#reforceinternational

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Reforce announces SEK 51 million equity raise to support sales growth and international expansion

September 4th, 2019

Reforce International (www.reforceinternational.com), a SaaS company delivering a technology platform for accelerating strategic initiatives within large organisations, announced today that the company has completed an equity raise of SEK 51 million. Lead investors included Creades, Swedbank Robur and Consensus Småbolag.

The funds raised in this financing will enable Reforce to accelerate sales growth, expand its geographical reach and further develop ReExecute, its proprietary software.

- We are very pleased to welcome these recognised investors to be part of our exciting journey. With these funds secured we can now focus on continued growth and developing our customer offering even more. Lately, large companies have realised the value of aligning the entire organisation when measuring progress on proactive initiatives and our software can be vital in achieving this. We are now in a position where we can fully benefit from this increased awareness amongst our potential customers, says Per Forslund, President, Reforce.

- Speed and precision in strategy execution is a key distinguishing factor between good and great companies. Even more so in today’s rapidly changing competitive environment. We believe Reforce is well positioned to become a global leader within its field’, says John Hedberg, CEO Creades.

- Tools that help accelerate and measure strategy execution are extremely important to business leaders that want to ensure a good ROI. We believe the tools from Reforce stand out in this area, and we are very excited to support the company and its entrepreneurs, says Henrik Carlman and Kristofer Barrett managers of the Fokus fund at Swedbank Robur.

The company is targeting an IPO during 2020.

Erik Penser Bank acted as financial advisor and sole book runner in the transaction. Synch Law acted as legal advisor.

About Reforce

Reforce is a Stockholm based international SaaS-company targeting large organisations. Its software, ReExecute, is a proactive tool that helps large organisations to execute better and faster on their strategies by visualizing, steering and measuring the business and strategy acceleration real-time and accurately throughout the entire organisation. By providing the tools and ability to be business agile, ReExecute helps its customers to increase revenues and profits.

About Creades

Creades is an investment company investing in businesses that have the potential for revaluation and value creation. Creades act as an engaged owner, mainly in smaller and mid-sized listed and unlisted companies in Sweden. Example of listed investments: Avanza, Lindab and Addnode. Example of unlisted investments: Apotea, Inet, Kaching, Röhnisch and Tink.

About Swedbank Robur

One of Scandinavia’s largest mutual fund managers with over SEK 1tn of assets under management (AUM) that serves approximately 3.1MM customers in Sweden and 1.1MM in the Baltic Region. Altogether there are approximately 80 investment funds under the Swedbank Robur brand covering all major regions, sectors and asset classes.

About Consensus Småbolag

Consensus Småbolag is an actively managed equity fund that invests in small and medium-sized companies in the Nordic countries. The fund has the ability to take large exposures in individual companies, but is otherwise diversified in its direction and is not concentrated to any specific industry. The fund has an investment horizon of 3-5 years and a concentrated portfolio of normally 15-20 companies, where the three largest companies can make up 50% of the total fund. The fund invests in smaller companies with a clear focus on growth with profitability. The initial investment in a company often happens at an early stage before the company is discovered by the market. In 2019, the fund’s value has risen by 34,9%.

Find out more about..

www.reforceinternational.com

www.reexecute.se

For Further information please contact

Per Forslund, President, Reforce, +46 (0) 8 24 31 10

Ulf Arnetz, Chairman, Reforce, +1 (917) 214-9437

Stina Åkesson, CFO, Reforce, +46 (0) 70 675 80 00

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Welcome Nicke Bergqvist!

Nicke Bergqvist has an entrepreneurial background and a strong willingness to succeed. His high performance and positive spirit will be a major addition to Reforce International.

Nicke first started at Ryska Posten where he was part of their big expansion in staffing and recruiting. Recently he has been working in the energy industry as a business developer and distributed innovative products in renewable energy to the Nordic market. Nicke went to College in the United States where he studied international business and psychology.

“First step in to Reforce office I knew for certain - I want to work here! I was instantly impressed by their unique Acceleration Software, big ambitions and strong commitment in everything they do, I thought- finally the perfect fit! With my experience in entrepreneurship, sales and building relationships I'm looking forward to helping our clients digitalize their goal steering and give them measurable financial results. Creating Business Agile companies prepared for any market changes” - Nicke

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Welcome Thomas Schnittger!

