The Power of Purpose
The two most important days in your life is the day you were born and the day you find out why. (Mark Twain) I was born and grew up in a small town outside Oslo, Norway. My dad was a doctor and my mom a nurse. One night my parents had friends over for dinner and...
Culture in the Time of Covid
Show me a leader who ignores her company culture, and I will show you a leader who is about to get a big wakeup call. An overwhelming amount of research over the last years have proven the effect strong and engaged cultures have on employee retention, productivity,...
The Big Escape. The Big Awakening. Why Culture Matters More Than Ever.
I hadn’t seen Joe for almost two years. Last time we spoke he told me about his soul-sucking job, his controlling boss, the long workdays, and the fact that he, at the age of 28, basically had no life. “Why do you still work there?” I asked, genuinely wondering what...
Human Leadership for The New World of Work
One of the many reasons I love my job is because I get to have wildly interesting conversations with smart, successful leaders about things they find challenging in their jobs. Their personalities, backgrounds, seniority, gender and geographies vary, but one thing...
Humane Leadership: when we know better, we need to do better
Originally published for Brand Minds Live July 24, 2020. “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better,” the great American writer and civil rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou said decades ago. In the Western world we are currently seeing...
The 5 building blocks of engaged, high-performing teams
Originally published in Business Insider Jan 17, 2020. Happy, engaged teams do better work, are more collaborative and innovative, have lower attrition and higher loyalty, and deliver up to 50% better performance than less engaged teams, according to studies from...
How Leaders Can Cultivate Cultures of Gratitude & Joy
Over the last years we have been exposed to an overwhelming amount of studies and evidence of how our mindsets, emotions and habits not only influence our personal well-being, but also the health of our work cultures and the impact it has on business results....
The Huge Leadership Challenge
“So that you can have some perspective, allow me to remind you that this last year, transforming TechnoGuard into a company that people are happy and proud to work for, has been one of my biggest priorities. I have chosen this as a strategy because it helps us attract...
Why Men Say “Yes” and Women Say “Not Yet” at Work
In my capacity as the Chief Cultural Officer of a fast-growing IT company, I interviewed most of the candidates before they were offered a job. As we grew from 300 to 1800 people over the course of eight years, it must have been at least one thousand interviews, maybe...
The Emotional Journey of Creating Something Great
After the first bottle of wine we got the idea. After the second, we were nearly jumping out of our skins with excitement. On the third, not only had we agreed that this was The Best Idea Ever, we had even sketched the entire plan on the paper cloth of the restaurant...
Digitization isn’t the problem. Ignoring the human side of it is.
They had had it all figured out; simple tasks would be automated, information would be digitized, processes would be optimized and the human touch would be minimized. On PowerPoint it looked brilliant, innovative and made perfect sense. In reality; not so much. Two...
Earning respect “the Norwegian way”
Cross-cultural communication Leader Last week I spoke about cross-cultural communication at a big company event in Berlin, Germany. There were 1700 people in the room, from 20 different nationalities. Leader I talked about how we all come from different upbringings,...
Why change-pain is the only constant
Change leaders “Change is the only constant” the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said 500 years BC. Change Leaders Having spent the last 20 years developing corporate cultures, teams and organizations in constantly changing markets and business landscapes, I...
Satisfaction, engagement or passion at work?
A few years ago I attended a conference about "engagement at work" (or "arbeidsglede" in Norwegian) and presented my theory about the 3 levels of engagement and how each of them impact performance, innovation and business results. First we have "job-satisfaction",...
How work culture can become a strategy for growth
"Strategies are nothing but a guessing game for a future reality we impossibly can predict. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. With the right kind of culture, we can handle anything” my new boss told me. A Company with Culture as Strategy The year was 2002; I...
One dance away from Steve Jobs
A few weeks ago I was the Master of Ceremonies on a leadership conference on engagement and change in Oslo. One of the keynote speakers was Daniel Walker, CEO of Human Revolution Studios and Steve Jobs' Chief Talent Officer at Apple between 2000-2005. He rarely speaks...
