Leading Through Complexity: Scaling Growth Across EMEA in the AI & Security Era - with Petra Jenner

EMEA isn't one region. It's many, each at a different stage of technology adoption, investment maturity, and cultural business logic. Leading growth across all of them at once is one of the hardest leadership challenges in enterprise sales. Petra Jenner, GM and SVP EMEA at Splunk, joins Michael Jäger to share what it actually takes to scale a complex enterprise organisation across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, in a market where AI is accelerating faster than most companies can protect themselves from it. Previously CEO of Microsoft Austria and Switzerland, and a senior leader at Salesforce, Petra brings decades of hard-won operational experience to a conversation that goes well beyond theory. In this episode: ✌️ Win #1 — One common vision of success: how Petra aligns organisations spanning dozens of markets and cultures around a single mission statement and why this one structural decision consistently outperforms every tactical initiative she's seen. ✌️ Win #2 — The courage to stop and rebuild: how Petra identified a go-to-market motion that was producing results — just not enough of them — paused it entirely, redesigned the partner engagement model from scratch, and is now leading globally with an initiative other regions are following. 🌱 Fail — Going broad with partners instead of deep: why an ambitious system integrator strategy that looked right on paper spread the team too thin, produced cherry-picking instead of traction, and taught Petra that depth with fewer partners consistently beats breadth with many. If you lead a regional or multi-market organisation — or you're trying to scale an enterprise GTM motion across cultures, continents, and complexity — this episode gives you the leadership framework and operational honesty you won't find in a management textbook. Connect with Petra: 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petrajenner/ 🔗 Splunk: https://www.splunk.com/ 🎙️ Beyond Revenue is hosted by Michael Jäger, Managing Partner at Cremanski & Company. New episodes every Friday. ⏱️ Episode timestamps 00:00 — Intro & Petra's background 00:47 — What makes EMEA uniquely complex to scale 03:30 — Leading at the intersection of AI, data and security 06:03 — How AI is exposing companies faster than they can protect themselves 06:49 — Balancing standardisation vs local autonomy across EMEA 10:11 — Why control through KPIs beats control through micromanagement 11:43 — Win #1: Creating one common vision of success 13:46 — Why mission statements work — and why teams are sceptical at first 14:35 — Win #2: The courage to stop, rebuild, and lead globally with a new model 16:25 — Redesigning the partner go-to-market from scratch 17:21 — The fail: going broad with system integrators instead of deep 19:01 — What Petra would do differently — fewer partners, much more depth 20:00 — Key takeaways 22:00 — Closing