Reforce International are proud to have Thomas Schnittger joining Reforce International. Thomas has an entrepreneurial background and has been part of several early-stage and start-up firms. Since 2011 he has been consulting and accelerating owner-led businesses through his own firm and before that, he spent 15 years in senior sales and sales management.

I am truly excited to join ReForces mission in solving one of the largest challenges for managers worldwide. With our unique software for strategy execution, I believe we will! It is Jim Collins who says ”The enemy of the great is the good” and I will use my 20+ years of experience as CEO, entrepreneur, sales manager and board executive to support our renowned clients in finding their distinction.

If you want to know more about Reforce International or interested in becoming our new colleague. Please contact sofie.romero@reforceinternational.com or Apply here

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Welcome Fredrik Colldahl Scherstén!

Fredrik Colldahl Scherstén has a background in IT- and management consulting. His main areas of expertise include software development, project management, architecture and mentoring. Fredrik has a passion to build and improve both systems as well as organizations and its people, having a solid background in system development as well as extensive training in leadership and coaching. Having worked in different industries, with a wide range of technologies and in different positions, he is experienced and keen to constantly improve himself and his clients, his mentor adapts as well as himself, always staying on top of things.

"Building and developing are a passion of mine, probably the reason why I became an engineer. Seeing results and see something grow is amazing. But it's not only about technology - building and developing people, companies and myself are equally or even more rewarding. I am therefore very excited to join Reforce, developing the tools to help companies improve themselves seems like a perfect fit."

Fredrik has an academic background with a civil engineering / master degree in IT and a minor in “Industrial management and economics” from Chalmers university of technology. Most recently he worked as a manager at Netlight Consulting AB. Besides a background in consulting, Fredrik really enjoys the start-up industry. For instance, Fredrik has been a part of developing concepts for the start-up "Digitalpost", making letters digital and accessible.

Welcome Fredrik!

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The need for mobility

ReExecute is a powerful tool for monitoring and facilitating strategy implementation. Even if we are proud of our product and we receive a lot of praise from our users, we are not addressing our customers’ need for mobility...until now.

Developing our mobile app has been a work in progress during the last six months at Reforce. In the beginning of the process a lot of effort were put into evaluating the different approaches/techniques of mobile app development. The different techniques can be grouped into three main groups: Native, Hybrid and Cross-platform. For our readers not familiar with these concepts, I will briefly go through them one by one.

Native Native implies using the platform (e.g. iOS & Android) specific programming language and APIs. This requires specific expertise but allows you to leverage the full potential of the hardware and more often yields a better performance and user experience comparing to the other approaches.

Cross-platform Cross-platform mobile development is a wide concept. In our case we have delimited the concept to include techniques that allows you to write one codebase (with minor platform specific exceptions) but to run on multiple mobile operating systems and to access a set of the hardware capabilities. One example of this technique is the React native framework that allows you to write a JavaScript codebase and in the end render platform specific UI components.

Hybrid The distinction between hybrid and cross-platform is not always easy define. Hybrid apps are cross-platform apps with less harnessing of the platform specific APIs. Hybrid apps are almost exclusively apps written in HTML5 and JavaScript then wrapped in a native WebView (browser frame) and then packaged into an app. This approach is the least expensive one and the one where you have the most limited access to the mobile hardware.

The relevant approach for your project depends on a number of things; cost, time to market, application lifespan, application content etc. In the next few paragraphs, I will go through the aspects we considered before starting our app development and do an evaluation of our decision six months into the project.

Requirements specification When considering which approach to use, there were a couple of requirements we had to take into consideration: • Our resources are limited (3-4 developers also working on our main web version of ReExecute)
 • The app must be able to access the hardware camera, GPS receiver and possibly other hardware capabilities (in future releases).
 • No demanding graphics rendering
 • Professional user experience
 • Short time to market
 • Support iOS and Android


Considerations Due to our limited resources and the demand on short time to market, we first considered the hybrid approach. It was a well fit to the competencies already present in our team, we are all proficient in HTML and JavaScript. This would mean that not a lot of time would be spent on acquiring new knowledge and thus we would be able to deliver a working product within a reasonable time span. The hardware capabilities were however an issue. We argued that maybe this requirement were excessive but we came to the conclusion that a hybrid app would limit us for future improvements of the app. The hybrid approach were hence omitted from the list of candidate approaches.

