges EVPs and SVPs on down the line- when proposing the purchase of a new technology (or a change in a strategy), to make a business case with a cost benefit analysis- as opposed to pointing to a proposed improvement in metric X. And it always helps to accelerate the timing of the benefits to the organization.

Mihir Shukla joins us from SSOW seeking to demonstrate what is possible with automation. He likens this change to steel being introduced- and the need to see elephants on the brooklyn bridge to understand that steel was strong. Or when electricity introduced at the worlds fair in 1893 when 100,000 lightbulbs were lit to show people that night didn’t need to be dark. At the show, Mihir and team processed the entire US volume of 6 Billion ATM reconciliation transactions in the moment- an innovation step jump change in itself. Mihir goes on to explain that what we do for work today will be a hobby eventually- much like gardening. That said, he insists that society not approach automation with either blind optimism or paralyzing fear. 

Recorded at SSOW, Lee Coulter joins us and takes us through his career and resulting philosophy. He learned a key lesson very early on- say what you’re going to do and do that. From GE he learned how to be completely analytical yet not go overboard. From AON, he realized that the move from one organization to another was more of a culture shock than moving from the US to Asia. On moving to Kraft, he was brought on to undo a long-term infrastructure integration that had just been completed. He says he’s had 5 once in a career opportunities- one of them being lifting rugs and move rocks that never get lifted or moved. What he found there and throughout his career in automation, he’s brought forth to his current work with IEEE.