S9E09: 35 years as CEO … and the next chapter, with Adrian Weiler (Chair, Smart Freight Centre)

Richard Medcalf
Hi Adrian and welcome.

Adrian Weiler
Welcome, Richard. Nice for having me.

Richard Medcalf
It's gonna be a fun conversation, you've got an extraordinary career, you spent 35 years as the chief executive of a business, which is incredible and then when you kind of handed over the reins to one of our previous guests on the show, indeed, you then didn't just decide to hang up your computer and sit on a desert island sipping pina coladas for the rest of your retirement, you've found a new mission, which is possibly even more thrilling by the sound of it in some ways around the environment change and working on that and so you've got a really fascinating separate, you know, the real executive role for many, many years and now there's real other passion, which I know is something that you're extremely committed to. So I'm looking forward today and diving in, and finding out really what makes you tick and what that story is?

Adrian Weiler
Yeah. Well, as I said, thank you for having me and you rightfully explained that there is not just one mission in my life, but there is multiple missions and right now I'm very much concentrating on what's called Climate rescue, what might be called Climate rescue but prior to that, for the first for the, for the previous 35 years, my, my passion was really with something entirely different, which is called Digital decision making and digital decision making, is it systems, algorithms, artificial intelligence, operations, research, machine learning, fuzzy logic, mathematical optimization, leveraged to improve the world, basically, to improve the business world to improve decision making, planning, and real time control of business operations and that's really what inform is about and that was my passion for the past 35 years before I handed over my CEO position to a group of four people who are now co-CEOing the company Inform.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, perfect. So and in fact, we spoke with Matthias, a couple of seasons back, he was the person who recommended that we speak with you. So it was fascinating to understand how that Co-CEO thing is playing out. So today, let's kind of go back, because what I understand is, is informed as a business was already in existence for 16 years and there already had five CEOs, and really the company hadn't grown at that point and then you took over the reins and you stay there for 35 years, right? And really, really good. So just tell us a little bit, first of all about what was the story there? And what so first of all, kind of what changed perhaps when you came in? What kind of things did you do to take this very small business that obviously been successful and died, right? It'd been profitable or whatever, for 16 years, but you really took it into growth. So what happened there, and then perhaps we can also talk about what kept you going and going and going and going for almost four decades?

Adrian Weiler
Well, what kept me going to make it to make it short is that of course, I didn't do the same thing. During all these 35 years, I started out with a very small startup company and basically, I had to do everything. I was not a CEO of a large organization. So I couldn't deploy people and rather, I had to do a lot of things, including coding it coding software, coding myself but let's come back to where I'm coming from before I joined Inform. I worked for a large corporation, a very well known international croup in Germany and after that, I went to Australia and I experienced some some time in Australia and how the mates down there, the mate ship culture of Australia works and coming back to Germany, I decided that, well, I wanted to work for a company who had this kind of makeshift culture that I had experienced in Australia. So that was basically where I was coming from and my, I was always looking to build such a company and when I joined in form, the other passion I always had was artificial intelligence and in before at this other corporation in Germany, and after that, I designed some algorithms myself some AI algorithms, optimizing certain business operations, and I was passionate about applying operations research and artificial intelligence machine learning to real world problems, real world issues that large corporations have. So informe at the time seemed to me a perfect candidate of basically joining those two passions and make a living on it and that's when I when I became not just CEO, but I basically, I became part owner of the company at the time, I bought out the original founder, and, and started to grow the business from there and the reason why, Yeah.

Richard Medcalf
So it sounds like it sounds like there was this sense of you had a sense of the culture you wanted to create. Exam, do you have a sense of the domain that you wanted, you know, the era you were, you wanted to create value. So it wasn't just one, it wasn't just I've got a great business idea but also, I have a sense or kind of business that I want to create community.

