91: How to Drive Growth Through Agility and Innovation - podcast episode cover

91: How to Drive Growth Through Agility and Innovation

Jan 11, 202241 min
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Episode description

Have a question for Darrell? Text the show here.

Want to turn AI and digital disruption into your competitive advantage as a service-based business? Join the MindShift Inner Circle. 

Want help to market, grow, and scale your business? Schedule a free strategy session.

In this episode:

Sannah Vinding is a 20 years Product Management and Marketing Executive who identifies business drivers and builds collaborative global and cross-functional relationships. She specializes in accelerating and driving growth through agility, innovation and digital marketing.

Sannah has experience leading large change management projects of organizations and processes to raise innovation and improve product launch execution, quality and customer satisfaction.

She's also the podcast host of "Mind The Innovation," where the focus is on taking a personal approach to inspiring managers to develop leadership skills and helping teams become more effective. 

You're encouraged to tune into this episode as Sannah offers valuable insights on staying curious, embracing continuous learning and committing to growth.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the complete episode:

  1. Discover what innovation means to Sannah and how it can be a messy line.
  2. She talks about excellence being a process, not a destination.
  3. Find out what reinvigorates her, referred to as her "vitamin pill."


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Thanks for listening,

Darrell

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Transcript

Sannah Vinding

Because you know what you know right now, and you can never be perfect, right? Also the 80/20 rule or what you know, today, you have to experiment you have to try. So if you saying yes, this is how I did something today, you will find over time, if you're repeating that process of what you're doing, you're like, oh, I can actually optimize it right? Example, right, I'm in the office a couple of days a week, I've learned which lane to be

in. And it's not always the one to the left to get there the fastest way. If there's more than one lane, I know Oh, it's always like, you know, a lot of cars here. So if I go over to the right, you know, then I change lane a little bit better. That is my process brain of saying and doing an optimize my little process of how to get to work.

The MindShift Podcast

This is The MindShift Podcast where we share real stories, real strategies that will help you find real success. This is the place to hear from people just like you who have taken their ideas, goals and dreams from a point of inspiration to realization, or when life knock them down from a point of breakdown to breakthrough. I'm your host Darrell Evans. Let's get started with today's

episode. Sannah Vinding is a 20 year product management and marketing executive who identifies business drivers and builds collaborative, global and cross functional relationships. She specializes in accelerating and driving growth, through agility, innovation, and digital marketing. She's experienced in leading large change management projects of organizations and processes to raise the level of innovation and improve product launch execution, quality, and

customer satisfaction. She's also the host of mine, the innovation, where she focuses on taking a personal approach to inspiring managers to develop leadership skills and helping teams become more effective. She says successful leaders embrace continuous learning. And as a leader, you have to commit to growth and development. Hey, Sannah, how you doing? Welcome to The MindShift Podcast.

Sannah Vinding

Thank you so much there, I'm happy to be here. I'm excited to be here.

Darrell Evans

I am to thank you. Where are you at in the world today?

Sannah Vinding

I'm in San Diego, or in the sunshine state right in California.

Darrell Evans

Oh, struggling down there and San Diego.

Sannah Vinding

I'm not complaining.

Darrell Evans

That's nice. So tell everyone a little bit about yourself. Let's get the backstory started.

Sannah Vinding

So my name is Sannah. I have a background in mechanical engineering, I have a master's in mechanical engineering, and I work with product development my whole life. And I think the whole product development then started to say, okay, how can I be creative to new products, work with architects, other engineers, manufacturing, and that just had been taking me in a long journey. And with my accent, I'm sure some people say she's not American. Why is she in San Diego. I'm a originally

from Denmark. But I've been in the states of more than 20 years. And I've been in different states as well. So my journey around in different states in the US, I've learned a lot about people, people skills, how to communicate. And sometimes by not being an American, gives me some other challenges, how to communicate or how to be creative. It also opens the door to say, hey, that just the crazy dane, right? This is trying something weird. Maybe that's what they're doing in