Ok, we need hardware capabilities and of course a professionally looking app. Let’s go with the native approach. We actually ruled that option out as well since we deemed it too costly. The one time cost of developing the app would be affordable but we estimated the cost of maintaining two codebases too high.

After having developed PoCs based on all three approaches, our final decision was to go with a cross-platform solution, more specifically the React Native framework. Since we are only 3-4 developers total at Reforce, the cost aspect was paramount in our final decision. Using React native entailed a fairly low cost (since it’s based on a single codebase and it is mainly based on JavaScript) while at the same time allow the app to harness a vast majority of the hardware capabilities. The framework ticked all the boxes in our requirements specification except maybe one, there was a risk that the user experience would suffer due to performance issues of cross-platform techniques in general.

Evaluation Our app project has now been running for about six months and we are days away from releasing a beta version that turned out to be a lot more extensive than we first planned for. First of all, I would like to assure everyone that our initial concern that there might be performance issues was unfounded. We had some minor performance hiccups in the beginning but React Native has matured (it is a new framework) and performance has improved (a major performance improvement was made in release 0.27 of React native). It is always important to evaluate the choices you make in order to learn for the future. So, do I think we made the right decision? Overall, yes. I think the cost would have been much less if we would have gone with a hybrid solution but the limitations would have been too significant. I am not sure whether this cross-platform solution is much more cost efficient than a native solution. React native is an immature framework and being the early-adopter always comes with a price. Having to constantly adjust to new releases (even breaking releases) is time demanding. Maybe a more stable approach would have been beneficial for us since we will not spend all of our time developing and maintaining the mobile app. Would a native approach have been too costly? Maybe, maybe not. Developing for iOS has become easier with Apple’s new praised programming language Swift and developing for Android implies writing a Java codebase (which our entire crew works with on a daily basis). Of course there would be a hurdle or two to overcome but maybe they wouldn’t have been as steep as one may think. 

To summarize, I believe we have made a sound decision but due to the constant evolvement of React native we need to make sure we keep up with new releases.

Johan Wiström Application Developer  Reforce International

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After having spent more than ten years in the organizational and leadership development industry I wanted to try something new.

My name is Anders Knutsson and I have spent a considerable amount of time in the traditional HR industry, functioning both in consultancy and leadership roles. My work focus has included all areas within HR, from recruitment, individual and group development, talent-perfomance management processes to organizational development initiatives. One of the things that has been frustrating for me working as a psychologist, trying to help organizations becoming more profitable, effective and sustainable – is how hard it is (except from recruitment decisions) to perform development work in a way that actually affects real life work behaviors. Most of the times, to me it is like we end up training football on a ping pong table. Leaders are extracted from their normal context and the group they are supposed to lead, learning generic leadership behaviors not at all connected to their organizations strategy, competition and internal circumstances. After training is finished, we hope and expect the leaders themselves to be able to export and apply their new insights and knowledge in their work. Considering that 50% of leaders still fail, chances are that this could be made in a better way. These are of course a problem that doesn’t have one single or obvious solution. But in my own search for answers I have been looking for a chance to work with behavior change in a more work oriented fashion. To find Reforce and understand how they designed their services was therefore a chance that I couldn’t miss. And when I finally, after a long and tough recruitment process, got accepted I was thrilled. To work, in “real life situations”, together with groups trying to accelerate their businesses strategy, is a very developing and humbling experience.

Anders Knutsson Psychologist and Associate Partner Reforce International

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CAAS (Car as a Service)

The idea that a car’s sole purpose is transportation — will seem quaint.

Under the old 19th century paradigm, an automobile was defined by the physical object you purchased on the showroom floor.  And its functions were unalterable — fulfilling the same purposes until you bought your next car. Under the 21st century paradigm — your automobile will constantly be redefined, providing you myriad services based on your needs and wants of the moment. The recipe driving the transformation consists of this essential formula: Platform + Apps + Service. This is delivered through a combination of: •    Hardware platform (the actual vehicle and its component parts) •    Software applications that control features and functionality of the vehicle hardware, software and services delivery; and •    Software licensing and entitlement management, which sorts out which car features, functions and services a customer has paid for and can access. That is what CAAS is! The interesting next question is how will this impact the Automobile industry going forward, will there be the same stakeholders? What other new stakeholders will enter this space? And who will own the transaction towards the end-user? One simple answer to these question is that nobody nows! One thing that is very clear though is that the ownership of cars will move to owning access to transportation, we will no longer always own our car, we will be connected to a service that will ensure access to just in time transportation!