Adrian Weiler
Value, client value, but that's at the same time, happy workplace, basically, workplace value for the employees and for the people I worked with, at the very beginning, with only five people, you knew them very intimately, and you work intimately with them as a team and so as we grow larger, and today we are we are close to 1000 employees growing, of course, this personal interaction, that little bit more loose, but I still consider many of the employees of of my company as my friends and I was, I was anxious to provide them with a way of professional life, which is worth living. I mean, after all, we are spending eight, eight hours every day, on average in our business. So we better make it rather than one rather than try someone.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a bit more. So what did you start to do to grow the business? So? And then did pastels give a sense of like, what was the growth of this business? We talked about it growing? How much did it grow over this period? And what would you say? What are the shifts that you made that perhaps those previous five CEOs didn't?

Adrian Weiler
As a matter of fact, I employed some principles and those principles have been written up by a professor Zaragoza. Swati, who is at the Darden Business School of Virginia, in the United States but she she wrote the the the size of paper, in the early 2000s, I think, in 2001, or 2002 and there is a textbook dating back to 2008. So I was applying these principles a lot, a lot longer, and quite quite some time before she wrote that book but that book summarizes very well what those principles are and those are I don't want to go too much into detail here, because we've got only half an hour but the principle of effectuation many of those principles have to do with who you are, what you want, what you can achieve, and how you form a network of likewise, people who are self selected, self selected stakeholders in your business and a self selected stakeholder in the business is either an employee, or it might be an investor, or it might be in certainly is the client and so for inform, it was always very, very important that we did our utmost to satisfy the client, they have kept happy clients and today, we are looking at around two thirds of our business being done with repeat customers, with companies like Mercedes Benz, like Daimler ally, like BMW, like British Airways, like American Airlines, United Airlines, and other very well known worldwide companies that are doing that are doing business with us for years, for decades and they're very loyal to inform and we are very loyal to those customers. You can't do that when you're when you're out there for for a quick buck.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. I get that long term perspective that you built in whatever moment, but was there something you did? Would you say specifically, because I know effectuation is multiple principles and they obviously were in play for a long time but was there like a moment where you felt okay, we've now shifted the company from this stable, small trajectory to a growth trajectory. You know, were there a couple of key decisions, perhaps that you made early on to change the direction?

Adrian Weiler
No, it wasn't. It wasn't something like a eureka moment. It was more. It was more living according to those principles. It was basically creating culture. It was creating a certain corporate culture that I thought is kind of mimicking the corporate culture you will find in a lot of Australian companies and where where people are, are mates to each other and where they don't don't bite their backs and weigh them whether they're focusing on on the client and there is a, there's a lots of a lot of these, these principles involve how to, to lead such a company and one of those principles is to step back as early as possible or as quickly as possible as a leader, rather than micromanaging the business. This is what I've what I've seen with a lot of other CEOs and that we partnership with, or other CEOs and other corporations that they can to micro micro micro manage the business and that's that's very bad. There is a principle which is called subsidiarity. subsidiarity means that you push decisions, the decisions the day to day decisions to the smallest level, or to the lowest level in any organization, where, where people are really on the front, and they know what they're doing and you stay away as long as you can and only if something goes wrong, you step in as a leader.

Richard Medcalf
Yes, yeah. So I love it. So it's really the fact that you by putting these principles out, the things started to move, right, and you put the foundations in is what I'm hearing. So let's say let's jump forward and so after 35 years, what was it that got you to make the switch? Was there a trigger that made you go, Okay, now it's time to leave that chapter behind to some degree, I know, you're still involved in the business in various ways, and still have executive roles as well as non executive roles but you made a change, you stepped down as just make the CEO he brought on CO CEOs and then and then you also got involved with his next thing, right, Smart Freight Centre. So what was the story between ending one chapter and also the story about beginning that other chapter?

Adrian Weiler
Well, first of all, you mentioned it yourself. You know, I mean, 35 years, in the role of the CEO is a very, very long time and I mean, there is for everything in life, there is there is a moment and I think the moment was just right to hand over responsibility of the company of running the company, to my my successes and I know these people, these four people that are handed over the responsibilities of CEO, I know them for quite a long time, the youngest of them, since 2008, which is already 14 years. So it's i It wasn't an unknown entity, I was I was handing over the business to, to people I respected and I know fairly well, that they could, that they could run the company according to the same principles that they grew up with, so to speak, over the last 1416 20 years and so I'm quite confident that the company in form will survive in its in its mission and can fulfill its mission to deploy artificial intelligence to planning and real time control issues in corporations for the next 35, 50 years, whatever.