Denmark. But it's fun, because it always opens up, especially when I meet new people. They're like, Oh, I have some family, right? Or I'm like, great, great grandmother or something from from Denmark. So that just a little bit about my accent. But so what I do right now, so I'm a Director of Product Development and Marketing at electronic component, manufacturer, and I'm responsible for the roadmap for NPIs, and also the marketing

roadmap. And it's fine. If you look at my bio as well, I don't have a marketing, hardcore marketing degree. I have the engineering so I have the engineering mindset of how to put things in boxes and do it, you know, do this process. But I also have a creative side and I have that my whole life. I paint. I do websites, I do creative things, all kinds of do I make jewelry? For me, I think

it's a really great mix. Because now that I been exposed over the last 15 years to the marketing side as well, I get inspired and saying how what if I try this? What if I do this or let it do my own stuff? And do a lot of experiments. I've failed a lot of things. And I think if you see people that are succeeding, you're always saying oh, they always like doing so great. Yeah, but that's, you know, they work for it. It's not everything just come handy. You try a lot of different things. And then

that's where I am today. And I think if you asked me maybe 20 years ago, I would like on I don't want to learn too much right? And now I'm like, I just sucking everything to me. Right,

Darrell Evans

Right.

Sannah Vinding

I just want to learn more and more and more. It's like I don't have enough hours sometimes during the day.

Darrell Evans

You know, so much so that you have your own podcast as well called Mind the Innovation.

Sannah Vinding

Yes, I do.

Darrell Evans

Tell us a little bit about that.

Sannah Vinding

So that started a year ago, I'd have to celebrate it really soon. So I've had been a member of different communities over the last couple of years, some of them has been in the in the marketing world. And but I wanted to be better in

communication. I wanted to be better myself how to, you know, if you go into a team, and you're saying, hey, let's do some visual management and then map something process out, you always have the people who were like saying, Yes, we're into it, you also have the one saying, yeah, maybe not. They're saying too much, you have the one saying, we've done this many times before. It's not going to end well. So to have a group of peers in to get to either hear how they succeeded, and to share

my experience. That's why I created the pocket. So I wanted to have other leaders like me to say, hey, I want to become better, because you can only be better today than you were not, you know, from yesterday. That's the goal. So that's why I invite a lot of different business people into the to my podcast and talk about how they succeeded, how they failed, how they, you know, came back up again. And also ask them and saying, you know, what would you have told yourself like 10 or 15 years ago.

Darrell Evans

Interesting backstory, right? Mechanical Engineering, to marketing. And my question is about because I started as an electrical engineering major, ended up going through finance. Yeah. And I find a lot of parallels to things that I learned along that earlier, electrical engineering journey, and then even the finance journey, because I was doing portfolio theory, and how it relates to my skills in

Marketing. Today, I want to ask you, what are the one or two skills that you think from your mechanical engineering background mapped over? Well, to help you succeed in marketing? I think I've heard one or two in my mind, but what would you say?

Sannah Vinding

Um, I think it's the to be organized and structure. Because when you're an engineer, you you look and proper solving. And you look at saying, Okay, how do I get from A to B, but you also need to be creative and getting from A to B, because sometimes it's not just a straight line to get there. So the creative side as well of being an engineer is to solve the problem. But you need to be sure that you have all the information as much, you know,

right? It is never a perfect world up front, so you can make the right design decisions. That's, I think it's been one way and I can see that now on the marketing side, how much that have helped me to be

organized, right. So not just naming that file, the final final final file may actually make some structure everyday right now, basically, something that inspire me, I think that can be anywhere and like then it can be on me, if I'm following a company on social media, if I see something that Oh, my God, that's really good. I take that snapshot, and I put it in and I already name it, I tag it right away. Because if I say I'll go back later, yeah, there's so

much going on. And we're getting so much distraction now that maybe we didn't have the same distraction, like 10 years, or 20 years ago. So I'm structured. And that helps me to, I think you can say you slow down in a certain things because it takes time. But then when I need to be creative, I say, oh, I need to go back and look at this. I can speed up because I've been organized.

Darrell Evans

Gotcha. So you also have this other interesting part of your skill set, which is interesting to me, because I'm going to call it process engineer. But that's probably not the right phrase. But you'd love systems and processes, right? Yeah. And I saw something on your website that it kind of was funny, because there was another quote that I sort of resonated with, but your statement was excellence is a process. Yeah, not a destination. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that.

