After 30 minutes in the warehouse, I was exhausted. The people around me still had an entire shift ahead of them. It was the middle of July at a manufacturing site in the United States. The heat was intense and the humidity almost overwhelming. When I stepped outside, the air still felt heavy. Even standing still required effort.
My first thought was not about inventory, warehouse efficiency or logistics. It was about the forklift drivers and warehouse operators who spent eight or ten hours in that environment. “If I feel this after only thirty minutes,” I remember thinking, “what does it feel like after an entire shift?”
Months later, when we began redesigning our global forklift strategy, the expected criteria were all there: safety, reliability, performance, energy efficiency, maintenance and total cost of ownership. All important. All necessary.
But I asked a question that did not appear in the technical specification: What about the wellbeing of the people who spend their working lives inside these forklifts? Had anyone consulted the forklift operators as to where they saw areas of inefficiencies, or matters of health and safety and furthermore, opportunities and value that could be seized?
Should air-conditioned cabins become standard in hotter climates? Should heated cabins be considered where winters were severe? Should ergonomics carry the same weight as purchase price? After all, comfort is not a luxury. It influences concentration, reduces fatigue, improves safety and protects health. Most importantly, it communicates respect. That moment crystallised a conviction that has guided my leadership ever since: AI can see the pattern. But, leaders must still see the person.
In my most recent executive role, I led a global scope of approximately CHF 1.6 billion and an international organisation of more than 100 professionals. Yet some of my most important transformation insights did not come from a dashboard. They came from going close enough to the work to understand what the numbers could not explain.
I believe procurement is at risk of making a historic mistake: automating work faster than organisations are learning how to lead the consequences. The defining capability of the future CPO will not be technological fluency alone. It will be the ability to connect intelligence with judgement, automation with accountability and efficiency with human value.
After more than 25 years leading change across animal health, automotive, advanced materials, food, biopharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals, I have come to believe that organisations are often asking the wrong question. We ask: How do we implement artificial intelligence? The better question is: How do we help people use technology with confidence, judgement and purpose. That question became the foundation of a leadership philosophy I call AI with Soul.
Transformation has been the one constant throughout my career
Looking back, I no longer see my career as a sequence of job titles. I see it as a journey through different schools of leadership – each adding something essential to how I lead transformation today.
At Vetoquinol, I discovered that animal health begins with purpose. The wellbeing of animals also touches the lives of people – the veterinarians who care for them, the farmers who depend on them and the families who love them. Purpose becomes visible in the decisions we make every day.
Toyota taught me operational excellence, but its deeper gift was respect. Genchi Genbutsu – ‘Go and See’ – taught me to leave the report, visit the place where value is created and learn before deciding. That principle became the foundation of my leadership.
Later roles across advanced materials, food and biopharmaceuticals taught me discipline, global interdependence and the human consequence of operational decisions. At Givaudan, those lessons converged: digital transformation, AI, supplier ecosystems, organisational design and cross-functional leadership.
The industries changed and the technologies evolved. The real work remained remarkably consistent: connecting strategy with operational reality and helping people navigate uncertainty without losing confidence, purpose or belonging.
Leadership begins with curiosity
Throughout my career I developed one habit that surprised many colleagues. Whenever we introduced a new digital platform, I insisted on becoming one of its first users. I created sourcing events. Requested contracts. Generated reports. Configured workflows. Made mistakes. Got stuck. Learned. Only then did I ask my teams to adopt the technology.
People often assumed this was about understanding software. It never was. It was about understanding people. By experiencing the same frustrations my colleagues experienced, I began seeing technology differently. Many implementation challenges had very little to do with the technology itself. Sometimes training material was too complex. Sometimes communication reached only part of the organisation. Sometimes people simply learned in different ways.
Some colleagues preferred group workshops. Others needed one-to-one coaching. Some were comfortable exploring independently. Others needed reassurance before taking the first step.
What we often call resistance to technology is resistance to uncertainty: changes people do not understand, cannot influence or do not yet trust. The role of leadership is not simply to implement systems. It is to create confidence. Once people believe they can succeed, transformation accelerates naturally.
That simple insight eventually became one of the foundations of AI with Soul. Technology should never become a barrier between leaders and people. It should become another opportunity to build trust.