Richard Medcalf
Let me be provocative for a second, if I may, because it's fun, right? Why did you obviously I want to talk with Matias on his side of things but what led you to kind of decide that nobody else could step into your shoes, and you needed to have four people instead of one people? For 35 years, I'm curious.

Adrian Weiler
I got the opportunity to learn about the business and to learn about being a CEO for for 35 years. So I started out when it was very small and the company was very small and, of course, I had a lot of experience together that way, none of the other ones or I didn't feel that any single person would be would be able to do it on its own and so it was a lot better to assemble four of them, each one with its with his or her or his specific strength and focusing on certain aspects of the business of running the business. Well, where were they had their forte.

Richard Medcalf
Right. Yeah, I mean, it's it makes sense, right? It's a lot bigger now than it was when you started and, and it's gonna guess it's still growing. So the possibilities continue to grow.

Adrian Weiler
Yeah. Still growing at the same at the same rate every year and meanwhile, we have we are doing business in 40 countries around the world. We have employees coming from 35 different 37 latest count different nations and more than 1000 customers and well, it's quite quite a challenge to to have such an operation.

Richard Medcalf
Perfect. Well, let's switch over. So what about this new chapter Smart Freight? Tell me about that and why did you why did you get involved with it? And what's it all about?

Adrian Weiler
Smart Trade Center is a, an international NGO, Amsterdam based, which helps multinationals to reduce their carbon footprint by decarbonizing logistics and freight transportation and I was, I was asked to join the board three, four years ago, and in 2020, in December 2020, I was elected chairman of the board and that was a very turbulent time, when in smart trade Central, lots of things happened, which required a lot of attention management attention, which is exactly what I what I did basically, during last year, most of the time, after handing over my responsibilities at inform to my successes, smart Trade Center helps to reduce the carbon footprint of multinationals. Firstly, by measuring what that carbon footprint in logistics is, and there's a scope three emissions, as you might know, Commons scope, three emissions, very difficult to measure and Smart Freight Center was successful in establishing a methodology, the so called Clek, framework, GL GL EC framework to do just that. And now we're transitioning the strategy of Smart Freight Centre towards a more active saving role where we would like to, to have a bigger impact in actually reducing the carbon footprint in logistics and international supply chains.

Richard Medcalf
That's great and so tell me about the mission that you're on at this point, then within this right, because obviously, it's it's a worthy mission. Right. It's environmental impact. It's all this stuff. Yeah. What's, on the other hand, there's plenty of other causes you could have focused on I mean, well, there's just things we've happened to come your way someone rang you up. So you come on the board, you happen to have to do this?

Adrian Weiler
No, no, it's certainly the the main reason is that I'm really, really concerned about what's going on currently in the world and there is, of course, a lot of things that are challenges that require attention but climate change is certainly one of the big the big challenges that humankind, if you like faces, and so that was driving my decision to do something in that respect and, and make it part of my, my further life and the fact that it's an NGO or nonprofit organization has a lot to do with, of course, that I'm no longer in need of dire in dire need of of pennies and I have I can afford the time to spend time on that mission. Besides, while saying that, I must say that also informed has a strategy, currently a strategy of targeting sustainability issues with our software and we, as I said, we have this artificial intelligence systems and some of those are explicitly targeting climate change, or climate rescue, so to speak, by for example, by by reducing the carbon footprint of dispatch League of dispatching vehicle fleets, for transportation, or by smartly allocating resources or material or parts to warehouses, rather than shipping them around between different warehouses and which is wasteful in terms of fuel and energy.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, of course. So what about within Smart Freight Centre, what's the challenging part of it? You know, so what's, yeah, what's the stretch? You know, is it about mobilizing an ecosystem? Is it getting organized things internally? Is it evangelizing the message? I'm just kind of wondering what you find within that?

