Short intro to how a CEO blog can work and be launched, based on the Grundfos CEO Mads Nipper and his internal blog on Yammer.

1. A short WHY and HOW of the
Grundfos internal blog written by
CEO Mads Nipper
January 2015
Experienced and written by Thomas Asger Hansen
Department Head of Grundfos Global Working Culture
Learn more at our socialbusinessjourney.com

2. WHY and HOW in words
WHY it was started
1. Get to know the new CEO at another level (employee
perspective)
2. Easy way to amplify messages and signal direction (max
reach and ROCI: Return On Communication Investment)
3. ‘Walk the talk’ of wanting real dialogue with all employees
(CEO is accessible, employees feel at level/more
connected)
HOW to do it
1. Understand what you want to achieve:
 Enterprise family (sometimes happy family
celebrations, sometimes tough decisions and hard
messages)
 Strategy or Planning (theme focus e.g. customer
centricity, enterprise efficiency, etc)
2. Have a strategy for making it easy for yourself to engage:
 Short post, sometimes in breaks between meetings,
 Not too perfect, don’t panic if you make a spelling
mistake – it just reduces fear of engaging from an
employee perspective!
 Choose your replies, don’t reply to all replies; blog
community will also ‘auto-moderate’ itself
 Get digitally literate, know how to use mobile phone
to post and engage (like, reply, pictures/video)
3. No ghost-writing, if you want to remain credible and
authentic, and learn something your self.
Example, employee view which is also embedded in the Grundfos Intranet
1000+

3. Case 1: Enterprise Family Culture “The CEO welcome”
The Board of Management decided to
celebrate the arrival of the new CEO by
treating all employees – high and low – with
an ice cream!
Under usual circumstances everyone would
have enjoyed their ice-cream in the local
departments and that would have been the
end of the initiative.
However, a lot of employees and company
leaders changed the initiative to become a
company wide shared experience, because
they started to post pictures from their local
happy-hours and say thank you in public.
So, without planning for it, the isolated
initiatives became a globally connected
experience, which created a feeling of
togetherness and shared excitement about
saying welcome to a new CEO.
Evaluating the overall outcome, the whole
series of events showed an unexpected
upside on two key parameters;
1. Productivity (Output/Input), was up,
since the motivation and engagement
reached a new level compared to the
initial plan.
2. Organizational culture was strengthened
on not only ‘enterprise family feeling’
but also the visible signal that everyone
could contribute and engage directly on
Mads’ blog – without asking for
permission or feeling ‘out of line’.
Mads’s post in his blog
“As you may know, Group Management
decided that all employees will get an ice
cream early August. Officially, this is to mark
my real start date in Grundfos, but I like to
think of it more as a small, symbolic
celebration of the summer and return from
holiday for most of us.
In any case, it is important to remember the
small celebrations like this one. In Danish
business culture, there is little tradition to
celebrate. My belief is that small, inexpensive
celebrations are not only OK - they are
necessary. They bring team spirit and a
feeling of appreciation and belonging, and I
am sure all employees are smart enough to
know that a celebration or recognition does
not necessarily mean that everything is
fantastic... But they will feel appreciated and
motivated to do even better to hit or exceed
our targets.
Back to the ice cream: I got a picture of the
ice cream that all Chinese employees will get.
Our Chinese office administration manager
has taken a great initiative to personalize
these ice creams. And I have to admit that I
am proud to be featured on an ice cream -
something I would not have dreamt of when
I was child! Thank you! :-) “
RECIPE & INGREDIENTS
An inspiring event
One shared place to talk and comment
Trust - that your open public comment is appreciated

4. Case 2: Openly addressing a strategic theme
“Let’s simplify and speed-up”
Grundfos is known for a culture of
excellence. One of the very good
characteristics and consequences of such a
culture is that the organization is used to
deliver excellent and high quality products or
services.
One of the potential challenges is that the
hard core pursuit of excellence and quality is
imposed on everything that goes on, no
matter the cost or consequence.
As an employee you become speed-blind in
at least a couple of ways:
1] You are so tuned in on the excellence
parameter, that you do not think of – or dare
– to question products, services, or
processes which are so perfect they demand
way too many resources compared to what
they should.
2] You become unapt at designing lean
products, services, or processes because it’s
typically ‘all or nothing’. The simple lean
tool or process is considered culturally
unacceptable.
All in all, your organization can become too
heavy on a number of parameters, and the
change management task is quite vast.
So how do you take the best from the
existing culture and find ways to introduce
new perspectives without creating a chaos?
You address it openly through real life
examples.
RECIPE & INGREDIENTS
A business critical theme
Courage to address painful issues openly
One real life example
A broad call for action or reflection
Employee taking the example to
the strategic level.
Mads energizes the feed-back
loop…..
…from his phone!
An employee ads context and
more depth to the example
An employee supports the
discussion by confirming a match
between theme and reality.
Employee proposing solution to
specific example.

5. Follow our work at
socialbusinessjourney.com