I have been working in conjunction with a large number of stakeholders within this sector for the past year, and I have seen initiatives ranging from Peer-to-Peer all the way to rental solutions like Audi:s ”SilverCar”. I don’t believe that all this will shift overnight, but I am quite sure that it will happen much faster then we think, and that is one of the most challenging transformations of Moores Law, the industry has ever come across. The number one question on almost all stakeholders lips is: Shall I become the spider in the CAAS net or shall I excel being a partner in other stakeholders webs? I believe that both paths will have the opportunity to work well, but not deciding on path will most likely not. Johan Ramel Partner Reforce International

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The mindset of a programmer

Working as a developer is challenging. You are faced with hard problems that takes time and dedication to solve. To succeed you need to know what you are doing, but most of all you need to have the mindset of a programmer.

The mindset of a programmer is a very efficient approach to solve complex problems and to find small errors in big systems.

As it turns out, our way of thinking can lead to success in business as well. Just look at entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. They all have a background in computer science and have managed to solve problems at a much larger scale.

Clearly there are useful lessons to learn here. Let’s start by taking a closer look at the mindset.

Step 1 - Break it down Every problem can be broken down to smaller pieces. The smaller the pieces are the easier it will be for you to understand them. You need to deconstruct the problem as far as you can.

When you have done that and figured out what each piece does, you have a complete overview of the problem.

Step 2 - Simplify Now that you have your pieces you must decide which ones are relevant. You will find that many of them don’t have anything to do with the problem you are trying to solve. It’s time to simplify.

To simplify you need to study all of the pieces you created. Investigate what each one does and doesn’t do. Remove the ones that you don’t need and map out how the remaining relates to each other.

Step 3 - Pay attention to details A developer want to know exactly what happens at every single line of code. Sometimes you will find that one line among thousand cause the problem you are trying to solve.

That’s how detailed you need to be. If you understand each line of code you will find the solution.

Step 4 - Don’t stop until it’s done As developers we know that if we spend enough time on a problem we will eventually solve it. If we have the programmer mindset the time it takes will be much shorter.

Being consistent and patient is extremely important. You will find yourself struggling for days without making progress and then all of a sudden find exactly what you are looking for.

If we give up when we are stuck that won’t happen.

Solving strategic problems A strategic problem may seem different but it can be solved in the same way. You can break it down, you can simplify it and you can pay attention to the details.

Maybe you already are solving strategic problems with our approach. Maybe you are as consistent as we are. But if you are not you should give it a shot.

I promise that it will save you time and that the solutions you come up with will be of higher quality. Oscar Johansson Partner & Application Developer Reforce

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Vill du utmana det traditionella? Lär känns oss bättre genom videon från vår kickstart i Stockholm 2015. #reforce

[reforceinternational]

Stimulate your entrepreneurs – give them targets!

Entrepreneurship is a term that many companies emphasize in their core values today. Internally as well as externally.

Some might claim it’s a buzz word but fact remains that, managed correctly, internal entrepreneurs can play a major role in a company’s success. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in companies that don’t only claim that they have entrepreneurial staff, they actually do.

Perceived challenges when managing entrepreneurs The challenge I’ve stumbled upon, however, is that many managers don’t know how to properly lead their entrepreneurial staff members. In fear of disturbing their creative process and forward spirit, managers are afraid to interupt these talents with strategic overview, targets, follow-ups, etc. Instead, they let them run wildly, energetically, but not necessarily in the right direction or towards a common goal. An open attitude and offering your entrepreneurs the freedom to explore is definitely important, but let’s be honest. That ONE THING that, due to a new revolutionary idea, “turns everything around” doesn’t happen very often, if at all. So until that one thing introduces itself, entrepreneurs’ energy and dedication need to be steered towards actions that actually have a direct impact on the strategy set. Not in a year from now, not in a month, not in a week… NOW.

Introducing daily targets and weekly follow-ups What I used when working with entrepreneurs are what we at Reforce call, “Affect KPI’s”. The vision for the company was clear, what results we needed to reach even clearer, but how we were going to do it… not so much. We needed to define what we as a team needed to do, on a daily basis, in order to reach those targets we had set. These Affect KPIs were followed up weekly, and made it clear what we had or hadn’t done and what we needed to do to next.