Sannah Vinding

Because you know what, you know right now, and you can never be perfect, right? Also the 8020 rule or what you know, today, you have to experiment you have to try. So if you saying yes, this is how I did something today, you will find over time, if you repeating that process of what you're doing, you're like, oh, I can actually optimize it. Right? Example, right, I'm in the office a couple of days a week, I've learned which lane to be in. And it's not always the one to the left to get there the

fastest way. If there's more than one lane, I know, oh, it's always like, you know, a lot of cars here. So if I go over to the right, you know, then I change lane a little bit better. That is my process brain of saying and doing an optimize my little process of how to get to work. Just one example.

Darrell Evans

I love the analogy. As simple as it is like I have to go to work. There's several lanes, but there's more than one lane that I can use to get there. Yeah, I love the idea though. Because we always say Success is a journey, right? It's never the destination. Yeah. And so I love how you put that into this idea of excellence. Because when you're building a product, you know running a business of any kind. I've learned now in my years 20 something years now running businesses that you're never

really going to get it done. Yet you're never really going to get there. We always have this new sort of Northstar that We're shooting for and it could be an improvement Norstar it could be a completely new goal or direction. But we really have to enjoy the process. And I always say that our job is to be habitual about the process, which is the boring stuff. Yeah. And then one day, all of a sudden, you're this rockstar superstar.

Sannah Vinding

Yeah, but I think what the process is right at a certain time, it gets into a habit, right? Some of it. So you don't think of it as much, it's not as heavy to say, Oh, my God is so boring with this process. And if you just improve a little bit, the 1% every day, it can take you so many places, I also learned that you can never wait for the perfect timing and saying, Oh, I'm not ready. Oh, I have so much to do,

right? You also busy tomorrow, and you will be even more busy in two years, or you found a new hobby, or you have a new job or something. There will always be like our new distraction. Right? And that took me some time to get there to say, oh, yeah, should I say yes? Or should I say no? Why shouldn't I do it? So when I started my podcast, last year, I jumped in. And I've learned on my way, right? I didn't have a website in the beginning. Now I have a website.

I didn't do small videos in the beginning of snippets from the podcasts, and you learn on the way and then certain point again, right, being organized and having some of the process makes it into a habit. And then that opens up that you have more time to be creative in a new way. And that's how you grow

Darrell Evans

Yes.

Sannah Vinding

And improve and get into the excellence.

Darrell Evans

That's amazing. I love it, taking those baby steps. And then before you notice I have it, I love it. Let me ask you this. You said earlier, he failed a lot of times, like and you talked about experiments, and I'm a big believer in in all of that, right? Yeah. I've learned over the years that when someone can talk so fluidly about their failures, or they can mention their failures. I know that that person has reached a place where they understand that failure is something I say failure is never

your identity. It's an outcome. Yeah, because you say it's so smooth. I'd love to talk to you a little about failure. Yeah. And how you overcome setbacks. Maybe tell us about a one or two of your biggest failures. And let's talk about how did you get to such a level where you can just have had many failures, because some people if they just think about a word failure, or think about a failure, they'll break down?

Sannah Vinding

Oh, yeah.

Darrell Evans

Let's, let's talk about it.

Sannah Vinding

You get afraid, right. So I worked for Lithonia Lighting many, many years ago in Atlanta. And we actually had Home Depot as the customer. And I was responsible for the whole product management and our products we were introducing, we just had them visiting us. And I still remember that we gave them the pricing and they loved it. They're like, yes, let's test these fixtures, light fixtures, you know, in the store. And they left the meeting, they left the

pricing, right. And then I went into my office and I was like, Yeah, great. You know, this is really awesome. Now we can just run read everything. And then I looked and I saw oh my god, I made a calculation error. I forgot to put enough margin in for us, right.

Darrell Evans

Oh.

Sannah Vinding

I sat there and you just did the whole feeling. I'm pretty close, right? It's all emotional in your body. And it's almost like when I still think about it, I can still feel it. Right? It was so emotional.

Darrell Evans

Oh.

