Practical Tools that I utilized as the global Head of Innovation IKEA Centres.

Jens Heitland at TRC 2023 Amsterdam

Leadership, Careers and Personal Growth

In the presentation, Jens discusses his belief in the importance of personal growth and leadership within business organizations. He focuses on the impact that leadership and management can have on the workplace. He further shares his personal journey from working in IKEA to starting his own business. He delves into the importance of networking and how we measure personal success. He also shares activities to assist in identifying individual superpowers, future goals, and offers methodologies on how to achieve them.

00:01 Introduction and Speaker's Dream

00:19 The Importance of Leadership and Self-Belief

02:06 The Speaker's Personal Journey and Motivation

03:13 Understanding Your Personal Brand

03:22 The Power of Personal Branding: Real-life Examples

04:39 Building Your Personal Brand: A Practical Approach

06:55 Identifying Your Superpower

11:33 The Role of Data in Personal Development

15:41 Setting Personal Goals and Measuring Progress

20:21 The Power of Networking

26:52 Challenges and Actions for Personal Growth

35:00 Conclusion: The Power to Change the World

Watch it on youtube

Want to book Jens Heitland as a Speaker?

Transcript: Ai Generated

[00:00:00] Hello, you can come into the front. Sorry. You, this will be not a keynote. This will be a speech with a little bit of interaction, more interaction than you might like. So as Adrian said, my name is Jens. I have a dream, a dream that every organization in the whole world has amazing leaders, has leaders that impact the culture of the organization and through the culture of the organization with the people that work in the organization, change the world.

I'm here, because Adrian asked me to come, no. I'm here because I believe that leadership starts with yourself. I believe in you. I believe every one of you has the possibility to change the world. If [00:01:00] you decide to do so. So we start with a couple of questions before we go into the stuff. Who of you want to have an amazing career?

Yeah, almost everyone. Who of you is here to connect to other people? Almost every... Almost everyone. Now a tricky one. So in case that person sits next to you, try... Who of you has had a bad manager?

Everyone, almost every... How can this be that we are all experiencing the same sh That you have had a bad manager. How can this be? In a time where we all know that leadership is important for organizations management and leadership have an impact on the people, on the customers, on [00:02:00] everything. How can this be that a group of 20 people plus have all had a bad manager?

Let's give you a little bit backstory. Why do I do what I do? I have been 12 years in IKEA. Started in a store. Grown up to the global position, had amazing leaders, but one manager that sucked completely. So I left Ikea because I got the new manager that was terrible. It was the first ever manager in my whole life.

I started my career in 1996. First manager in my whole life that was shouting at me. In a company like IKEA, which is, and I still believe it, truly the best company in the world. So, that's why I stepped out and said, I need to fix the root cause. I need to fix bad management and bad leadership in this world.

If I'm not going to do it, nobody's going to do it. That's why I'm here. So let's get into [00:03:00] the presentation. It's all about you. Your brand. Your data, your network, and then we do a little bit Q& A. You can change the world. Let's start with, with your brand. There are a lot of things which are brand related.

Let's, let's look at this. Three iconic brands, without giving you the names right now. Smartphone, Home Furnishing, and Hamburger. I'm betting that most of you have had the same brands. Let's see,

that's the power of brand that same way works on a personal level, the person that changed the electric car industry. Everyone has a [00:04:00] name in mind, or at least a face. We could talk about social media with that person as well, but that's not the part here. That's another person, the person that changed the social media landscape, maybe a little bit more difficult, but if you've grown up in the eighties, nineties, like I did, then you might have the same picture.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. It's not about if you like them or not. They're iconic and they're a brand. You know them. That means that they're a brand. Let's talk about this guy. When I stepped out of IKEA, I was the guy of IKEA. And I still use this because it's a branding effect that I utilize for myself.

Of course, I would be stupid if I'm not. I started all over. I was the dude that was the big corporate guy who was running innovation, traveling around the world, had fun. earning quite a decent salary and went into the world [00:05:00] of startups, went into the world of building my own businesses. I started all over and I said, I need to get rid of the people that just follow me because of Ikea.

So I did for about a hundred days a challenge on LinkedIn. You can't find this anymore, but it was hilarious. I did every day a live blog on LinkedIn. Can you imagine this? Like me dressed up like this. Everyday, live, on LinkedIn, like 2, 3, 4 minutes, rambling whatever the, you get it. Interesting, a lot of people said, you're destroying your career.

