INTERVIEW: Meet Pauli Johannesen
Meet Pauli Johannesen – our Chief Commercial Officer at PNO who joined in August 2020.
1) In your own words, what you do at PNO?
I am leading and supporting our front end – the colleagues who are serving our customers. At the end of the day, my task is to make that team perform really well.
I can coach them on a daily basis in order to help them prepare in the best way possible when meeting our customers, as well as support them with good processes and tools enabling a better customer experience.
I like the terminology “servant leadership.” A leader has to support his/her team. It is the main task of what I do. At the same time, my role is very much to capture the signals and information from the market. We listen to customers in terms of what they need and bring that back to our organization. In this way, we develop services and products that are in line with the market needs. There is also another level of listening. It is also about listening to the broader market and by that I mean our customer’s customers. Bringing that information into our organization will help us maintain a proactive approach. So, it is the combination of bringing information back from our current customers and taking it a step further.
It is about seeing where the world is going – listening and embedding it into what we do. We are returning to sustainability, again. It is about looking ahead and being aware and ready for what is coming around the corner to ensure that we serve our customers even better. Looking at my role, it is about “servant leadership” and bringing information back that we can act on. And by doing so we help our customers. In a nutshell, that is my major task.
2) Can you give one word that describes you the best?
Ah, it is a difficult one…It is tough to find just one word. Coming back to “servant leadership” I do appreciate being available for coaching and supporting the people working around me.
3) Can you share your thoughts on an innovative product or service offered by PNO?
Our platform. To give an example: we are letting our customers upload PNO trailers but also other trailers on to our digital trailer platform in order for them to manage their entire fleet.
At PNO we have decided to have an open approach enabling our customers to access our platform and manage all different kinds of trailers.
It would also be fair to mention the New Cool reefer (axel driven) operating on self-generated energy that we have in our rental fleet. It’s a fully electric reefer trailer powered by a battery pack charged by an axel driven generator while on the road and through the grid while standing still. The New Cool reefer trailer consumes no fossil fuel and as such, it is CO2 neutral and emits no diesel particles into the surrounding environment. This is the first step towards the electrification of reefer trailers.
4) What do you think are the biggest challenges in our industry we will face in the next few years?
I think it is a question of how we can make our industry move faster to accelerate sustainability efforts. How can we implement sustainability into the core of our business? It will require a lot of investment. It also adds uncertainty to what we do as we need to rethink the way we make our investments in assets and how we use our assets. We are in a transition period and a lot of pilots are being tested. We are all generally challenged in making the right decisions as we don’t always know what the right solution will be in the future.
5) Sustainability is here to stay. What do you see as the challenge we face in incorporating sustainability into our business?
A role that we have (PNO’s purpose: lead the transition to sustainable freight) is to be consultants for our customers in order for them to see and understand what is possible. We have to be bold and invest in new and more sustainable transport solutions that will allow us to offer our customers choices that are more sustainable without necessarily compromising on profitability. We must help them understand what is possible – i.e. the New Cool reefer trailer. That is our promise and being serious about the planet is also our obligation.