Sannah Vinding

And then I was like, Okay, again, engineering process, right? What can I do? Look at my options. I can either wait, and then it will blow up later. It will show up later in the annual report saying this is not doing as well as we thought, oh, I can actually just go in and go to my boss and saying, Hey, this happened, right? It's a human mistake. And let's, here's my plan, how to get back. You know, let's fix it as much as we can. And let's do it right

now. So I think that one just facing and just saying, hey, I really messed up. And then saying, let's get back on track. And I just remember it because that was a big one. It was a big customer, right? And then say, how do you get back? And of course to me to go in and to upper management to say I had trust, right? I knew that. They were not sitting there. She's not doing anything. And she's always making mistakes. Right? I admitted it wasn't you?

Darrell Evans

Right.

Sannah Vinding

Yeah. So I think you have to, and again, right, the the good outcome, right? I never made that mistake again.

Darrell Evans

Right. Learn once.

Sannah Vinding

You learn, right, and I can see that with my team now as well. If there's anything where something happens, we're not pointing fingers. Let's take it as a learning experience. And sometimes it's maybe more also, yeah, that was a miscalculation. But it can also be just to say, hey, we tried it this way. It didn't work. Now I know this didn't work, then we're trying something else. So again, it's like the whole messy. You know, it's not that straight line. And

it's back to the innovation. It is a messy line and you need to you need to get through it because if you didn't, how do you know it actually was the best idea that you have?

Darrell Evans

Yeah, so many people just stay stuck in not wanting to take action for fear of the failure. Right. And yeah, you know, obviously through your years you've taken enough at bats, especially given all the work all the different arenas inside of the business world you've been in right Product Design Engineering Management people process. You know, you've pretty much seen it. All right.

Sannah Vinding

Yeah.

Darrell Evans

I was gonna ask you of the areas that you have spent your career in. And I don't want this to be a detriment to where your current position is. But what do you find the most joy in? So you're in product development and product management teams. Yeah, what Jazz's you up the most of all of your leadership responsibilities.

Sannah Vinding

I think if I look back over just the last, again, 10 years, every year has been different, in what the goal has been set to me or the goals I've set to myself, if you're looking on my private projects, as well as just getting so inspired to solve problems that maybe I don't know exactly how to do it yet. But to do the research, getting the network, ask all these questions, right, and finding a really good solution. And then in the end, it always about to see a happy

customer. So in my whole career is to see okay, when I worked for this lighting company, when I see the product on an outdoor light fixture, and it's lighting this parking area, right, I get proud because I know I did that little bracket that was there. So it's from the beginning to the end, I get proud where I am now if I see the components somewhere, and I've seen it actually in it when I was traveling, right and my family was like, Oh my God, my mom goes off here again, right to take

pictures of LED. That's, that's shiny. But when I see it, I get so proud to say Yes, right. This is the end goal and somebody is using it somebody is actually having, maybe they don't notice it, but I noticed it and by by them not noticing but it works is a happy customer, even though it can be a messy again upfront to find, how do you solve it? How do you get the right feedback, making sure you're getting all the right feedback from all different kinds of

teams and customers. But then when the final product is there, and you start getting the recognition to saying yes, this is good. And again, I'm sure there's an area as well, nothing is right the first time. So you always have to, you know, to optimize, so you have to do some changes, but you will get there. And that's just I just love that,

Darrell Evans

you know, someone who can attack change and problem solving the way they do. You know, it's not many people in the world that really love to take on challenges and the variety of challenges because the variety of skills you've developed over the last 20 years, they're all across the board. Most people have been fine having a career in one of those lanes. Right? So I really applaud you. And I guess I'm curious to know, what do you do

to really stay sharp? Because something is driving your curiosity, and willingness and desire to learn and become better? Yeah, 1% better or more per day? What is that for you?

Sannah Vinding

So that's a really good question. So you need to stay on top of everything. And there's different ways, right? Maybe we haven't gone to too many conferences. But be sure then if it's then it's online conferences, now our virtual conferences, sign up for these conferences to keep up either to

explore a few of them. And again, and I know that when we went in person you'd like you get so much information, I was called like my vitamin pill, that when I went somewhere, if it's reading a book, or you listen to a podcast, or you go to a webinar, or if it's just a live event, you know, whatever it is virtual in person, it's my vitamin pill. And you will say, Oh, my God, I got all these 50

good ideas. And I also learned Yeah, I'm not turning around and then implementing 50, right, just take one and try it out and see if it work. And if it didn't, then next time, either you will remember the second one you heard, or you will get reminded next time you are there. It's also important to go and that's where I go. Don't be with the same people all the time go out in different industries, because that will open up your perspective to things and perspective of how to

