 Hello and all of you. I'm super excited to be here today and present to you. It's my first time at slush And I was asked backstage. What do you find so special about slush and what is so unique about this experience and being here first time? I can only say it is the compound intellect of all of the people here the curiosity the explorative mindset and the energy that makes this so special and I'm Only here today and I feel it and I'm very grateful that after this presentation I can go around like all of you and meet more people and get that energy Especially in an environment where the nature is calm the contrast seems quite big here in Vinland So happy to be here Anyone of you also first time slusher so to say yeah cool So you feel the same as I feel right super exciting to be here any of you addicted to slush Many times here cool keep going keep going strong on that one really really cool So today I'm here. I'm happy to introduce already myself. I'm the chief people officer at Sender and Sender before I go into my presentation is a company in road logistics And you may wonder hey startup road logistics. Is that exciting actually? It's super cool So if you look at our vision, we're digitized digitalizing road logistics and fast-forwarding the future of road logistics So if you just step out and go maybe on the drive if I don't know if any of you drive a car If you were to drive from Hamburg to Stuttgart if you drive from Paris to Rotterdam if you drive from Milan to Madrid and if you do a little game as you could do with kids count the Number of times you see the same truck You will find that actually you don't add up to five even on these long distances You only see maybe once maybe twice the same truck And that is because this industry is super fragmented and that's where we play in and we are aiming with mr Marketplace to connect the data of available loads of shippers with our carriers So the small carriers can actually drive both their way in as well as their way out with a full truck Because it's surprising how many trucks drive empty and we hope to contribute to that and make this in that sense a more efficient value Chain but also a more sustainable one and we're doubling down now also in green transport So it's a super exciting Industry to be in it's a super cool company to be in but it's not the reason why I am there It's one of the reasons the big reason is the culture and what the founders have built at Sender quite intentionally over time To make this very unique and special as a company and it's a place to be and in my role Of course, I meet a lot of CEOs and many founders for sure and everybody would say people are important But it's only when you're in a company when you see the initiatives that have been taken and how people are treated that it comes to life So today I want to talk to you about what the model is that will help you to bring to the life in your country Company because I must think many of you are founders. Maybe first-time founders figuring out how to do this I want to share some methods. You can use some very simple one. Maybe some structured ones and I want to share we use something around Three examples that we use at Sender that's turned out to be very successful And those maybe will help you to to do it in your own way in your own format in your own company as well So engagement and performance two very important words Performance is about output and engagement is about the gut There's actually in nobody really can find your gut But it's your heart is what makes you wake up in the morning excited to say I want to go to work The two of them don't always go together. So if you would make a little overview If you have high performance you can make a bar also to say do I have high engagement? So I've made a big star here top right any one of you first-time founders you feel your top right, right? You feel your high performing your super engaged you build the company It's your whole heart and soul is in it and the team you get around you probably feels the same and when you go bigger and bigger It is your task to maintain that same energy in the company, but it's not so easy So what happens over time and it could happen to yourself too as a founder? You have people that go to the right that are super super high performing But they start doubting the strategy. They start Questioning they are wondering whether it's worth it because none of you probably like none of us work 40 hours You put a lot of time in and people start questioning and you don't see it on the surface because they're high performing But internally they're disengaging and that makes people almost quiet quitters And it's hard to recognize those because you see it Not in their performance Then there's another group of people that goes down and these are the people that over time still put the same energy and put the same dedication in but their Performance is not up to the expectation the company grows bigger new people come in. They said different performance standards You'll find that these people are very very kind people that are glue in your company But they may not be the ones that come in the role they were in till date to the success that they could have in their output So this is not new it's not a super difficult models I don't like difficult models because I can simply not remember very difficult models Probably the same for you too My goal of today is to tell you this model and what is most important is to reflect on the model So to reflect yourself. Where am I on this grid? Am I switching off a little bit? Do I think it's too much? Am I still on the right top? And also if you're dropping in terms of the standards that are out there constantly have that reflection for yourself So