And just like that, in the blink of an eye, it’s already been 100 days since my first day as CEO of Haulogy!
I’ve always believe that, in order to successfully run a business, you need to have as much first-hand knowledge as you can about it.
In my previous job, I was often (or should I say always? 😉) the one with the most knowledge and experience when it came to the market and our customers’ needs. Now, at Haulogy, I’m a new bee therefore, my main challenge was to get up to speed ASAP.
In order to do that, I used 3 main sources of information:
My board: I often had difficulties extracting value from the boards as CEO. My knowledge of the market and the company were so advanced compared to the other BoD members, that it required a high level of abstraction to really get to that value. At Haulogy, it’s the opposite: everyone in the BoD knows the company and market much better than I do! Special thanks to Bruno Vanderschueren, Damien Ernst and Daniel Byl for helping me understand the dynamics of this market, as well as the company.
My colleagues: I spent my first days on the job having close to 70 one-on-one meetings with different members of our team. It was really important to me that I get to really know the people behind the roles, as well as understand their expectations from our company and from their jobs. I just asked them to talk to me as freely as possible, and the results were truly amazing. I left those meetings feeling refreshed, enlightened, and full of new ideas and points of view that I hadn’t considered before. Big thanks to my new executive team Charles Delhaye, Pedro Schuermann, Hélène Glineur, Quentin Gemine, Fréderic Lessire for your help with this!
Our customers: as soon as I started the new role, I personally met up with several of them. As expected, these meetings provided invaluable insights into their past experiences with our company and their expectations going forward. It gave me the chance to get up to speed and learn about their most pressing needs in record time.
This helped me identify the real challenges that our business faces, as well as some bright and easy to implement ideas to improve the organization.
One of the comments I received from our colleagues was that a lot of employees wanted opportunities to see each other and hang out in a relaxed atmosphere outside of work. We decided to act on this feedback and organize our first event: a 4th of July-themed BBQ!
As you can see from the pictures, we had a blast. The event was also an excellent moment to share our ambition to replace a Nuclear plant with renewable energy by 2028 (:O !), which will mark the beginning of the new phase.
My main responsibility as CEO is to make sure our team delivers quality to our customers. These first 100 days were intense, both for me and for the team, as I brought some changes and new views that we had to adapt to our current reality. However, I have confidence that we’re at the start of a great next step for Haulogy.