solve different challenges. I also created actually a community called Mind Innovation. We have like a handful of group that we meet every month. But that's been a little bit more than a year and we are in started in more product development. But we are looking at how to do continuous improvement. But we have people from Europe, we have people from the US all over us. And we have people less in jobs like I am we also have consultants. So a

little bit of everything. And when we talked about habits, we talked about continuous improvement, we talked about how do you improve, and we are so different. And we would have never I think maybe we met each other just on a normal conference because we are from different industries, but because we're together, and now that we know each other after a year, we trust each other so much that we can ask and saying hey, I'm facing this challenge right now. What have you done?

So that's turned into I don't know if you want to say it's a mentor group, because we all on the same level, almost like a mastermind. It's the mastermind where we all trust each other. And it's just great to see that and I I was Looking for that kind of mastermind group and I couldn't find it. So like, then I will create one. So that's the way

Darrell Evans

so much power in that right. And it's so funny because a lot of times, like you said earlier, we want to stay in our lane with people that do what we do. Say what we say, practice, what we practice, sell, what we sell, come from, where we come from, etc, etc. And the reality is growth comes from crossing over into the lines, yeah, into the mixture of our world, right? Yeah. And every mastermind group I've ever been in that I've had, and I'm

in them all the time. I'm in one I just had a meeting on Wednesday, we meet once a month. I'm a believer in masterminds and coaching, and conferences. Number one, because you do get that it's fun to use the word vitamin, yeah, because I feel reinvigorated when I go to these things. Because I know that all 5000, 2300 or 20,000, people showed up for the same thing. And that was a willingness to grow. And that for me is very energizing. So I love what you

said about it. But it's even more so that it is better when you have different people in the room that are at your level. Because they're all seeing things from a different perspective that you may not even get a chance to see but realize how relevant it is for what you're doing. I applaud you for that. That's how many people are in your group.

Sannah Vinding

And we are eight right now. So it sounded bigger before. But I also think the at one point, I was like, Okay, how can I expand and have it to grow? And there's also a magic number of when do you actually because you need to have the trust, you need to be close to each other. So otherwise, I'll start a second group. I think that's that away.

Darrell Evans

I agree. So I've got one group I'm in. There's about a total of 17 of us. But we generally have about 12 to 14 of us on any given month. Yeah, there's a very one schedule. Yeah, I'm in another group with for me and three others. Yeah. So you're right. We tried to grow the small group from the four. Yeah. And we actually grew it to 12. And it just changed the mix of the group. It changed everything. Yeah. And so we went

back to our four Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's good, though, you know, you have this, you said something earlier. And man, it just struck a chord in my heart. You didn't say the word Kaizen. But you said this group is about continuous improvement. And so it's like the lifeblood of how I run my life. And that is..

Sannah Vinding

Yeah

Darrell Evans

I learned in college. And it was, you know, obviously, Kaizen is from the Japanese Toyota Motor Company. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that Edward M. Deming, who was an engineer in the United States, kind of went over to Toyota and started really helping them with that process. So is that your engineering background shining through that continuous improvement mindset?

Sannah Vinding

Yeah, so I didn't learn it. When I went, I got my master. And I learned after because I actually joined a group called LPPDE. So that's like a lot of letters here.

Darrell Evans

Just a few

Sannah Vinding

No, yeah, just a few. Right. As you can see, I'm like, concentrated when I'm saying it now. But this is the Lean product and process development exchange, and is a nonprofit organization. And actually, I'm the chairman, a woman right now. And I've been there for two years. And we do all this exchange that we do continuous improvement and looking at Kaizen. So that's where I learned a lot of these tools, the methodology, you know how to go and get to look at it.

