References

Peter is a generalist having covered the total Finance- and CFO area including Risk & Compliance and IT; from build-up to significant sizes. He is an intelligent, quick brain with humanistic values, and he has been one of my most trusted colleagues and speaking partners. He concluded several difficult assignments across different cultures with very good results and actively contributed to developing the CFO function on both local and group level.

Peter leads agenda with vision and foresight, never compromising on values or giving up an inch in his belief that people shall be at the heart of everything we do. Although he loves strategy and exploring future scenarios, he stays anchored in reality and builds bridges for others to step into the future. He is a wonderful coach or mentor, depending on what you need and he will help you navigate complexity in elegant and kind ways.

Peter has a passion for the future that is rarely seen in global business life and combines strategic thinking with different scenarios in close collaboration with a multitude of stakeholders inside and outside the company.

Peter painted a great vision for Group Shared Services. He engaged all the people into the scenario planning to look into and and prepare for the future; he took many outside-in perspectives, embedded the continuous improvement and innovation into the organization as part of the value and culture; he set up a strategic development plan for the organization, downstream to short term and long-term goal, and he followed it up with yearly business plan.

Peter introduced me into the world of Finance being a fully independent right hand covering all the sub-topics of the CFO role in an excellent way. However, I remember him the most for his contributions outside his role, driven by his curiousness, eagerness to find solutions out of the box. His contribution with Strategic Foresight is still legendary for the senior leaders who worked in that time in Poland.

Peter remains on my own ranking of ‘the best leaders’ for several reasons: broad business strategic mind, professionalism & reliability, example of humanistic values & always being firm in his convictions and actions and all these with his natural humbleness, curiosity and interest in supporting other people.

I have followed Peter from Poland, Japan, Netherland, Russia, Poland and Switzerland. He has during all his assignments shown a huge amount of enthusiasm, professional engagement and loyalty. Some key words that describe Peter well: Thorough, improve, develop, humour, believe, intelligent, loyal and try to keep it all simple. When Peters heart burn for the matter he will do magic!

Peter impressed me a lot by his way of leading an organisation in complex and international context. He is an authentic leader, truly people oriented and always doing business through people.

Peter is a person, who always focuses on the future thinking where we should be and what we want to achieve. He was the driver building up a strategy for Group Shared Services through Strategic Foresight considering the outside view (mega trends), the inside view (IKEA's needs) and the GBS industry and defined with us scenarios that potentially can happen. Peter is a visionary leader who includes everyone in the process of creating the future.

I admire Peter for the complex strategic mind combined with the need to place humanism and service for the bigger good of the world and people. He is eager to listen and synthesis the information to get the great holistic conclusions and ask the questions to the core of things. What is special about him is the fact he integrates the sustainable business growth with his values and principles.

Peter is a truly role-model, visionary leader, who guided our organization in setting up and owning organizational vision and values. I appreciate a lot Peter's ability to turn every business challenge into an opportunity and admire his constant strive and curiosity about the trends for future ways of working, sustainability and innovation.

What really impressed me about Peter was his genuine interest and focus on the people in his global team. He encouraged out of the box, creative and unconventional ways to engage and energize the team which led to unforgettable meetings that built competence, anchored team goals and fuelled team spirit which ultimately led to transformative growth and business achievements. I highly recommend Peter to any organization seeking a partner who will coach in a way that incorporates business and people together.

I appreciate Peter’s support to implement IKEA Shopping Centre Russia’s first country wide Business Plan that truly aligned the units and was launched with two unforgettable Kick Offs in 2012 and 2013 where we brought 200 leaders together and started up cross-functional cooperation that fostered an overall company- rather than 14 independent market approaches.

Peter took the difficult assignment to create one global shared service organization, he was looking for finding a good balance between standardization and flexibility to stay open to different business needs. He had a vision how to build and lead shared services and consequently managed to take stakeholders and leaders to follow it. He has always surprised me by looking for new inspirations, best practice and how to apply it to create business value. I recommend Peter as a professional advisor and seasoned leader who experienced a lot and can dedicate his heart and mind.

Peter's skill is not only to think futurist and strategic but to empower and encourage people around him to join and participate in that thinking. With Peter a group discussion becomes truly a team discussion, goals become shared, and success moves away from individualism, into the power, the contribution, and the fun of the collective.

As a leader Peter has a unique skill to run the business and deliver results by always having people in the center. He always strived for providing the service on highest, world-class level, perceiving people as company's biggest asset. His interest, passion and broad knowledge of economy, processes, future ways of working, new technologies and sustainability have always impressed me.

Peter is the person who has become for me a synonym for strategic management driven by empathetic people leadership. He is a very experienced leader with strong sense for business development focusing constantly on his core values with the highest standards for people development and sustainability.

I perceive Peter as a very dedicated and innovative leader who manages to connect finance and operations to a great level. He introduced the 'balanced scorecard' to the team which I am still using as it helps to provide a holistic view of a business.

Peter worked hard for promoting cross-function cooperation, encouraged out-of-the box thinking and a solution-oriented approach. His efforts contributed a lot to the positive image change of the CFO function – so that we in Finance were no longer seen as barrier-builders, but rather as support and advisors to the business.

Peter is a high level professional able to balance simultaneously with the long-term planning and short-term deliverables. The lessons learned from the work and the activities led by Peter (scenario planning, goal setting, working with people, etc.) I still use in my job.

I had the amazing opportunity of working together with Peter when he was CFO for IKEA in Japan. His strategic vision and leadership together with attention to detail and contagious passion and caring for people inspired me then and now, many years later.

Peter was an invaluable resource as we together worked to expand and grow IKEA retail operations in Poland. In that time we grew from 2 stores to 6 while maintaining control of our overhead and improving same store growth and profitability. Peter was an integral partner helping decide on where to invest, where to focus and the best path forward to developing the local Polish management team. It was not only a tremendous success but a hugely rewarding effort to see our Polish colleagues step up and take the reigns.

I recommend Peter for his very structured approach to scenario planning. I was very inspired by the way he led the life@home scenario planning workshop in IKEA Japan.

Peter is truly open-minded and very positive in attitude, full of respect for differences and various standpoints. He made it through many experiences in remote countries and different cultures, proven with so many good feedbacks and appreciation of colleagues.