Örjan Feldt, CEO (Hong Kong)

Örjan has proven himself repeatedly through his career and it has allowed him to work with some of the biggest companies in the world. He has worked and lived across Asia in management and the executive level. Key takeaways from this interview:

• When opportunity knocks, invite it into your life even if you have second thoughts.
• Find the factories producing your competitors products, it means they are good enough to produce yours!
• People have the same goals and aspirations regardless of culture or geographical location.

You can contact Örjan at http://hk.linkedin.com/in/orjanfeldt

You’ve been a manager, director and engineer for a variety of companies around the world from Sweden to Japan, China to now Hong Kong. What have been some of the challenges you met conducting business across such a broad cultural oasis and how did you go about getting these positions?

Let´s start with the easy question – I got these positions mainly by being at the right place at the right time. And of course, also by actually having done good jobs that were recognized and rewarded by strong references. Being a bit adventure-minded and happily accept challenges helps a lot – don’t think “Can I manage this job?” when an opportunity appears. The hiring manager and company know much better what the position requires, and if they believe in you it is most likely within your capacity and competence.

The challenges have in many cases been to start up a new unit, function, market or outsourcing partner. When you step on virgin ground, or at least for yourself into new areas, you are automatically out of your comfort zone and usually without much support. Certainly the culture in different parts of the world vary, but I would say you probably have the same variety between internal corporate cultures and that can be an even harder challenge to tackle. When I discuss with my fellow ex-pat friends, we all agree that the toughest challenge we face is the head office back home.

Specific really tough situations I have faced involve a predecessor starting a pirate business involving staff and suppliers, the complete staff wanting to quit my first week in office after threats by mafia, making suppliers continue to deliver goods despite six months of unpaid invoices, finding interaction designers in China when they only did engineering, negotiate the Japanese internal bureaucracy… But worst are situations where you have to lay off staff, either due to redundancies and wrong profiles, or due to theft and other illegal action.

How do you go about creating a business where your employees are as motivated as you are to grow and succeed in a business? What are some of the tips you’d give to somebody who becomes a CEO of a large business and has a strong cultural divide as you did between management and employees? You did have up to 200 employees – how do you make them all feel valued when you can’t hope to memorize everybodies name?

When I lived in Holland, they had a habit of greeting all colleagues with their name in the morning. Although I have a lousy memory for names, that habit is something I can really recommend, as it demonstrate a genuine respect and care for others. “Respect” would actually be my main advice whenever you enter a new team or culture. You are the new person, you can’t expect everyone else to adapt to your style and preferences, you need to be open-minded yourself and find a way to act within the given framework.

But of course you have to drive the business and reach result – and not always are the established roles and patterns optimal so changes are for sure needed. I’d be welcomed by the odd employee, but in general people face changes with fear as they don’t know what to expect and what consequences it will have for them as individuals. This is simply the human nature, and generally not related to culture – so managing people from another culture is just like managing a team from your own country. Sure, there are some “do’s” and “don’t”, but besides that it is what you learn in most leadership education.

You began your career as a polymer engineer and quickly rose through the ranks to become an Executive in a few companies – what lead you to this success and how did you go about achieving it? Was management a goal of yours from the beginning or did the opportunities just open-up for you?

In the mid 90’s I joined Ericsson Mobile Phones after a couple of short initial employments in local companies. At the time mobile phones were still not an everyday item, so I lived through the boom from a niche area in this telecom giant, to becoming the main profit contributor. We grew exponentially, and there was a mentality of “the sky is the limit”. When you combine such enormous growth with a huge and solid parent company behind you, there were unlimited opportunities for a curious young engineer. Not only did we travel and work with colleagues and suppliers/customers all over the world, we also had extensive internal education in all from technical subjects to leadership, cultural understanding, business and more.

Already when I did my military service at age 18 I had a group of 25 to lead, and that was appointed after a series of tests all young Swedish men had to pass in those days. In business life it works a bit different – at least for me. I was given challenging tasks, sometimes as a result of good performance and other times as a response to request for higher salary, and when delivering on those challenges it created a positive spiral. It involved more responsibilities, new cultures, new functions, larger groups, more money… Making a career was never a driving force for me. Looking back, sure I have advanced in knowledge, experience and corporate levels but if that would have been a main goal I doubt I would have made it. Personally, I never say no to a challenge and approach everything with curiosity and an open mind – sometimes I fail, but usually not.