my key message for today is in order to make your organization all stars this needs the liberate reflection of every individual and of every Team and as a company as a whole and there's mechanisms for that to have reflection and I call it the reflection discipline and Discipline may not be a word you like because it comes with a lot of rigor it comes with a lot of strength and and Actually Constantly even if it's not necessarily what you want to do that they still do it reflection discipline So in a company it requires that you're actually looking into How are the performance going? How is engagement going and to stimulate an organization? that has this habits in their own teams and If you're a founder today, you're probably most founders are not alone probably you're with two Often they say three is the magic number. I worked at a company where there were four founders also super cool There I saw this happening all the time and speaking to founders. I see this happening a lot Conversations with each other every Tuesday morning breakfast every Wednesday evening Talking honestly about how you're doing. How is the business going? What is working in terms of the heart of the people? What's working in the output? But that same methodology somehow never scales to the organization as a whole and to all teams and That means that if we are not putting a systematic approach in place at the micro level at the micro level if we're not making The way to reflect Symbolic to the personality of the company you want to be then actually you're not set up for success So why reflection? I'm proud to say I'm from one of the technical universities that is also present here in then from the Netherlands Reflection has to do with the fact that if what you do as a founder what you do is a leadership if you would look at the company as a mirror The science shows it's a very easy picture that if you cast things and you do things in a way to Mirror that's clean. That's unbroken. You get back exactly what you intended to do But then in real life, you know, your organization does not look like a flawless mirror, right? There's a lot of different people There's a lot of layers. There's a lot of different backgrounds and diverse views on things so you cast things should take initiatives But it comes back maybe in a much more diffused way and until you have reflection mechanisms, you will not know So I will talk you through now Four ways to do those reflections and then three initiatives at Sender that turned out to be super successful So what are these reflection habits on the very left side? This is so easy and it's probably not mind-blowing But life can sometimes be very simple and effective. It is called daily habits in meetings It's super super helpful if you want to create a culture of openness and where you can reflect also amongst each other and be vulnerable If you you close a meeting and you take four minutes and you go around and everybody speaks up to say What did they like about the meeting and make it personal? So hey Anthony, I really like how you prepared this document. Hey Charlie. This was really fantastic You kept us on time or you challenged us but also critical to say hey You were not in a meeting you were on your phone all the time and the rule is you need to be crisp So it needs to take max four minutes you can say positive things and repeat them But the constructive feedback you only say once so that is a really simple thing you can do it is very quick and it's very Disarming for people to speak up and to be recognized But also to speak up and be aware of what other people are doing and create a culture of feedback and reflection The second thing you can do is again. It's not rocket science, but it's retro When you finish off a project have the team together to just look back make it 20 minutes only super sharp super simple Look at the results that you achieve versus your plan But more importantly Reflect on how is the performance of everyone individually in the team? How are they engaged in the project? What would they do differently if they were again here and that even put it on little posters in your digital board is Super insightful It's insightful to learn but more importantly it really really helps to create this culture in which people reflect So you see the intentions of what you're like that you were casting as a project leader or as a project member Is actually coming back the way you intended and that's really important Now some of you may have already grown your company much bigger and you may be with 100 people you may be 150 people 400,000 people and then these methodologies you need to also structure more in a formal process And this is at the end the right box in structure. We call it performance management I don't necessarily like the word because it's as if we can manage performance of people I tend to believe it's people who drive and lead their own performance, but it's most companies This does help so it's sender. We have a performance management system that every six months And the digital platform opens up to people and ask a person. How was my impact this? Six months. What did I achieve? What worked well for me? What did I not achieve because it's perfectly fine to also admit that things didn't come through if You're a startup will actually most of your project may not come through because he said such bold ambitions You also look at behavior So we ask people what have you contributed to the culture of send and we go through our values and people can enter there What they like and then finally what have you learned and what was your commitment to yourself to grow and develop yourself as a professional in our company and These questions on the what the how and the growth you