Adrian Weiler
The message I think the message is very clear and the companies we're working with like companies like Nestle or IKEA or Hewlett Packard, they are they're very well aware, there's about 100 companies working with Smart Freight Centre at this point, and all of them being multinationals and all of them trying to use their influence for their logistics suppliers, their logistics service providers to to decarbonize their their operations. However, while there is quite a lot of technological solutions, like electric cars, electric trucks, way ways of improving the, the aerodynamics of trucking, and others While there's a lot of technologies that could be deployed the the economics are a different of difficult and what we're trying to do is finding appropriate business models so that third party logistics providers could afford deploying those technologies. I think this is the the biggest challenge that we're seeing before those technologies might become widely available. Economics. Yeah and that's, of course to do with economics of scale and that that, of course, has to do with building networks of like minded multinationals and helping them to, to exert their influence.

Richard Medcalf
Does that mean it's part of your role actually trying to build those relationships is that?

Adrian Weiler
Exactly, yeah, exactly.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so tell me a bit about that because I always say we never have enough influence, because if we did, we'd have achieved our goals. Right? So often, there's an influence gap between what we can imagine and what we've achieved and so but, you know, but obviously, on the other hand, you know, you're making all these things happen. So I'm kind of curious. They're all like, what, what advice would you even give to people who are looking to build ecosystems, right, people who are looking to forge partnerships, relationships, make things happen in the world, I have several co clients myself who like, you know, like, we need to band together with other companies to make because we can't solve these problems all by ourselves. So I'm curious as to how you would, what what you found is worked in your experience?

Adrian Weiler
I think a person that works is quite important and I think this is, if you look at social media, on the impact of social media, I think it's wildly over overrated, particularly when it comes to CEOs because I don't know that many CEOs that spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, and other social platforms, because as you know, it's, it's very, very difficult to, to control your own time and your own life when once you start being too much invested in social media. So therefore, the the main, the main path towards impact is personal relationships and those personal relationships, of course, you get through networking.

Richard Medcalf
And when you say networking, what would you do? What do you do? How would you build that personal network? How do you reinforce it? How to expand it?

Adrian Weiler
There's conferences, and there is there's conferences where, where you meet people and where you get referrals and the important part is the referral. So even people there are not at the conferences, you get referred to, and then they they would listen to you rather than than listen to broadcast message on on any social media platform.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah.

Adrian Weiler
Sorry. Sorry to say that. I'm right now, I'm speaking on a social media speak but but, you know,

Richard Medcalf
It's a great point. Yeah. I mean, I, I see that as well. Right? I mean, my business is pretty high end business. I work with very senior leaders and a lot of that is from the personal network, you know, as you said, Yeah, two thirds of your business is referrals, whatever, repeat business, I mean, I think mine is higher, right? High percentage, because and so it's important to figure out, there's that crown jewels in the personal network and your own reputation and the way you serve people in their network and then there's the other stuff, which I think can be good when you have a message you want to get out when there's a broader reach but you have to be aware of what you're doing in each case. So, for example, for the podcast, the one of the founding reasons for why I created the podcast, was because there were stories that my clients, you know, what my clients are up to, that were valuable for a broader audience that perhaps I'm not going to get to work with one to one and then after that, it broadened out, well, what are the other stories that people might be interested in, in connecting with an understanding? But I think you're right, there's a difference between, you know, depth, I mean, there's a kind of a scale of impact at a high level, and then there's a depth of impact that actually is probably where the magic is.

Adrian Weiler
Yeah, that's the case. That's certainly the case but from from my days that inform, I certainly know that these personal relationships to your clients are invaluable and even if we if even if something goes wrong, I mean, sometimes, I mean, our operations are quite mission critical. So the software we deploy, for example, they're, they're controlling the entire ground operations at the largest they have words on Earth, like Atlanta Hartsfield in in Georgia, we were quite instrumental in, in reducing the departure delays by 31%, according to what the New York Times has written about it a year later. However, with that, mission, criticality comes to the responsibility of nothing can go wrong and, of course, things go wrong with your software from time to time, because there is so many factors out there that you can't control all the time and then it's very important that you have a close relationships to, to your, to your, to your customers, and you have to maintain that at all times. To mitigate the effect, if something happens, I mean, if you look at the fact that we are there, there's about three and a half million containers moved through Germany's largest container terminal. We decide on each and every movement of each and every of those containers with our software, the sequence in which they are moved by what resources they're removed, at what point in time, at what location and you can imagine that this is awfully complex, and there's things that go wrong and there when there were things that went wrong and so it was it was quite okay. Or it was quite helpful to then speak to the corporate management in Hamburg and apologize and still still be on good relations with them. That was I'm talking now about an incident that occurred about seven, eight years ago.