When setting our targets and processes for follow up, there was never a conflict with the generally open attitude towards freedom to explore. Instead, it offered great guidelines to explore further possibilities of making these processes even more effective. The entrepreneurs I worked with didn’t fight the structure and targets set, they treasured them. The result…  The goals we had set were blown out of the water, and we celebrated accordingly on many occasions.

Why, Where and How In conclusion, don’t be afraid to set targets and do weekly follow ups with your staff. The common entrepreneur, whether running his/her own company or working in your organization, loves reaching targets. Provided that your staff knows why they should work for your organization and give it their all, just show them where they need to go, but more importantly, HOW to get there, and you’ll succeed.

Peder Ålenius Reforce International

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Improve your memory

Everybody understands the importance of our memory in terms of what it is used for and how it affects us. What most people don’t know however is how easy it can be improved and how this can help us with our performance in our everyday life. Just by reading this article you will gain the tools you need to start improving your own memory and see results starting today.  

First of all I want to clarify something. A common misunderstanding is that a lot of us tend to think that improving our memory has something to do with increasing the amount of information we can store in our brain. This is wrong.

Although there are no exact answer to how much information our brain can store estimations of around 2.5 petabytes  is not uncommon. In other words the amount of space your computer would need to store 3 million hours of film.

The conclusion of this is that we don’t need to worry about running out of space and saying that your head is full is certainly not a valid explanation of poor performance.

Comparing two minds Let’s think of two different persons. Person 1 is a math-student who knows the first 1000 decimals of pi. Most people would be very impressed by this saying that person 1 must have an incredible memory. How can someone remember such a huge amount of different numbers?

Now let’s think about person 2. He is an ordinary guy with a huge interest in soccer and especially his favorite team Arsenal. He have watched all of Arsenals games for the past years and have also kept an eye on the top competitors. If you asked him for the result from one of Arsenals matches he would be able to tell you.

In fact he would be able to tell you the results from hundreds of other matches as well, easily piling up 1000 different numbers (not to mention the names of the many different players, their kit-numbers and who scored which goal).

You have probably met person 2 many times. Maybe it is your 12 year old son. What I want you to take with you from this example as you continue reading is that there is no difference in memory capacity between person 1 and person 2. They both accomplish the same feat and you should be equally impressed with both of them if what impresses you is a good memory.

What do we remember? If I asked you to remember a phone number in your head this might cause you some trouble. What you probably would do is to chant the numbers repeatedly in your head holding on to them for dear life.

In other words you would try to remember the actual numbers. This however is quite useless. The actual numbers in their original form is not very exciting to us and thus very hard to remember. The reason why person 2 in the example above can remember so many numbers is because the numbers are directly connected to something he finds very interesting and they have been encoded in his brain in a good way.

When you ask him for the results from a certain game the numbers are not the first thing he remembers. He extracts the numbers from a set of images he has from the game itself and as long as he remembers the game he will be able to remember the result with minimal effort.

So when answering the question “what do we remember?” there are too parts I would like to focus on.

First of all. If we find something interesting it is much more memorable to us. This is fairly obvious looking at person 2. What if you asked him for the voting results from the Eurovision Song Contest which he was forced to watch because it is a family tradition? Second, the way we encode the information we want to store is very important. The chanting of numbers is an example of encoding by repetition. This is one of the most inefficient and time-consuming ways to do it. Person 2 has primarily made a visual encoding but it is combined with other kinds of encoding as well like auditory encoding (the commentators voice or the cheer of the crowd).

Memory technique Improving your memory is all about adapting a good memory technique. In fact person 1 have probably been able to memorize the first 1000 decimals of pi the same way person 2 was able to remember all of the results from different soccer games. The numbers have been put into an interesting context and encoded in an efficient way.

The difference is that for person 2 this process came natural while person 1 has actively used a good technique to make it possible. Basically what we want to do when trying to remember something is to take the information embed it in something we find interesting and encode it in a good way.

So the question is, how can we do this? The most common way of doing this for memory athletes is to construct a story in their mind. They will use visual encoding most of the time since it is easy to use.

Let me give you an example of how I would do this if I were asked to remember the number 1008413 using this technique.

Since I am very interested in athletics and more specifically in 100m sprinting I would construct a story where I am a competitor in the Olympic finals for the men’s 100m. There are 8 lanes. I run on lane number 4. I win the race becoming number 1 in the world. The 3 top athletes gets medals. You could wake me up in the middle of the night months from now and I will remember the number 1008413.