You're nuts that you're doing this. The best thing that came out of that, people that just followed me because of Ikea, didn't follow me anymore. But people who said, hey, he's, yeah, maybe a little bit stupid, but somehow fun, I want to learn what he's up to. They started following me. And that's something which you can do too.

[00:06:00] I'm not saying you should do this on LinkedIn. You can if you want, but what it is all about is understanding what your superpower is about. So I've had an amazing mentor in the past who helped me to find this out. 2010 ish. I was knowing what are the things that I'm extremely good at, but I was not realizing how do I use these things for myself and how I use that for my personal brand.

I was just the IKEA dude and I was playing that role. So I was not expressing my own opinion because it was always I need to stand in, I need to respect the brand and as well with the other brands I've worked with before and after. It's really, I was not really myself, but deciding to be myself was the biggest value and is still the biggest thing.

Your brand, nobody, nobody will ever be able to take from you. So, first exercise, activity. What's your superpower? Most people, if I'm [00:07:00] asking this, have no answer to that. So I will give you a very, very simple way to get that with the help of the people in the room. So, I've written it down because last time it was a little bit confusing because my German English.

Um, so, four minutes for yourself. What are the moments in your life from childhood to today that stand out in your experience, in your memory? Extraordinary moments of your life that stand out. Think about it. Connected to that, what are the activities you did?

We take four minutes for this. Then I will introduce the other part, which you can see already.

So I'm checking time.[00:08:00] 

People are smiling, that's good. It's difficult, I know. Normally I would give you an hour or two with, like, a coach that can help you to do that, but we only have four minutes because we need to do a couple of more.

So moments that stand out in your life from childhood to today, and the activities you did.[00:09:00] 

Okay? So, now you find a partner. So, you find a partner you don't know, and share your superpower. It's the first iteration of your superpower. You can do this with your mom, with your dad. I highly recommend that, because they give you a different perspective of your superpower. You can do it today. So, find a partner, and introduce the superpowers from each other.

You have two minutes.[00:10:00] 

Don't tell the whole life story. Focus on you.

Okay. Where are we?[00:11:00] 

Let's get back to the stage. Excuse me. I know you have the whole day to do that deeper. So did, did you share the superpowers? Adrian. So important. Remember, you will need that. You will need that. Remember the superpower of the other person. Write it down in your phone. You need to know this. Because you need it later.

Data. I always say, I'm, I'm German. My brain is an Excel table inside. And it's true. I'm a, I'm a data freak. Like, I'm measuring my heart rate variability every day. My, my sleep. Um, there are a lot of stories to that. I have worked in big large and we have had that conversation during lunch as well, that management teams focus on freaking data.

[00:12:00] It's numbers that count. Some management teams even don't count on people. We have discussed that as well, but I'm not going too much into that. But data, if you don't know what you're measuring, if you don't know what it is about, it's very, very hard to understand if you are doing progress or not. So, I have finished.

Several Ironmans in my life and it's all about data. If you need to run a marathon after 180 kilometers of bike ride and you have no idea what your FTP is, doesn't matter for everyone who is not into cycling, you, like, how much energy you expend with your cycling so that you are still able to run a marathon afterwards, you're not going to finish a marathon.

Because it's, at least for me, it's like six, seven hours into a race. Uh, which is in total 11 hours or 10, depending how fast you are. It's all about data. The data [00:13:00] to understand, to measure your progress over time. So when you think about yourself, what are you measuring? Not too much. Some people go on the scale every morning.

Let's not measure it the next days. But what are the things, if we, if we go back to you and your personal development, you all have had the hands up where you said, I want to make a career. How do you measure that? How do you measure your progress to where you want to be when it comes to your career?

Connecting that to, if you don't know where you want to be with a specific goal, how do you reach that? We have had the conversation with Jan early, early in the morning, where he said like he's doing the. It's not called outreach, but sourcing in HR. I'm more in the sales world. Um, you need to do this every day.

You need to hit your numbers, or you need to find out what you're doing, so that you know you're on track. Because you know [00:14:00] over time, when I reach out to so many people, I will hire the right staff. Some of you work in scale ups. Sorry, I'm using the two of you again. Over lunch, we discussed that a company with, how much was it, 3, 000 people doubled in three years?

You need to hire a freaking lot of people. If you don't have the numbers dialed in, how many recruiters do you need, how many people do you reach out to, it's not going to fly. Same with your personal goals. The tricky thing is that we don't measure our personal things.