But I think you know, too, you always want to say something doesn't work, right? Again, if you fail, you need to, you can't just say I began and then you just you've run, right? You need to find out the root cause what happened? Right? Was it because I didn't know all the information? Did I forgot to ask someone a question, or what did

happen? And also understanding, you know, why are you waiting, because sometimes there can be a lot of waiting time, and if you just waiting for the next person to give you something, but you don't understand why this person didn't pass it to you. If it's a bigger project, you need to go in and have these questions, right and ask, so you can understand it, because then you can do the continuous

improvement. You can also if you if there's anything that there is taking a long time, you need to make sure that you get everybody within that team or everybody that's that's working together. It could be your family. But any anybody where you have something that be a little bit better or a little bit more efficient, ask a lot of questions, right? Because that's how you will learn to see it from their seat. And that's I think, I'm still at where I am right now. I'm asking so many

questions. If it's just to understand, you know, not to understand the why maybe, but not understand the decisions of how we got there and making sure that we're listening to everyone on that journey.

Darrell Evans

I'm just inspired listening to you like you're constantly asking questions. I've always said for years that one of the most powerful words in the English language, or in language in general is the word why. Yeah. And when you ask questions, and you're inquisitive about certain things, it's interesting how the world opens up to you. And it's been one of by so you just talked about, I'm always asking

questions. I'm always asking questions and depending on where you come from when you are younger, In school asking too many questions is a sign that you're not smart. Yeah. And it's funny how the most successful among us are always asking questions. We're always saying, what if we're always saying, What if we could do it this way? Or that way? How could we do it better? How can we be a little bit smarter? How can we be a little faster? What if we shifted left instead of right?

And it's interesting that those questions is what unlocks greatness in many cases. And it's just very interesting that we were going to have guys in as part of the conversation, when I talking to a process expert, I had a funny feeling. Yeah, you're doing this podcast, a couple things come to my mind, because you're interviewing a lot of entrepreneurial people, leadership, folks thought leaders around this topic of

innovation. And I'm curious to know, in your time, because you're always trying to answer this show. What will you do to unlock innovation? Yeah. What have you learned, now that you've been interviewing these folks? Yeah, about this topic of innovation, tell me about one or two things that have really struck you as, ah, aha moments that maybe you hadn't heard before.

Sannah Vinding

I had one where I asked and say, you know, it was the reflection and put 10 or 15 years ago, and he said, Life, it's like a train, or you have like a lot of opportunities and these opportunities like windows in this train. So when you look out, right, you see these opportunities, not that you have to go for all of them, but look out and make sure that you are going for it, even though maybe you're not sure that you can do 100% of it, go for these

opportunities. So I just like the way of saying that your life again, back to what I said earlier, there's never a good time. That was just another way of saying that, you know, to go jump in, figure it out. Don't be afraid, because if somebody else is doing it, pretty sure they are going through some of the same struggle, but some of the same challenges and on their

way. So that's one, I think a common theme is that, again, back to the question, when when I'm asked is like people saying how I should have trusted more of myself. I didn't think of me being excellent, or being the expert at that time. But now when I look back, oh, my God, I had all this knowledge, all this information. Why was I holding back? So that's also back to the one right, just believe more. And again, you can have expertise, but you're not an expert. And I think that's fair

every day. I'm a parent, I've read a few books, but you know, I don't have any education of being a parent. I experimenting every day, say that. I'm figuring it out every day. And I have two kids, and they're not the same. They're totally different, which is amazing. And I think you just have to take that in as well and saying you you are learning every day and then just remember to to own it. When it's not going sometimes in the right way.

Darrell Evans

It's funny, you mentioned being a parent and learning everyday my youngest is 17 high school senior. And I will never be for sure if I got it. Right. Right. But you know, you just have to keep moving through the process. You can't judge whether it's right or wrong, you just got to keep moving through the process. So yeah, you use the word innovation quite a bit in your work. Yeah, products are always

being evolved. We're always innovating product, we're always moving product to be better, we're moving our lives to be better, our thinking to be better. Our experience to be better, our kids lives to be better as you just brought up as a parent. In thinking about the word innovation, I know there's a definition, we can go get it out of the dictionary. But what does innovation mean to you?

Sannah Vinding

It's to improve and create something new as well. Because it as you just said it could be a product and I think if you say go to somebody and saying I you know explain with innovation and say Oh, this is the new product and you know, Apple came out with a new product, right? That's it that's

innovation. But innovation is everything it can go back to can be a service that you suddenly have created innovation could be that you are simplifying things because you learned that you don't need five different software's you can use two of them and then you accomplish it. So it is going back and saying how can you improve services things products? That's That's how I see it.