What I did was placing the numbers in a context which I find interesting by creating a story (embed). I visualize the story in my head (visual encoding). The story don’t have to make sense (obviously).

You might say “that’s just seven digits anyone can remember that” and you are right. I might say “anyone can remember one hundred digits” and I am also right. Using this approach you will see exactly what I am talking about.  I encourage you to take every opportunity you get to try this technique out. It doesn’t have to be digits, it can be anything.

A great practice is trying to remember your grocery list. I still remember mine from two months back when I practiced these techniques.

Everyday life performance Mastering memory technique is very useful. If you practice a little bit everyday it will become more and more natural and soon you will use it whenever you need to memorize something.

This is not just a very good party-trick even if that alone would make it worth your time.

You will save a lot of time and energy when you can switch from encoding by repetition to something more efficient. It will decrease a lot of the stress your brain experience every day.

It is an amazing skill to have when learning something new or reading reports. Just imagine how much faster you can finish a report if you don’t have to go back and double check what you read.

Oscar Johansson Application Developer Reforce International

Sources http://www.thememoryinstitute.com/how-we-remember-and-why-we-forget.html http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/ http://www.dystalk.com/talks/23-ed-cooke-and-some-nifty-memory-tricks http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/06/21/some-memory-problems-stem-from-lack-of-interest/40481.html

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Tools of the strategy execution trade

Making your strategy happen is hard. Depending on the sources you use, you'd get different answers but here are some examples:

8 out of 10 business leaders claim they have the correct strategy but statistically only 1 of them succeed with the implementation.

3 out of 5 businesses see themselves lacking in ability to implement their strategy.

As many as 70% of all strategic initiatives are never carried through.

These figures speak for themselves, but how can you improve your odds by choosing the right tools? Unsurprisingly there are no silver bullets but here are some hints.

Your ERP won't bail you out

ERP:s are marvelous creatures - once they're set up. Correctly configured they can provide steadfast support for most of your business processes and provide valuable insight into the performance of your organization. However, any strategy worth the paper it's written on would require ability to adapt - and ERPs are rarely useful as agents of change. Make sure you complement the stable (and costly!) base with a more nimble component, able to adapt to a changing environment.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything

The next stop on the quest to find tools to support you would be more specialized strategy execution management software. Compared to an ERP they're marvels of flexibility, enabling you to break down goals into myriads of tasks and assign responsibility to make it happen. Trouble is, they rarely connect to an operational layer and although there's vertical transparency that purportedly allow you to trace cause and effect, the sheer number of plans, tasks and KPIs these solutions tend to create does little more than obscure the really important facts.

Business Process Management

So, if the ERP is too unflexible and strategy execution management software doesn't connect enough to the operational level, then perhaps business process management suites could be the solution? Sure, they contribute by improving quality of delivered goods and services while keeping cost down and they can be change agents if handled properly. The drawback in this case would be their bottom-up approach where you might end up being reactive from a strategy perspective; letting perception of reality dictate your choices.

Strategy execution requires focus

In the end, getting your strategy implemented boils down to just a few fundamental components:

Focus Have the courage to focus on the most important KPIs, the ones that will make or break the strategy. It's hard, because who would say that improving the company's customer satisfaction ratings isn't important?

Fulfillment This is the part where the organization is given operational tools, techniques and procedures to help them excel at the most crucial tasks; be it sales, delivery or support. No strategy can be achieved if it doesn't actually impact the people carrying out the work.

Improvement Improvement is measured and acted upon on micro level; are we doing things the right way? Many times the effort to change an organizations way of working will drown in everyday tasks, do use techniques and incentives to make sure that the strategic objectives are kept front and center at all times.

Evaluation The ultimate acknowledgement that the strategy is being implemented is measured in months, dollars, users, market presence or anything else that is significant to you. If this doesn't materialize then hopefully your support system is flexible enough to adapt before it's too late.

No software solution can do this for you but some of them can help you with the three latter components, make sure you select the one that matches your way of thinking. The courage to choose and prioritize, however, will always have to come from you.

Dan Mattsson Product Manager Reforce International

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Välkommen Oscar!

Vi välkomnar Oscar Johansson - vår senaste rekrytering på produktsidan - till Reforce.

Har du liknande drivkrafter som Oscar och skulle vilja jobba i ett företag där få saker är omöjliga? Fortsätt då processen genom att maila till rekrytering at reforceinternational.com.