made a Person answers but also peers answers and peers are your colleagues So people select five people that they want their feedback from and they give the same answers to their managers So as a manager you get the same feedback and then as a manager the circle is round and they call it 360 This Process is super time-consuming. So it's always a process that it's jealous. Is it worth it? But I believe it's super important It gives us reflection discipline every six months to review and it's accomplished what you've accomplished And how you've contributed to the company and to your own commitments At Sunday we had last round. No, there's a twenty twenty three over four thousand seven hundred I think thirty six reviews So can you imagine how much value there is for people to learn and to give feedback to each other and to grow? Think it's unprecedented to have that level of depth in your reflection So this is what we do and there's many ways to do that There's a lot of opinions to do this if there's any HR professionals in this crowd This is the hottest topic within the HR function But I do recommend however you define it however way you do it when you grow bigger It helps you to build that rhythm of reflection So finally these three things I just shared were reflections for performance There's also reflection on engagement. So I show you now a chart. This is our Engagement reflection at Sunday we measure every month. How are we doing on the engagement level of people? Are people happy to work with us? Are they still belonging at us? Do they feel their opinions are hurt? Do they understand the strategy? Are they committed to the strategy? Do they see how they contribute? So we have a lot of questions Probably if you would ask yourself how many questions do I want to ask you may end up with 80 or 100 questions That's of course not possible So we have a tool that we have around 50 55 questions and they rotate over time So people answer every month and we get this feedback every month and super cool Because this is exactly the mirror that shows us the light that we're casting with all of the projects all of the Communications are all hands our road shows Do we get back the same light or does it disparate and go in many different directions? So we have this tool and the honest truth is some initiatives that we put a lot of effort in don't work And you will find some things don't work and you don't see it go up or you don't see underlying drivers go up But some things do work and then you see the proof in the in the metrics and that's super super valuable So let me show you three things that work at Sender and I'm proud of those Many of those were there before I joined so it's part of the company DNA and how the company has been built and I want to share with you the first initiative Which we call summer camp Let me see. I hope it will play a video, but I don't know which button to push to make that happen Let me see Let me talk you through it because I don't think the video shows if the video would show you would actually feel the energy and I and I tried to bring that energy of thousand people into me and then cast it to you but at summer camp we bring together all of those people at Sender and last September we brought them to Italy and In those days there were three days formal days one first day was about reflection the momentum What have we achieved? What are we proud of? What can we accelerate so a lot around positive momentum based on facts and numbers of What the team has done over the year and the second day was all about inspiration So what is the logistics industry evolve? How will cream transport evolve? How can you evolve your career? So a lot of different elements to have a much more further looking out Outlook So those two things looking back reflection having the momentum and looking forward Were very important parts of how we designed that summer camp Then the final part was all around personal connections and this is really important in our culture So it was around the fun we had together It was about connecting team building and the way the program was designed I think was very very beautiful and we saw also an immediate uptick in the engagement coming from that Now would that work for you? I don't know it has worked for Sender for a long time Even I think eight years ago when the company was quite small and starting these things were organized But it's over time evolved and became very intentional about what is the outcome and how do we orchestrate? the days to make people feel this connection with the company and feel engaged for Giving it their extra best So that is one the second one. This is a picture. We call it set up. We do love branding by the way As part of our culture everything is orange Coming from the Netherlands. I love that color was very recognizable in a whole of our offices We call it set up set up is a program in every year We select 15 20 top performers people that have a true potential that have been outstanding in the way they Were entrepreneurial in their domain the way they added value to their teams and the way they stood out as an individual And we bring them together for a year. So in that year they meet up a couple of times They are part of executive team sessions They get a mentor through our networks that they can work on their personal development They get personality tests so they can also reflect on where they are as a person and how they want to grow and then finally We assign them a project and as teams they work on business relevant projects and now this really gets excited because it's not a Potential program that runs next to the business actually fully integrated in the business They work on these projects for six months and then a summer