This is just a sports example, but I am measuring things. I have an Excel table, the German, sorry, I have an Excel table where I measure things and my personal progress to where I want to be. I have a clear goal in 2030. Most of the people have zero goals. They have ambitions, they would like to do things, but it's not really that they work to that every day.[00:15:00] 

So, who are you going to be,

is another big question. If you look into the future, are you striving to something? Or are you just being in today? Which is not bad. It's a decision for yourself. But if you are ambitious, all of you have had the hands up that you want to make a career. What are you doing every day to make a career? What are the things, what are the small steps you do every day?

And how do you measure that? Which is linked to our next activity. So first four minutes in silence again, built a picture, built a picture of yourself. Let's take five years, because ten years is too difficult for most of the people. Five years from now, who are you going [00:16:00] to be in five years? And add the data.

How do you measure where you're going to be? What is the number one KPI? You don't need to build out the whole KPI dashboard.

I'm checking time.

This exercise for some people takes two years. Today we just start.[00:17:00] 

Are we good? I know it's difficult. I use this all the time with my team members. First time, like people that are newly reporting to me, they're always like, What the fuck does he want? Like, where, what, like, it's always because they're used to get kind of pushed in a direction. But that's truly, I do this with everyone that is reporting to me.

And I've done it the last five years. And even before, because that's how I got trained in IKEA. How you care about your [00:18:00] people is... Enabling them to grow. If you don't do this in an organization, you will have a problem in the future. So, same partners, share. What did you find? What's, what's your dream?[00:19:00] 

Okay,

let's get back. I know it's not enough time.[00:20:00] 

So now, again, remember what the other person said. You will need that. You will need all the things we have discussed in the third activity.

Yeah, sorry. It's getting worse. So, network. Adrian was giving an amazing talk about the network and how important it is. And I have to underline this. Because I wouldn't be here without networking. Adrian and I got connected through a corporate person that has seen my podcast. And she said, hey, you should be talking to each other.

We got on a phone call and said, yeah, let's do fun stuff together. That's how I ended up here. It's all network. So, question. What is the most valuable item in this room and it's like taking [00:21:00] the humans out. Potential. That we all have. Potential. Let's not talk about us. Like nothing. It's not a trick question.

Physical object? Physical object. My sneakers? No.

Exactly. So. I'm not sure if this one or Adrian's. We can debate that. is the most valuable thing in this room. And it's not because it's a specific brand. Doesn't matter at all. What matters is, on my phone at least, I have, I checked it yesterday, plus 800 connections. Like plus 800 phone numbers from extremely highly valued people in this world.

CEO of IKEA. [00:22:00] I can send a WhatsApp to... The chief HR of Heineken Group, former chief HR. Because it's, it's a connection. It's a person that is in my network. So, take 30 seconds and check how many connections you have, or how many people you have in your phone book. You don't know. No, I didn't know as well.

Just, I can only say it from, from an iPhone perspective. You can just check the, the thing where you can dial and then you see the group stuff. Lists.

Lists.

200. 550. I have 810. I just checked 1600. Awesome. So next trick question or not trick question. How many of these people do you truly [00:23:00] know?

So same with me. One of the things, and that's a networking trick. Number one,

do you know the birthday of the people that are in your phone? So, networking.

Exactly. So if you're connected to me on LinkedIn, you will receive a birthday message. I have messaged people over the last 10, 12 years, every year. Some of them have never replied. Never.

Depends on, it's as well people you know. So it's, it's really about, if you want to stay connected to a person, [00:24:00] then the least you can do, congratulate them to your birthday. If you don't want to stay connected to them, then you can delete the contact. So, it's, it's a super simple networking trick. I do this since, I don't know, 10 years ish.

And my network brought me from here. I started as an electrician when I was 16 on a construction site. I'm trained electrician in Germany. Started in Ikea, got headhunted from Ikea before I worked in Deutsche Bank and so on, but got headhunted from Ikea and they said you need to start in an Ikea store because if you want to grow in Ikea you need to know the business.

So they made me jumping from a deputy position which was total Germany country to being in an IKEA store for one and a half years. But that enabled me, through my network, to grow within less than ten years [00:25:00] to a global position. In a company that has 150, 000 employees. It's rarely happening. Only because of the network.

I've never had in my whole life, I'm 42 right now, a job that was not related to my network. And I'm pretty sure you see this as well quite a lot. If you get from someone internally an application onto your table, if you're working in sourcing, you will at least try to connect to that person. Sometimes you don't want because you see it's not a fit, but you still do.