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Beteendeförändring och att lära sig cykla

Mina 4 år på Reforce har gått fort, och jag kan med säkerhet säga at jag är inte samma person idag som jag var den dagen jag klev in på kontoret.

När forskningen talar om personlig förändring och beteendeförändring påstår det allra flesta att detta är något som tar lång tid och vissa menar att det egentligen inte är möjligt, på riktigt. Du kommer alltid var densamma och egentligen kan du inte förändra dig, du kan bara anpassa dig, lära dig att spegla och hantera situationer och personer du träffar, du är den du är och din personlighet sätts de första 18 åren.

Min största lärdom under min 4 år här på Reforce, är att jag inte håller med. 

Verklig beteendeförändring Vi på Reforce pratar ofta om beteendeförändring, men vad menar vi egentligen med det ? Frågar du olika personer här på kontoret så får du garanterat olika svar. För mig innebär en beteendeförändring framförallt tilltro. En tilltro till att du kan förändra dig, att du kan bryta gammal vanor och att du kan sparka ut gamla hjärnspöken som att de mesta aldrig kommer fungera.

Det finns ett otroligt lugn och en fantastisk styrka i att känna ”jag klarar detta”. Genom att varje vecka – ja, kanske varje dag - ställa sig inför okända, nervpirrande situationer och våga ta obekväma beslut har i alla fall jag, vuxit som människa. 

Ledare - inga chefer Jag har förmånen att lära känna mig själv på riktigt här på Reforce. En arbetsplats utan chefer, men med starka ledare som givit mig känslan av att de springer efter min cykel, fast de släppt taget för flera kvarter sedan. Det har fått mig att växa och förändras. Inget är omöjligt och jag klarar allt jag bestämt mig för att ta mig an. Jag måste bara våga trampa.

Signe Mörner Partner www.reforceinternational.com

[reforceinternational]

Svettigt värre - Det lackar mot jul

Klockan visar 18.03 på mobilen, det är torsdagen den 18 december, sista mötet för dagen är avklarat och du har ”bara” ett par saker att ordna innan du fäller ihop datorn…jag glömde nästan, det regnar ute också! Känner du också igen situationen? Här kommer mina smarta julklappstips!

Du har ett par julklappar kvar att inhandla och tanken på att kasta dig ut i julhandeln med lågt blodsocker, köa i överfulla varuhus, trängas med människor i varma jackor, många med desperata blickar efter julklappar. Konceptet verkar inte speciellt lockande.

Med anledning av detta så vill jag därför dela med mig av två boktips som kan passa utmärkt som julklappar till någon som tilltalas av entreprenörskap eller företagsledning och bespara dig den värsta julruschen.

Great by Choice, Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen ”Great by Choice” är den sista i serien som inleddes med den klassiska Good to Great 2001. Kärnan i boken handlar om hur man bygger upp framgångsrika bolag i perioder som är oförutsägbara, tumultartade och snabbrörliga. Specifikt går författarna in på exakt vilka faktorer i företagets strategi och i dess ledning som skiljer vinnarna från förlorarna.

Speciellt tilltalande tycker jag Collins beskrivningar är av de osäkra och oförutsägbara miljöer som dagens ledare står inför. I kapitel 3 och 4 ligger fokus på disciplin samt vikten av att arbeta med regelbundna metodiska tester och empirisk data.

De disciplinerade klarar sig alltså extra bra i osäkra och snabbt föränderliga miljöer genom att konsekvent och metodiskt exekvera sina strategier - trots att det hela tiden uppstår mycket frestande möjligheter till genvägar och snabba klipp. I boken tas flera exempel upp där företag avviker från sin utstakade plan och övergripande strategi i sin jakt på snabbt försprång och stora genombrott, bara för att på lång sikt bli ikappsprungna av konkurrenter som stått emot frestelserna och disciplinerat exekverat sin strategi.

Zero to One, Peter Thiel Peter Thiel, den legendariska entreprenören och investeraren menar att genom att enbart kopiera framgångsrika entreprenörer, så lär vi oss ingenting av dem. Progress kan uppnås i alla branscher och inom alla områden, men den avgörande faktorn är att varje enskild ledare måste kunna tänka självständigt. Författaren ställer många sanningar på ända i boken, till exempel om att små utvecklingssteg är bättre än omvälvande innovationer och att ”First mover advantage” inte alltid behöver vara bra.