A manufacturing business generally runs with peaks and valleys both in staff and financially as you might over-produce one product and under-produce others. How do you get your manufacturing numbers right before starting-up the assembly line? How long did it generally take from go-ahead to selling your products in stores?

This is an interesting question, and a situation most companies struggle with. I am a generalist and in no way an expert on the matter, but I have learnt that each industry and each company have to find their own way. A few examples:

At mobile phone products, we were during the 90’s in the forefront of technology development. The performance increase of components and products was so rapid, that the key was to get massive amount of products out on the market from day one – a few months later they would be outdated and not able to sell. So the challenge was to work with parallel production tooling and equipment already from the design stage to have a massive capacity, even before the products were debugged. I would suggest that the key factor here was quality- and industrialization engineers.

When I worked with toys and other children products, the situation was very different. These products are highly seasonal – if you miss the Christmas sales on toys you are out, January delivery is just too late. Here it comes to cash flow and taking risk – if production is not started already before the summer you will not have the goods in shops for Christmas sales. And for sure there were very few customers that committed to volumes half a year before delivery, so it had to be done on risk, and the decision involved a lot of people all the way to the top. Should I state a key factor it must be that close cooperation between internal units to merge conflicting interests.

In my latest venture, a lighting company, we had a very well developed business model that fitted the part of the market we addressed. The majority of customers were big distributors and retail chains, and we actually produced on order only. There was no stock at all of finished goods, only certain components where the MOQ for purchase was rather high. This is not a model suitable for all companies even inside the lighting business, but worked well for us. Typical delivery times were about two months for new models, and down to one month for existing models and these timings were accepted by the customers.

You were involved with a large variety of products, how do you decide which ones to go-ahead with and which to drop? Market research is an expensive endeavor and I want to get a better understanding of the process you go through before green lighting mass production.

This is of course different depending on the industry and the company size. In business you need to have an offer or portfolio that attracts sales to be commercially successful. The easiest part is probably to kill products that have proven to fail in the market, as numbers don’t lie. And to determine hit models are equally simple, sales figures should be clear. Quite often staff has emotions attached to ideas or existing products, making the portfolio planning a very sensitive task. But how to determine what new products or services should be developed?

In general you will know what the industry market trends are, not necessarily from expensive research but from following competitors, trade fairs, and general fashion trends. And you should be aware of what image you have, and want to have, on the market and among customers for your brand or company. To analyze the market place, determine which areas to address, and identify gaps to be filled take some time and resources. And don’t expect to change it all over night; this might be a several year long process.

Some of your customers will have a strong opinion on what kind of products they would buy from you – so ask them! It cost nothing, and can build a closer relation for the future and even a commitment to buy before you start to invest. When possible, you can of course also prototype or illustrate new ideas and ask for feedback from customers or user groups before you move to heavy investments. And sometimes it is just to follow the guts feeling and keep your fingers crossed!

You were instrumental in developing manufacturing capabilities for a variety of companies across Asia. What are the key signs you’d look for as to whether a plant was capable of doing what you were hoping and not just bluffing? How do you go about building trust between design firm and the manufacturer that they won’t run away with your IP once they get the files?

Let’s start with the easy question – IP. I might sound cynical here (and I have even a few patents in my name), but I see very little purpose for most companies to protect design or ideas. We live in a market full of stolen ideas, when even huge MNCs like Apple, Google and Samsung are fighting in between about infringements in patents and brands. To get around a protection is really easy with just small adjustments, and should someone copy you straight off you will probably never get any compensation out of a process that will take time, money and effort. How many companies in China for example that notoriously infringes protected rights just close down and opens under a new name next week? Perhaps I am colored by working in Asia quite a lot, in the Western world people tend to be more concerned about contracts and clauses.

Better to put the focus on selecting the right production partner (assuming we talk about outsourcing). Again, there are people specialized in researching manufacturing companies and due diligence firms wanting your money and I’m personally none of those. I usually like to see some of the main competitors on the customer list – if my competitors already work with the specific factory they can probably build my products as well. If you are outsourcing to a country other that your own, use your local staff to check around – they usually have a personal network within sub-suppliers and competitor staff. And for sure, bring along your technical and supply expertise and have them look around and ask questions. If you have none of those competencies and no local staff, I would recommend calling for help with the search and evaluation. Finally, hopefully you find yourself in a position where you don’t need to put all eggs in one basket, and can try out a small non-critical project first. Even great customers and suppliers need a time to adapt to each other’s way of working.