The ABB Way – how to run a global company in a rapidly changing world

This week, I’m marking my first 100 days as CEO of ABB, a global technology company with a history of more than 130 years.

I took the helm at ABB at an opportune but extremely challenging time. Under my predecessor, Peter Voser, ABB started a journey towards becoming a more decentralized company; a journey that I am continuing and accelerating. Of course, since I joined the company, many things have changed as the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every country with severe consequences for millions of people and a heavy economic toll.

My first day at ABB seems a long time ago now – that was before the COVID-19 lockdowns when I was still able to travel and visit our teams in other countries. To date, we have managed to keep our people safe and our operations up and running with few interruptions – this will remain our major responsibility. As a new CEO, I am impressed to work with such dedicated people who continually go above and beyond the call of duty for each other, our customers and our communities.

While managing the COVID-19 crisis, we have kept our transformation journey on track. On June 9, I presented our future operating model – the “ABB Way” – to our 500 top leaders, and shortly afterward to our investors. Having been designed for a global company in a rapidly changing and unpredictable world, the ABB Way is the operating model that ABB needs for the one we are all facing.

Company purpose

The core of the ABB Way is our company's purpose – why we are in business. As a commercial enterprise, we constantly strive to succeed by creating superior value – for our customers, employees and investors. Our purpose also encompasses ABB’s role as a technology pioneer that has always pushed its boundaries. And it recognizes our bigger responsibility, as a leading global company, to energize the transformation of society and industry to achieve a more productive, sustainable future.

As well as our purpose, the ABB Way contains the essential elements for the future success of our company: how we drive performance, how we ensure that we have the right people in the right place at the right time, how we create a strong culture of governance and integrity, and how we build and protect our brand and reputation.

Empowering our businesses

At ABB, we drive performance through a decentralized business model that empowers our business Divisions with full ownership of their strategy, operations and performance. This gives them the freedom to operate as entrepreneurs – fast, innovative and responsive – which is critical in our rapidly changing environment.

Our Divisions have a very clear mandate: grow profitably to become, or remain, number 1 or 2 in their respective markets. We insist on market leadership because it is the key to profitability.

To ensure we have the right people when and where we need them, we foster a high-performance culture through excellence in people. We do that through strong and fair performance management, good leadership based on trust, shared values and collaboration, as well as healthy and inspiring workplaces.

People and leadership development are at the center of the ABB Way. As well as providing opportunities for learning and personal development, we empower our people to shape their own careers with an open job market across the organization. In this way, we attract and develop strong leaders who can run successful businesses, motivate their people with the passion and spirit to win, and who also have the maturity to understand the value of cooperating for mutual success. We call this #ABBSpirit.

But at the same time, we know that our success is strongly rooted in our people with employees in more than 100 nations worldwide. We continuously encourage them to share their ideas and thoughts to contribute to ABB’s efforts: we welcome their individual differences and embrace diversity as a core asset to continuously become a more collaborative, more dialogue-driven and more focused – a stronger ABB.

An exemplary corporate citizen

To protect our people and our reputation, we have a strong governance framework, underpinned by our Code of Conduct, which applies equally to everyone everywhere. I am proud of our newly revised Code. We offer it as an interactive guide with practical and useful advice on how to do business, which is also available on a mobile app. As such, it is far from being a list of Dos and Don’ts that people will skim through once and forget about soon after. By following it consistently, our employees safeguard themselves and our company from financial and reputational harm, and they can be confident that we are an exemplary corporate citizen and promote ethical and humane behavior.

The final element of the ABB Way is our brand – a strong part of the “glue” that holds ABB together. Having led companies that were both customers and competitors of ABB, I have long felt that ABB’s contribution to society is under-appreciated. As the CEO, I believe strongly that we need to explain better what makes ABB such a good company, why it has an exciting future and importantly how it contributes to making the world a better place. A strong brand is key to getting that message across.

For me personally, having the opportunity to lead ABB is something of a dream come true. After graduating, I applied to join ABB’s trainee program in Sweden – but I was rejected. Fortunately, I got there in the end.