Our progress
With our four-year strategy cycle drawing to a close in 2023, our strategy was further developed and sharpened to be ready for the upcoming years. Peter Sanders, Chief Strategy Officer, reflects on this process, our progress to date and the opportunities ahead.
I am optimistic looking at both the process and the outcome of further sharpening our strategy. We got the cascading on point starting with a strong alignment of the strategic direction on both a Global and an EMEA level. We continued to align step-by-step through each part of our organisation’s matrix. This made the process more collaborative with contributions from both our partners and talent ensuring the right level of depth and resulting in overall consistency.
Our strategy is based on a set of critical beliefs and making these beliefs more explicit helped to get everyone on the same page about our collective direction. Our strategy meeting with the partners in Maastricht ended up being the apex of this entire process. For me, it was confirmed there that we struck the right balance between providing a collective direction and establishing a frame that provided sufficient freedom.
During this process, we also involved an outside-in perspective by inviting clients and experts in their fields to enable them to share their points of view in order to gain a diversity of thought and insights. This helped us to zoom out, ensure we have a great understanding of the expectations of our stakeholders and can fully grasp future needs and trends.
Peter Sanders
Corporate Strategy Officer
Looking at our strategic direction, where did you see the most progress this past year?
We have made significant progress in becoming a driving force in EMEA and in selecting specific trade corridors. We also continued to make progress by further building on our ‘Future of’ themes, such as the Future of Energy, by setting up the global Hydrogen Centre of Expertise in the Netherlands.
One of our priorities is to make sure we will be the long-term partner for our clients, for example with our Advise, Innovate and Operate’ (often referred to as A-I-O) capabilities. For one of our clients, we will design and build a cloud-based AI and Data platform, work on keeping the systems running smoothly and continuously innovate the platform.
This past year the focus has also been on Generative AI. In the Netherlands, we took a proactive approach to bring GenAI to our professionals, set up a dedicated team aimed at integrating Gen AI into our operations, and organised labs with clients to support them in their GenAI journey leading, for example in identifying cost savings with GenAI for one of our large Consumer clients. Of course, we are also benefitting from the scale of Deloitte as a global Generative AI taskforce has been set up in the past year, encouraging collaboration and collective investments to fully embrace the opportunities around GenAI.
We have also invested in our (future) leadership, which is vital to ensure that we will thrive now and in the future. I have been impressed by the implementation of our 3C leadership philosophy which embodies the courageous, curious, and compassionate leadership behaviour that we expect from our leaders. We integrated this framework into our learning and development initiatives for partners, and it has extended beyond the Netherlands as it is now also part of the NSE training programme.
Looking back, what challenges did you encounter?
The volatile market challenges us to review our strategy and asses if we made the right strategic choices. I believe that we are focusing on the right things that will help us to stay successful in the long-term, and at the same time it is crucial for us to accelerate on parts of our strategy. One example of this is changing the way we deliver our services in order to stay competitive. By increasing the use of our global delivery centres, we can complement our teams in the Netherlands to deliver the best services to clients. However, we still need to become more efficient in doing so to improve both cost and delivery.
We have also been constantly guarding the balance between having our full focus on our client work now, while managing several organisational changes to ensure our organisation is future-proof. The upcoming adoption of the modernised and simplified global storefront, the way in which we organise our services, is an example of this. Through an alignment of capabilities that is most relevant to the market of the future, it will help us to serve clients better with their most complex challenges, now and in the future . It will also make it easier to bring integrated solutions to the market, to use our global scale to invest and to work across borders, which will provide a more seamless experience to our clients.
From a personal perspective, what aspect of the strategy resonates with you the most?
For me, it starts with ensuring a consistent focus on marrying purpose and profitability, as I believe it will help us to become future-proof. Being successful helps us to set the agenda for a responsible and sustainable business and provides us with a platform for growth to accelerate on societal challenges and invest in diversity, inclusion and equity. At the same time, we will be able to provide our people with more purposeful and meaningful work, which is measured in the Engage for Change survey amongst our talent as an important part of our strategic pillar to be the preferred employer for all.
What has made you proud looking back on this year?
Generally it is actually the people that make me proud to be part of Deloitte, they never cease to amaze me with ideas and their drive. An example of this for me are the initiatives that have been set up around financial health, which are driven by personal conviction to make an impact on people and society. Connecting both organisations in the public and private sector and using our strengths as an organisation to push this initiative forward, is admirable to me.