Richard Medcalf
Right. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's, yeah, it's a good story of well, nothing beats that. genuine relationship. Right?

Adrian Weiler
Genuine relationship, yeah, yeah. Specific, specifically, when you're in the mission critical business.

Richard Medcalf
Yes. So let's kind of head over to some of our quickfire questions that I like to ask, I guess. First is what's the favorite quote? What's something that kind of you live by or you always telling your people?

Adrian Weiler
I actually there isn't, there isn't such a quote, because I'm very bad at remembering quotes. However, there is a principle and that's Trust. Trust versus control and I value trust a lot more than control, even if it means that from time to time, your people are not doing the right thing. Still trust is the main the main word I would I would build an empire.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. What about a book, that book that's really influenced you? Over the years?

Adrian Weiler
Yeah, obviously Frederick Laloux reinventing organizations and the other it's not a book. It's a complete series of books. He wrote several books. It's a philosopher called financial Kanga Reinhardt spranger. It's a German German language guy who spoke about writes extensively about intrinsic motivation, and how intrinsic motivation can be fostered and can be nurtured through corporate culture.

Richard Medcalf
As well actually, because, so often people try to focus on the extrinsic motivational factors. Right? The carrot and the stick rather than autonomy, mastery, purpose connection, these kinds of things, right?

Adrian Weiler
Nobody, nobody works for money. I mean, and we pay quite quite well but by that inform nobody works purely for money we work for, for a certain a certain purpose and mission.

Richard Medcalf
Absolutely. What advice would you give your 20 year old self?

Adrian Weiler
Quite honestly, I thought a lot about that and quite honestly, I don't know whether I would have done anything different and I was lucky in many ways. I was lucky in working for that large German Corporation, where I got exposed there early even while I was a student to the corporate culture of large corporations, multinationals and then have the then when going to Australia and seeing how things can be done differently and so I don't think I would do anything different.

Richard Medcalf
I'm still gonna put out a principle there I think which is a really helpful one in terms of advice for others, which is get that exposure early. Get different things different. That allows you to find your groove your niche.

Adrian Weiler
Oh, of course. I was right when I was when I was a student I worked for an organization which is called iSeq, the International Student Exchange organization which organizes internships in large corporations. I did a couple of internships while I was a student, and I organized a lot of internships for others and that taught me quite a lot of exposure, even as a student.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, again, yeah and that was a great example of exposure and trying to. Here's a good question, because it applies to you, like many of our best guests on the show come from referrals and indeed, yeah, as you said, he that's how I reached out to you originally, because of speaking with Matthias, which was, which was a great conversation. So I'm always curious, you know, is there an impactful CEO that you know, who you think would be great guests, somebody who inspires you? Or who's impacted you in your own journey?

Adrian Weiler
Yeah, there is, in fact, there is actually two of them. Well, they're called Mark Papenburg and last former professor, last former, they're Germans and they are, they had a consultancy, which is called intensify and intensify the name of the corporation already says what it does, it consults companies in how to, to value intrinsic motivation, and how to motivate people in an intrinsic way.

Richard Medcalf
Fascinating. Yeah and what do you admire about them? Like, what's what inspires you about that or about them?

Adrian Weiler
They're the, they're very well, representing the principles of purpose driven companies and which, if you look at today's talent, and workforce, the biggest challenge that we're all seeing in many industries, and certainly in the IT industry, as well, is finding talent and not just finding anybody, but finding the right talent, finding people who are motivated to think as an entrepreneur and this intrapreneurial thinking, requires a culture or corporate culture, which nurtures that kind of entrepreneurial thinking and this intrapreneurship thinking is exactly what intensify this particular company is helping helping corporations to, to achieve.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, beautiful. Yeah and they, they're walking their talk by the sound of it. Yeah. So. So finally, Adrian, what's, where do you go from here? Right? How do you continue to multiply your impact? Because I'm a believer that, you know, you might have retired from your core, you know, you're 35 years and everything else but there's still more impact ahead of you and I'm wondering, what might you have to even shift in yourself? To see...

