Viktor Ekman: The windscreen is larger than the rearview mirror for one reason
Never walk with your hands behind your back. This was learned by Viktor Ekman from his grandfather who started the Ekman family buses after the war in 1945. During his upbringing, he learned to look ahead and always be on his toes.
Igrew up in the transport industry and have been given important guidance by my grandfather and later by my father who took over. From the sideline, I have been able to keep up with both challenges and glossy days. Grandpa was the one who gave me a great deal of self-confidence, says Viktor Ekman, Aliceco’s founder, and owner.
Viktor and Sture Ekman.
In his younger years, Ekman was reluctant towards education. He would rather mow with engines in the workshop and perform practical chores.
– The tools fit in my hands. Already in primary school, I fixed with all kinds of mopeds, engines, and tractors. My goal was always to become an entrepreneur. Yet, at the same time, I was a thinker, even though I have always been practical.
He also received the award “The Thinker of the Camp” at a confirmation camp a few years later.
– While fixing and trimming the engines, I was constantly driven by the idea of optimizing what I was doing. How can you make this go better and even faster? How can we get more out? Optimizing capacity has always driven me.
Everything can be done better
For a few years, Ekman also lived in Sweden to study construction technology for buses. He brought the new lessons and experiences with him to the family business in Jakobstad, which became his workplace for a few years. At the age of 27, Ekman finally started his own company. Continuing with the same driving force as before: to optimize. Now it applied to the IT system for passenger traffic. Digital development and optimization of passenger traffic.
– Throughout my childhood, I always had a business in mind. And I knew that development and optimization was my thing. I’ve always thought that “everything you do does matter”. I’ve always worked with that motto.
Important to identify brake pads
Today, Viktor Ekman works full time as a consultant. He is happy in that role and is happy to take responsibility for other companies’ profitability optimization and business development. He also helps companies develop sustainability strategies.
– I thrive when I get to cave myself in the whole process. To go into the depth of a business. What affects what? Who is with us and why does it look like this? I want to identify the brake pad that stagnates development, or at worst makes development impossible.
– I think a lot is about the gambling eye. You can, of course, read up on things to a certain extent, but how things are transformed in practice – there is a need for a fingertip-feeling for how what works. Something that works very well in one place does not necessarily work in the next.
– I think my approach may be a little unconventional, but I could always feel people in a room. When I come in, I can read the moods. It comes in handy when I need to define problems and formulate solutions.
A negative curve can be reversed
Although Ekman, as a child, was reluctant to attend school and education, he has always had a keen interest in history.
– History tends to repeat itself. Lessons can be learned from the past. Neither social development nor enterprise is a nail-biting curve. I also observed that as a child in a family business. History, both world history and my own is valuable as I take on new assignments. I know it goes up and down.
– But we should always remember that the windscreen is larger than the rearview mirror for a reason. I am positive and believe that it is possible to swing a downward curve upwards, to an increased economic and social capital.
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