So network enabled me in my personal growth and as well with business. I'm not talking too much business. Business, obviously, it's the number one thing. My first ever customer, when I started my business, I was still living in Sweden. The guy who was buying my service, what do you do when you leave a big corporation?

You [00:26:00] just do coaching, right? Or consulting. So I said, hey, I'm now coaching and consulting. I have done innovation at IKEA. Who wants that? And a guy who was swimming with me every morning, former Olympic swimmer from Sweden, he said, hey Jens, I have a company. I need you. So I helped them over half a year. My first ever company.

Network. Same for yourself. Think about your career. It's network. Your dream is network. Everything is possible. Just utilize and ask.

We have to have that already.

Activity number three. Some of you will hate this. I still make you do it. Selfie challenge.

Who does still remember the [00:27:00] things from each other? By the way, I did this already. You can check me on LinkedIn. I did this already today. Meet up with the person from activity one and two. Connect on LinkedIn. And each of you, so one person introduce the other person on LinkedIn. It's very difficult for one or the other person.

See, you're not going to do it.

We did this today. We were eye gazing partners. So, it's a challenge. Who is up for the challenge of doing this on LinkedIn? 3, 4, 5? You're welcome to do this. So the challenge with this is, who are you going to become? We are all living in, in a time where it's [00:28:00] all, no, I can't show up like this. I can't be really my purse.

My personality is not working in LinkedIn. I don't want to be present like this, especially not on LinkedIn. That's why I'm choosing LinkedIn. If I would be tick tock or Instagram, he's like, no problem, right? The challenge with personal growth and fulfilling your dreams. is doing the things that you normally would not do.

Because if you would do it all the time, you would be there already. When I started this funny blog thing, or live vlog on LinkedIn, you can imagine how terrified I was. And how many stupid comments I got.

But, who cares? It's not about what other people think about you. I know we are living in a society where you, you value the [00:29:00] opinion of other people, and I agree, you should be open to receive feedback, but if you want to be that person in the future, if you have a dream which you want to accomplish, why do you give the power to other people that hold you back who even don't know you?

Right? Honestly, if you, if we, what was it? 17,000 followers on? On LinkedIn, Adrian, how many people of that truly know you? And, you shouldn't say that, but how many, how much do you really care if someone is saying something bad? Like, yeah, you have a bad hair day or whatever. Well, bad hair is okay. No, yeah, but the point of that is, do you still not do it because you have a dream?

Do you, do you, do you push yourself to go this step? Which allows you to accelerate, which allows you to get to your dream. If you truly have a [00:30:00] dream, you follow that. And I've built it up in that way because I was knowing that this is the hardest thing for most of the people. Not everyone is interested in being vulnerable and visible even on a social media network.

But if that isn't your dream, you can dream without putting it out there on social media. Agree. That, but that's not the point. It's the point that the point is doing something that's difficult to do, doing something which gets you over the edge and doing something which you would never, ever do.

The tricky thing is that's exactly the things you should be doing. Just give you an example. I lived in Germany and I got a phone call. I was driving from Frankfurt to Bonn. I was living in Bonn and it was the head of. Ikea Russia, [00:31:00] 2013. He was calling me and saying, Jens, you should come to Russia. I need you here, you need to be head of sustainability for the Russian market for the next three years.

And I said, like, never ever. Why should I? He said, I give you until Monday, Friday afternoon. I sat together with my wife, no kid at that time, or no child, and we said, like, shall we do that? Russia is dangerous. There are bears on the street.

We have had no idea about Russia. Like a lot of people see today. I mean it's it's a political discussion, but it's not about that right now So we have said in two days we have decided we are going to move to a country where we don't speak the language [00:32:00] Where it's most probably very very difficult for us to integrate into a culture that we don't know But it gets us closer to our dream

doing things that are hard Enable you to achieve more. We are living in a society which is cozy all the time. It's split like hell right now Everywhere we see it with the wars that going on But what are we like every one of us has the power to do something Every one of us has a has a dream, but how much are we willing to sacrifice for our dreams?

So this challenge was built up to Provoke you a little bit to see who is [00:33:00] speaking up to see who is saying now. I'm not going to do that That's stupid. I don't want to because that's needed if you have a dream

Utilizing your network and your brand which is this why does it all matter? It only matters if you know where you want to be if you have a dream that you're going to follow

if you don't have A dream and you don't have anything to follow. You don't know what to measure then you may be living your dream already That's absolutely fine. But we are living in a space where every one of you saying, yes, I want to have a great career. And yes, I have a bad manager. How many people are really stepping up and saying, Hey, you [00:34:00] suck.