Så mitt tips till dig i decembermörkret är att ställa tillbaka paraplyet, sätta dig vid datorn igen, beställ böckerna på nätet och byt en svettig kväll i dunjacka på stan mot ett svettigt pass på gymmet istället.

Från oss alla till er alla önskar Reforce en riktigt god jul med tid för inspirerande läsning. 

Therése Utsi Associate Partner Reforce International http://www.reforceinternational.com/karriar.asp

[reforceinternational]

Differences between Strategy Execution and “Acceleration Execution”

It’s a significant difference if a company is doing just a new strategy, or if the strategy is done based on fairly big changes on the market or the company’s product range.

If the strategy demands fairly big changes, and behavior changes, or if the company has been in a negative situation for a long time, traditional strategy execution will not be enough. In those cases, its needed to find ways to accelerate the execution and the behavior change.

Many consulting and software companies that help its customers with execution are rather within execution than Execution Acceleration.

Let’s look at two typical strategy execution projects Assume that the company’s revenue is €200 M, and profit €10 M, 2014. The strategy is to increase revenues to € 300 M and profit to € 30 M year 2018. What can the company do today, this week and this month, and how could we measure and accelerate the execution?

Traditional Strategy Execution The company will work with the execution in a traditional way which is:

20 High KPI’s that comes from the new strategy, normally:

Increased revenues, increased margins, increased market shares

Increased Return of investment

Improved Customer Satisfaction, increased quality

20 Measurable KPI’s (measuring above, but when it’s already have happened, for example per month or quarter)

0 HOW or Affect KPI’s (HOW-work per day including behavior change)

How to make above happening, behavior change etc

How to connect How-What-Strategy-KPI’s in the same currency (money according to a timeline)

The reasons for that the company above will fail (only approximately 20 percent of all execution projects are successful according to Harvard Business Review and several other sources), are that the strategy execution lacks “HOW” and how to measure low and high KPI’s in the same currency (normally time and money).

The strategy goal’s currency is in money and the time line is defined, but all the “HOWs” are defined and measured in done or not done. The only way to compare, will be to look in “historical numbers”, for example the sales process system.

Strategy Execution Acceleration -  Execution that really happens A company that must reach fairly radical improvements and reach the strategic goals must have a way to accelerate the execution in order to speed up and “make it happen” in reality. In order for the CEO to survive, he or she, needs a way to measure how the company’s culture, speed and focus is before the strategy execution start and how the execution and improvements accelerates week for week or month per month.

Instead of focusing on 20 KPI’s it’s necessary to focus on 1-2 at the time. We call this the Most important Goal (MIG). For example two Strategy Acceleration KPI’s (SAK) are a) increase number of strategic sales processes and b) decrease the sales process time and cost. HOW: Sales should be done to higher customer roles, in a more proactive way, based on business values, which means that SAK’s as revenue, profit, customer satisfaction and market share will increase. This means that one SAK have an impact of many high strategy KPI’s. In this case SAK will have an impact on about 50% of all Strategy KPI’s and stand for about 70% of the strategic financial goals until 2018. Add HOW that is connected to a certain “Step” (what). The first step according to above example is for instance:

Collect information about the customer before you meet with a high role

Put that information together in an outside-in perspective

Contact the high suspect/prospect role

Most Important Goal  - MIG (a more modern and countable execution) The company will work and measure the execution also as before:

20 High KPI’s that comes out from the new strategy, normally:

Increased revenues, increased margins, increased market shares

Increased Return of investment,

Improved Customer Satisfaction, Increased quality

2 SAK = Measurable KPI’s (Measures the result of below HOW’s in money and/or time, i.e the same currency as SAK)

1 WHAT and 3 HOW’s per decided time line (week, month or quarter). Measured as the Affect KPI’s (HOW-work per day including behavior change)

The modern way to “make it happen”, i.e. accelerate the strategy is done via HOW and measured via Affect KPI’s in the same currency as the strategic goals (money and time). By doing this, it’s possible to measure the execution per week or month, but it’s also possible to speed up and accelerate the execution, not just measure historical theoretical goals. The company will increase the chances for a successful execution with 3-4 times, and the execution will be at least 30 percent faster. Most important is that it’s measurable per month and it’s able to view if the strategic goals will happen on time. 

Ulf Arnetz Founder, Senior Partner & Chairman of the Board Reforce International http://www.reforceinternational.com/karriar.asp