Darrell Evans

Nice. If you could change one thing in the world of product development in innovation in how the world sees new stuff come to life. What would you change? That's that's challenge one. That's a big one. I know I just

Sannah Vinding

so this is like doing it really general. Right? Because I'm sure you know if you go to to the companies this flying interface, right. That's a lot of money that you spend when when you send something out. Right. And I know they do a lot of small testing to get there, which is incredible, and that's the way to do it. So I think that's other companies so I don't I don't think I can do a general one. I think it'll just look up and change the way how you do your whole innovation

process. Because again, the more you know up front, the better, you can get better results. And a better final result, the more you can do simulations, the more you can do prototypes up front. So you don't have to wait 13 months, and now you build this product, and then it doesn't work. So the more you can experiment, fail, learn from the failures and do some of this knowledge sharing up front, that is going to change a lot of how innovation has you know, is

executed. And I think that goes in anywhere that now I know, I just talked about a product, because that's close to me, that could also go in in a service, software product that you're going to introduce or anything else, but to to challenge the the the mindset of how you start a project, an innovation project, and listen to your customers don't sit there in your own silo and saying I love it, because I like it, get out there and get feedback.

Darrell Evans

Sannah, I appreciate the way you approach improvement, experimenting, the idea of getting feedback and understanding that feedback is a part of improvement in process. There are some people listening this and they're just afraid. And I talked to him all the time in my world, I'm sure you talk to people that don't see it as easily as you spit it out here, because it's very fluid the way you say it, and I'm right there with you. But what you're saying to someone is, failure isn't

final. It's literally data. And from that data, we can get better. And if we get better, we can make the mark on the world that we were attempting to make in the first place. Right? And the time is gonna pass. Anyways, what you said on the train, right, the time is gonna pass? What final thoughts do you have, that you would like to share related to someone listening to this, who maybe is a little afraid to step out, whether it's a belief in themselves, or in a

project that they're on? And maybe they're not the lead of the project? Or they're working with a diverse group of professionals, you have experience in marketing, engineering, Process Management, you've got unique insights, what would you say, is as a final thought, to encourage the listener to really step forward into what they really are after, but maybe they're hesitating.

Sannah Vinding

For me, I think it's easy to say, Don't be afraid. But you need to have, wherever you are, you need to have some kind of trust or safety in that organization or that company you're in. And it takes some time. But then start with a small step, right? I think if you maybe don't go in and saying you did a whole big arrow mistake in the beginning, you should do it. If you did it, but start small, then....

Darrell Evans

you're saying don't do the margin thing. Right? Don't let that be the first let that be the first mess up, right?

Sannah Vinding

No, no, but it's all about trust. Because if you start building trust, so you also need to trust who you are among, and in your team members. And it is the respect for people. And that's back to hold Lean and Agile. So if you start there, it's the way and let's be honest, I think everybody was looking at themselves. We all do mistakes, right? If I still burned my hand, sometimes when I cook, I should know better. I

still happens, right? Maybe not every day anymore, maybe every 10 years, but it still happens. So be true to yourself. And I think by being honest and true to yourself. It's not as scary. And when you start opening up and saying hey, yeah, I did it, you will actually start to see how other team members or their organization is going to look at you and respect you in a different way.

Darrell Evans

That's also just to Sannah where can our listeners catch up with you online on social? Where do you want people to connect with you?

Sannah Vinding

So fast way is to go to LinkedIn and look me up under send an ending. There's only one you will find it. Or you can go to my website, and that's Senate ending.com or to my mind innovation.com. So just reach out anywhere there. And yeah, I would gladly Connect.

Darrell Evans

Awesome. Well, we will link up those places to catch up with Santa in the show notes. And said I would always like to ask the last question and it is if for whatever reason today happened to be your last day on this planet? What would you want everyone to remember you for?

Sannah Vinding

That I inspired them and made made a better day for that.

Darrell Evans

Amazing. Sannah Thank you so much for being here on The MindShift Podcast. It's been a pleasure.

Sannah Vinding

I loved it. Thank you.

The MindShift Podcast

Hey my friend. Thanks again for listening to today's episode of The MindShift Podcast. Listen, let's not have the conversation in here connect with me on social @MrDarrellEvans. Until next week, remember you're just one shift away from the breakthrough you're looking for.

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