Maybe not in that way, but doing something against that.

Most of the time, what I hear from organization, we, again, lunch, people are leaving organizations, startup in Amsterdam. 45 people last year, 24 left within a year because the CEO changed. A startup, 50 percent of the staff can't be good for any organization. Of course they're all bad, right?

So if you want to achieve something in your life, if you have a big dream, you have the possibility to achieve that. It just means you need to step up and say, Yes, I want to, and I stand, nobody stands in the way. [00:35:00] That's why if we just take, um, a very, very, very good example, Elon Musk, very controversial.

Read his biography that came out, when was it, like, the last couple of months. Super interesting. I don't like him from a personality perspective. He was on Joe Rogan's show this week, or last week, with Halloween costumes. Super funny. Very interesting story, but he is just following his dream. He's maybe not doing that in a social way, which we all...

He's one of the people in the world who has changed extremely positive things in this world. It's not about liking him or not liking him. He's following his dreams. Maybe another example, because I've had the pleasure to meet the founder of Ikea before he died. He has followed his dream, starting in a very, very little farm in Sweden, building the biggest [00:36:00] furniture company in the whole world, which everyone literally knows.

And it's never easy. You only, if we talk today. You only see the things on social media and it's always flashy and always fancy and everything is good because we're not sharing what's not good. So you have the power to change the world if you want to.

Questions?

No questions. Adrian, microphone.

So when you talk, I always get inspired, right? But, but, so how do we do this then now take this into action? All of these kind of like four, four points. Like we go back to our work tomorrow or a Monday and [00:37:00] we get caught up. In reality of things, how, how do we take this a step forward, a step further? Do your homework.

Number one is understand where you want to be. It's very, very simple. I know these are things everyone has, if you are ever been in management school, studied, whatever, that's what you learn. Know where you want to be, understand how you measure that, and then get your ass moving. Build a plan that helps you to get there.

As simple as that. The tricky thing, we do this when we talk about business. When you build a business, when you build a department, when you build, um, a strategy to recruit 3, 000 people, you build a plan on how to get there. When it comes to our personal development, we don't do that. And organizations, most of the organizations are not set up in a way that they care so much about you that they say, Okay, Adrian, tell me where you want to be.

What's your perspective? How can I help you to be successful? It's always, how can you help the [00:38:00] company turn this around? I did this in a very large corporate two months ago. I did this with the whole team and said, okay, individual, where do you want to be? I did exactly this questions. They have never had heard this question from someone inside of the corporate.

Never. And then we matched the usual yearly performance talk where you have these other things we need to reach. These are the numbers. We said, okay, now we have the whole team, you have this dream that fits to that goal of the company. So maybe you work on that topic, maybe you contribute with your plan on what you're delivering the next half year on that topic because it matches your dream.

So we did the whole thing the other way around. Normally you start with what the company needs and then who is doing it. We did the other way around where we said, where do you want to be and how does that fit to the company? The team is one of the most performing teams [00:39:00] ever existing team. They have been together for years.

So really doing that on a detail level, if you, if you think team yourself, you can do that as well. You can build your plan this evening, maybe tomorrow or over the weekend.

Danielle,

what's in your Excel sheet? How do you measure your own success? Okay. So can you give exact examples? No fake, nothing fake. I can. One dream is selling my company in 2030. So, I have a monetary goal to that. I'm going to sell it if I'm getting this number. That's a monetary thing. I have a goal that's connected to my daughter.

That's maybe more relatable from a human perspective. Where I said, I want her to live and grow up in an international environment. We have lived in six countries, so it has [00:40:00] worked until now. But, I'm always, so, again, 2030. 2030, I want her to speak three languages, fluent. I want her to ask me, I want to study in a different country.

So these are two, two of things. I have one for my wife, I'm not going to tell her. But I have this as well for my buddies. An example, I'm truly connected to the buddies. I mean, do you remember the blue color? I'm connected to the guys I, I did my education with. Once per year we are meeting up for a drinking weekend.

It's buddy stuff. They are still in their small town. They are still doing the same job like they did 1997, in that case. And my measurement is, we are still connected, we are still working with each other, and we go and drinking once a year at least. That gives... Yes, thank you, thank [00:41:00] you. Time is up. Time is up.

Give it up for Jens here. Thank you.