ISLET­TER HIGH­LIGHT: Aki Pousar, Wihuri Oy Aarnio

THROUGH ISLET BINOC­U­LARS: AKI POUSAR, DEVEL­OP­MENT DIRECTOR

In what kind of orga­ni­za­tion do you work and what is your role there?

Wihuri Oy oper­ates in sev­er­al busi­ness areas: pack­ag­ing busi­ness, tech­ni­cal trade and food whole­sale. I work for the Wihuri Oy Aarnio whole­sale, which serves organ­i­sa­tions man­u­fac­tur­ing and sell­ing food, mean­ing the HoRe­Ca sec­tor, and the retail indus­try. I lead Aarnio’s devel­op­ment unit ded­i­cat­ed to con­tin­u­ous busi­ness improvement.

To which direc­tion is your field developing?

It has been inter­est­ing to see how the Euro­pean cul­ture, like the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of eat­ing out, is slow­ly spread­ing to Fin­land and boost­ing the restau­rant busi­ness and how the entire indus­try is grow­ing despite the gen­er­al down­turn. Com­pared to oth­er indus­tries, eat­ing and food are a part of every day. Eat­ing out is more com­mon­place these days and it cre­ates a need for new play­ers like pop-up or theme restaurants.

What is your organization’s key mes­sage to its stake­hold­ers and customers?

We are a reli­able part­ner that cus­tomers can rely on to make the best out of every­day life. Restau­rants need their ingre­di­ents fresh and with ser­vices cus­tomized to them. Our cus­tomers require a com­pre­hen­sive range, a reli­able sup­ply chain and ser­vices to sup­port their every­day lives. Reli­a­bil­i­ty is key.

What is the best part of your work?

Con­tin­u­ous progress. Wihuri is an orga­ni­za­tion with a for­ward-look­ing cul­ture, which is reflect­ed in our work in prac­tice. We have the own­ers’ sup­port for pro­mot­ing busi­ness that ensures the need­ed resources for devel­op­ment. This con­tin­u­ous move­ment is well suit­ed for our devel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed employ­ees – upwards and onwards!

What are the keys for suc­cess in change?

Strong change man­age­ment cul­ture. We do a lot by pro­ject­ing dif­fer­ent efforts, but the cul­ture is like embed­ded in our peo­ple and encour­ages con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. Already years before the last trans­for­ma­tion, we cul­ti­vat­ed the spir­it of dri­ving change, which is a key force for achiev­ing. For exam­ple, good tech­ni­cal pre­req­ui­sites to run projects are not enough, but peo­ple need to be moti­vat­ed to con­stant­ly improve. That helps a lot when we are fac­ing com­pli­cat­ed devel­op­ment steps.

How did you start devel­op­ing project capa­bil­i­ties in your orga­ni­za­tion before the changes?

Pri­or to the project of deploy­ing the logis­tics cen­ter, we estab­lished a Project Man­ag­er Acad­e­my, a con­cep­tu­al coach­ing pro­gram for those dozens of key indi­vid­u­als dri­ving the change. The Acad­e­my includ­ed, of course, prac­ti­cal mat­ters, but also how to lead change through peo­ple and how to ensure the right capa­bil­i­ties and crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors. Suc­cess doesn’t only depend on the indi­vid­ual but there are wider depen­den­cies with­in the orga­ni­za­tion. Thus, the foun­da­tion for the growth of the orga­ni­za­tion’s very exten­sive change man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties began to emerge.

How does your orga­ni­za­tion retain top tal­ents and what makes your orga­ni­za­tion a great place to work?

Indi­vid­ual coach­ing: peo­ple with the same job descrip­tion may have very dif­fer­ent ambi­tions, and lis­ten­ing and respond­ing to them is impor­tant. Mod­ern man­age­r­i­al work requires car­ing for the employee’s career. In our devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion we have sought to embrace that as a new way of lead­ing peo­ple, which encour­ages pos­i­tive out­look, secu­ri­ty and ful­fills indi­vid­u­al’s ambi­tions. In addi­tion, we strive for con­tin­u­ous improve­ment — we have a healthy, crit­i­cal atti­tude towards the present and look for things to improve. It is writ­ten into each job description.

”Lessons learned” for lead­ing in change? 

In the face of demand­ing change, you should pre­pare for “lead­ing in uncer­tain­ty”. You can­not see clear­ly very far, thus you will inevitably be in a state of uncer­tain­ty. This state of affairs reflects exten­sive­ly, not only on the man­age­ment team or staff, but on the stake­hold­ers of the orga­ni­za­tion. Dimen­sion­al­i­ty, open­ness and trans­paren­cy, as well as rec­og­niz­ing the uncer­tain­ty and the pow­er of the group all con­tribute to man­ag­ing it.

Your devel­op­ment plan for the next 12 months?

Our cur­rent theme is ful­fill­ing mar­ket promis­es. When intro­duc­ing the Logis­tics cen­ter, we promised our cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers and our­selves to bring a new, sig­nif­i­cant play­er to the mar­ket. We are now start­ing to get the most out of our machine and ful­fill­ing our promis­es, for exam­ple by increas­ing deliv­ery reli­a­bil­i­ty and design­ing new services.

We would also like to pro­mote coop­er­a­tion between Wihuri’s var­i­ous indus­tries, which holds great poten­tial. Cross-indus­try col­lab­o­ra­tion would improve both cus­tomer and staff expe­ri­ence as well as cost-effectiveness.

How would you describe the part­ner­ship with Islet?

ISLET is a reli­able, straight­for­ward and open part­ner that calls a spade a spade. Our coop­er­a­tion has always been fruit­ful and I have very pos­i­tive expec­ta­tions for our future coop­er­a­tion. ISLET’s nearshore ser­vice in Hun­gary is high-qual­i­ty, cost-effec­tive, very reli­ably inte­grat­ed and seamless.

What is your motto?

Progress stops upon sat­is­fac­tion. There is always room for improve­ment and devel­op­ment work is nev­er done.