Adrian Weiler
Yeah, well, right. Now, obviously, we have a, we have a big shift in strategy coming up at Smart Freight Center and I'm part of that and but the other the other portion of your question is, what is where is informed the company informed, which is still my company, going from here, despite the fact that I'm not leading it as a CEO anymore and what we what we did over the past 35 years was, we start I started out with just a single business division, now we're having nine business business divisions out there, and about 20 different products, what we call product solutions, artificial intelligence solutions for various types of industries and what we, what we intend to do within four is expand that, like finding new issues or new business problems with business fields were to deploy artificial intelligence in order to make the businesses more efficient, more reliable, more resilient, in the face of unexpected changes and volatility, which is currently plaguing the world. That also is...

Richard Medcalf
The volatility these days, I think we will pretty calm...

Adrian Weiler
No way. No volatility at all. So and also in also in terms of in terms of sustainability and so say sustainability with regards to climate, but also with regards to social responsibility towards the own employees and towards basically making the world a better place. Sorry, just say, it sounds maybe it sounds too, too optimistic but I'm an optimist.

Richard Medcalf
Well, I think you have been optimistic. I think most business owners, founders, CEOs, actually, yeah, there's a few people. As I said before, it's Jeff Bezos, who has said, you know, there are missionaries, and there are mercenaries and actually, you know, the mercenaries just wanted to flip their stock and the mercenaries actually want to make the, the missionaries want to make the world a better place and he says, actually, the missionaries tend to make more money anyway, along the way, because they've actually a long way. Yeah, yeah and so I found Yeah, my clients Life is short, you know, and we have a chance to make an impact and I think actually people start to realize, you know what? I'm gonna put bread on the table, let me actually make the world a better place, I think, yeah, it sounds Yeah, we're gonna make the world a better place. It sounds a bit idealistic, but that's what we need, right? As humans, we need people who are going to be positive and do that.

Adrian Weiler
Actually, I admire your podcast for that and I respect what you are doing your work very well because I do think you are making quite a difference and I understand there is actually 1000s of listeners to your podcast serious and by giving examples and by providing these types of interactions and interviews, I think you're you're having a very significant impact on the world of corporate leadership and so I think, yeah, what you're doing there is certainly also one of those missionary things. I very much respect.

Richard Medcalf
That's nice. I'm table's turned on me like that, thank you. There was a, I can't remember whether there's a client of mine or a partner or somebody, but they they said, I want to help the good guys win and I actually love that as a phrase, it's stuck with me, because that's kind of my mission is if I can help people who are up to good, you know, want to make good things happen in the world, if I can help them, multiply their impact, reinvent the success formula to make a bigger, more positive impact on their on their purpose, their people their profit, then that's the self reinforcing circle and that's the probably the biggest way that I can help, do my best.

Adrian Weiler
Absolutely, absolutely.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Well, hey, Adrian, it's been great to talk to you, it's been great to go understand those two parts of what you're up to, with inform and with smart freight and just to kind of hear those principles, right, the trusts the laying the cultural foundations, the building relationships with customers in your network, and not just skimming over the surface, but playing the long game, which I think I've really heard in all sorts of ways right in establishing those cultural principles from the start, actually been doing the long game for 35 years, and then continuing to invest in people and relationships that really comes out. So thank you for, for sharing who you are really, as well as what you've done in this discussion.

Adrian Weiler
Thank you for having me.

Richard Medcalf
If people want to find out any more about you get into view or Smart Freight or Inform you know, what's the best way for them?

Adrian Weiler
You certainly, LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm very accessible on LinkedIn and also, you might publish my my email on any form, which is adrian.weiler@inform-software.com

Richard Medcalf
Perfect. Well, hey, it's been great to speak and thanks so much again, and look forward to hearing how all these stories continue to evolve.

Adrian Weiler
Yeah. Thank you.

Richard Medcalf
Take care, Adrian. Bye bye.