Sumitomo SHI FW is a leading global provider of energy technologies for the power and industrial sectors. The corporation is a part of Sumitomo HeavyIndustries Group, a Japanese industry giant that operates globally. SFW, headquartered in Finland, employs 1800 people and is headed by CEO Tomas Harju-Jeanty.
Recently SFW designed a new growth strategy which will see the company expand into new high-demand segments, such as waste-to-value energy and energy storage over the next 6 years. CEO Harju-Jeanty says that the energy industry is seeing sweeping changes, which necessitates strategy transformation at SFW.
“All across the energy technology market there is a substantial shift from previous technologies and ways of producing energy,” he says. “We know what the world wants today and needs tomorrow, and our new strategy is about capturing those opportunities.
The newly formed strategy is expected to bring new growth for SFW and offset declining demand in some industry segments. According to Harju-Jeanty, it was not difficult to create a strong sense of urgency among top management for the strategic renewal. “The world around us was giving us good direction on what needs to become of the company,” he says,“so in that sense the impetus to act was there.”
“Moving the strategy from the planning stage to execution is probably the most exciting step in the journey,” says Harju-Jeanty, who notes bluntly that “strategy which is a set of slides thoughtfully developed by senior management and then shown in a town hall meeting to the team is worth practically nothing.” The critical element, he says, is ensuring the entire organisation buys into the same direction.
Executing new strategy requires “sharing a single view” and “real commitment”, and by working with Trailmaker that was achieved at SFW, says Harju-Jeanty.
“To me the most beneficial part of working with Trailmaker was achieving a shared view of concrete action to execute the strategy. That enables top management who are driving the strategy to be able to explain the strategy in a way that you get the buy-in from the entire organisation.”
TRAILMAKER is a concept for faster strategy execution:
• Concrete common view and commitment
• Identified capability needs
• Visibility