camp They present their process back to the whole of the management and they formally graduate So there's some symbolism rituals around that and then the new Crew the new squad will start so this program. I will say is difficult to set up, but if you put your Your head into it you can set it up without spending a lot of money is really important to do and as Small as you may are today to pull out and have this CEO found a lead program is Amazing to retain your top performers. It really Creates this energy and people are competing to be part of that now Today, I think from Sender with a thousand people 205 people in our company are under the leadership of someone that comes from this squad And that makes me really proud because that shows our internal mobility and how we grow people and that Next to hiring people is probably the most important thing you have to do as a founder So that is our setup program and the last example I want to share is something also quite cost-effective and easy to implement and That is the Sender learning week. So what we do every year in June we ask all of our people What is it that you are passionate about? What is it that you really really know? Well and What would you like to share from your knowledge your expertise with all of your colleagues and it's amazing to see what comes out? So people surprise you right people come up with things in their personal life things They know business-wise and we have a variety of topics people want to share finance for Finance Fundamentals they want to share team building they want to share maybe yoga or meditation They want to share how to deal with stress or how to cope with uncertainties. They will want to share AI They want to share what their work is on a daily basis. So a lot of proposals already We can see coming from from our people submitting their personal Ideas of what they want to share with their colleagues We then vote so the whole company can vote what they like best and then we make a week and in that week The most voted topics are there and they're presented by the people for their own colleagues and it's super high energy is super Rewarding to see your colleagues presenting topics You were not aware of that they had this knowledge and it generates a lot of sharing of knowledge across the group So these are three examples the summer camp the stand-up potential group as well as the Learning week examples that you can shape you can take to your own company if it's valuable to you But what I really appreciated that send is that these were put in place quite early on in the early days Because it set the tone and it also now gives us a rhythm a rhythm of reflection a rhythm of investing in engagement of people So that is my final Slides that is because however you look at your goal And I know you all have amazing goals if I read the visions of founders. They're awesome But it's actually your ability to have your company your team your founding team your management team the whole teams Create a habit of reflection and Why this is important? I hope I shared with you But I I tend to believe it's actually the same in in many other areas, right? Every person that's on the Olympics that's on the front line the start line to go run the hundred meters Every one of them has the same goal to get the gold medal, right? Every person that is in American football and I'm a big American football lover So raise your hands if I'm not the only one maybe some yeah, thank you every Year every season when they start the season and they run their first yard they have this goal to get the Super Bowl But thinking about the goal working against your goal all the rational things you need to do will not get you there It will only bring you there if you have this constant habit of reflection improving improving improving and It's very very interesting to see how that engages people because it's one of our almost child these Behave how do you call it child these values we have as an individual to do better every time, right? To do better every time So if you are a young person and you draw your first drawing of a little house You want to make a next drawing a little bit better, right? This is what we love to do We love to get better every time and we don't lose that when we get older We don't lose that when we become professionals We don't lose that when we are leaders doing better every day have it is reflection habit. It's just the most Inspirational thing and forceful thing you could have from inside self motivating Well in the NFL, there's one really great example of that. It's Jason and Travis Kelsey They're both big brothers, and I mean really really big the one is I think 191 and the other one 93 The weight is around hundred and fifteen hundred and thirty kilos They both won the Super Bowl two brothers both won the Super Bowl really impressive one with the cheese one with With the Eagles and they ended up in the Super Bowl competition one day against each other Eagles versus the Chiefs If you watch any videos of them if you ever have to or want to see a podcast watch that podcast They these brothers love each other, but they really really have done this reflection habit From early days on so they did not get to the Super Bowl because they had this goal They got to the Super Bowl because when they were still tiny they didn't have the big bears They didn't have the big body They were ready constantly challenge each other throwing the ball catching the ball throwing the ball catching the ball And that is I think the most important thing to develop and grow in your company as a founder As you do with your founding team invest that time and create that culture with your teams Thank you very much. This is what I wanted to share with you today