Pushing boundaries - the story of JLI vision

Over 40 years, a company will inevitably pass several small and large milestones, and this is also true for JLI. One of them in particular stands out so prominently that one can speak of a JLI before and a JLI after.

In 2016, Jørgen Læssøe came to the realization that he, too, would reach an expiration date at some point. He had turned 68, and customers had begun to ask what the plans were for continuing to run the company. It was time for a generational change, and since he had no heirs to pass the baton on to, his successor would have to come from outside the company. And he also had an idea of who the right man for the job was.

"I didn't want an engineer; I had plenty of those. I wanted a businessman. That was what we needed, and I thought it should be Jan."

He had known Jan Dall Christensen, a member of their joint VL group (a network for business managers) since 1994, and Jan had been a member of the JLI board on several occasions, even serving two terms as chairman.

A bit like a family

Jan Dall Christensen saw the opportunity to work with a company in a completely different way than he was used to. He had served as CEO of a large German industrial company, with everything a role like that entails -process optimization, tight management, and Ordnung muss sein.

"It was very top-down, and I didn't want to work that way anymore. This opportunity, on the other hand, I found extremely exciting."

"For Jørgen, the manner in which the company was taken over was important, because he literally saw the employees as his family, and he wanted them to be happy, even when he was no longer there. So he asked me if I would help ensure that it would continue in the same spirit."

It has always been my dream to start a company from scratch, based on a common understanding of people, respect for each other's differences, and openness to others' abilities to help you. If you can build on fundamental human values like those, I am almost certain that it will lead to success, no matter what you do. I didn't start that company myself, but I knew Jørgen and JLI well, and it was the closest thing to the ultra-flat organization where everyone collaborated. It was a bit like a family. We trusted each other, and that's why so many things worked," says Jan Dall Christensen.

Terribly underrated

In addition to the people and the corporate culture appealing to him, he also saw an opportunity to contribute his skills as a businessman.

“I could see that there was huge potential. I think they had been terribly underestimated for many years considering the great skills they actually possessed.”

If Jan Dall Christensen was going to get involved in JLI, it had to be with the opportunity to make the necessaIf Jan Dall Christensen was going to get involved with JLI, he needed the authority to make key decisions, which is why he aimed to acquire 51% of the company. Jørgen Læssø considered this for a while before agreeing:

"I had such confidence that Jan would manage it properly that I said, 'Okay, let's do it.'"

The accountant calculated a price that both parties could agree on, but Jan Dall Christensen still faced one hurdle before the deal could be finalized.

"I attended a company seminar where all employees had to express their opinion on whether they thought it was a good idea for me to join. If they had said no, the deal wouldn’t have gone through," he explains.

A new self-image

However, no one opposed the generational change, and so Jan Dall Christensen was able to start introducing the changes he thought were necessary. The most important battle had to be fought in relation to self-image:

"I told Jørgen that my greatest wish in this process was to get him to stop calling it a rag-tag company. They were making high-tech solutions of the highest quality. It just didn't look that way at first glance. They were still making test setups out of some water pipes, a phone book, and some duct tape, and I wanted us to move into a setting that radiated the professionalism on which the company was actually built."

That's why Jan introduced the idea of moving to new premises. While some employees couldn't quite see why it was necessary to spend money on a move, Jørgen was on board, and they set out to explore the possibilities. The employees were involved in discussions about where the premises should be located and which facilities were needed.

In 2019, JLI held a housewarming party for customers, friends, and family at the new premises at Ellekær, Herlev. Already at this point, there was a certain pride in the more presentable surroundings with welcoming, bright rooms and a well-equipped laboratory with modern testing facilities.

"It turned out that once they had these premises, they started inviting customers to visit. That was very rare before. So I'm quite sure that it has helped boost the self-image of the employees, but also the customers' perception of what kind of company JLI is," says Jan Dall Christensen.

More focus on marketing

Until the change of ownership, marketing had been seen as an unnecessary expense and had primarily consisted of trade fairs and Jørgen Læssøe writing articles for trade journals. The attitude had been that we don't call customers, customers call us.

However, Jan Dall Christensen hired a marketing employee, Mia Kolsboe Hansen, who joined the company as a recent graduate and was given almost free rein.

"It was clear from the start that there was a lot of trust in the employees, so I could see that I would pretty much be allowed to decide what we should do. I think I had been permanently employed for a week when I said that we needed a new CRM system, and they agreed. Then I presented an inbound marketing strategy to them, and they bought into that, too. Being allowed to set the strategy as a recent graduate was both really fun and quite challenging," says Mia Kolsboe Hansen.

Tripled revenue

With Jan Dall Christensen's intervention, there was greater focus on the company's financial management, and for the first time in the company's history, a proper operating budget was drawn up. Jørgen Læssøe had always managed using a liquidity budget in an Excel spreadsheet, which he kept updated so he knew when the bank account would run out of cash if no new orders came in.

The liquidity budget has survived, but now coexists with an operating budget, and since 2016, JLI has tripled its revenue.

Although JLI has become a more well-oiled machine in business terms, this has happened without changing the company's fundamental spirit. For example, Jørgen Læssøe has always disliked KPIs, and today, KPIs are still absent as a management tool at JLI.

According to Jan Dall Christensen, this is also reflected in how the company works - or rather doesn't work - with profit optimization.

"We don't think first and foremost about how to make the most money. Of course, we have to make a profit from what we do, but the main thing is that we have fun projects, that we do something that makes the customer satisfied, and that our employees are happy. Then we simply believe that the rest will follow. If we were focused on profit optimization, we wouldn't spend all that time and money on ESG and climate accounting, or on developing a new model with the Danish Bird Protection Foundation for companies' investments in biodiversity. But we think it's important, and we've put ourselves in a position where we can afford to prioritize it," explains Jan Dall Christensen.

New surroundings and a new self-image

A bit like a family

Terribly underrated

A new self-image

More focus on marketing

Tripled revenue