My year in sales

When I joined the Program, I moved from Copenhagen to London, to start as an account manager on the Crossrail Project. The project is not only one of the largest infrastructural projects in Europe, but in my opinion also one of the most exciting and innovating amongst them. Working on Crossrail is really about leaving a legacy as it will expend the capacity of Londons underground by 5% and remove some of the pressure on the other lines too. I am proud to have been first hand witness to see the amazing engineering work that goes into building a new underground line. Seeing all the installations that you will never see as a passenger and walking on raw concrete platforms underground is a sight I will never forget!

The colleagues I worked with had been handpicked to work on our team and during the year they taught me more about sales than my 6 years in business school. The team was so great we ended up winning the Team Competition in GB, and we got a chance to meet our American Counterparts in Las Vegas for the World of Concrete! Again an amazing opportunity were I got to see some of our very best account managers in action! Despite two days of rain on the open air fair, we still managed to exceed our expectations for the year.

Next up is Finland!

Six pretty good months in Finland!

If there is a recurrent theme being on the Outperformer Program, it would for me be “challenge”. If I have not been the one challenged through the rotations and the scope of my projects, I have had to be the one challenging the status quo.

In the past six months, my project has been in Finland working on a strategic project. The strategic projects are usually in our regional headquarters, but in Finland they were assessing how to implement lean tools and mindset in the whole organization. From the beginning, it looked to be a massive challenge, not only because of the scope but also down to the fact that my experience with lean was nothing more than a few books and courses from my time as an under-grad. I had to learn while teaching others and supporting in using the right tools across all our departments from HR to Sales to Finance. I have arranged workshops, developed a lean platform, and held a kick-off event with lean as the sole focus. None of that would have been possible without amazing support and engagement from what we call Change Champions in Hilti. Change Champions are representatives from across the organization, who voluntarily and with a lot of enthusiasm engage themselves in trialling out new processes, work methods, and eventually supports in the implementation too! They taught me the meaning of teamwork makes the dream work!

A side from the business perspective, I can highly recommend visiting Finland! Just around the capitol area there are national parks, lots of lakes and scenery, and of course plenty of Moomin themed attractions… and a chance to taste reindeer. A must if you ever go to Finland! What’s not to like?

My next destination with Hilti will be our North European headquarter in Manchester where an operational project in HR awaits!