Hi everyone and welcome to the podcast In Good Company. When I started in finance 30 years ago, the first person I met was Karl Henrik Schwannberg. He was then the CEO of S.A.Bloy and following that he's gone on to be CEO of Ericsson, the Chair of BP and he's now the Chair of Volvo. We own 8 billion Norwegian coronavirus or 800 million dollars of Volvo equivalent to 2%
of the company. Karl Henrik is one of the leading industries in Europe. In this podcast, we condense 30 years of leadership experience into 45 minutes. Cheers. Hi everybody. This is a very special day for me because after university when I started working with finance, one of the first people I met was Karl Henrik Schwannberg. He was then at S.A.Bloy and he built S.A.Bloy and moved on to become the CEO of Ericsson, then the Chair of BP and
then the Chair of Volvo. I considered Karl Henrik the leading European industrialist. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Karl Henrik, what is leadership? What is good leadership? Well, I think leadership is how do you get the most out of your people? How do you get them to perform the best they can ever be and move towards a target? Of course, leadership is there for
all to have a target, to have an idea where you're heading. I think everybody that works in a company or in a group, whatever, they love that, a clear target. Now, you're just going all the way back. You grew up in a tiny little village up in Northern Sweden. What has that done to you as a leader? Well, first of all, I moved south when I was 16. We had moved around from different places, but I was born by north of the Arctic Circle. That created a huge interest for me in the mountains
and in the wilderness. I loved being out there. I was a lot. I thought I would spend my entire life in mountains in various ways. But then I moved south and it was different. But I think my upbringing was something that was quite fostering. It was a demanding life. When you come to a place like that, impreasible, you have to do something. You can't just sit through the whole day. You have to do something to get warm, to get food, to make a living. Before the video games.
Yeah, before the video games. But even so, even video game players need to eat and need to stay warm. It's hardworking people. It's serious people. It's interesting. Many leaders talk about the upbringing of moving around a lot, as being instrumental in making them more agile. Yeah, I mean, that is truly, I've always said that is true for me. All of the way I was born
in that village, it's actually I was there just a few weeks ago. It's so tiny now that it's like one of those where it says the name of the village is set on both sides of the sign because the minute you have entered, you're on the way out. It's just a few people living there. But I moved about 15 times before I was 20. And moving for me was, I think, made me develop skills in a positive way. I knew that I had to sort of make friends in the new plays, make sure I
became part of the groups and I adjusted. And I still have a bit of a nice feeling when it's time to move, packing boxes, moving on. I am probably a bit of a normal man in my lot by now. And by the way, I think one should not shy away from that fact when it comes to that I was eight years ago as I was going to jump to Ericsson was a pretty big jump and then to BP and then to Vorgoth. I mean, I haven't been nervous. I've been inspired by change.
When I met you the first time you read as an abloy and you built it up pretty much from nothing, right? Through acquisitions. And generally speaking acquisitions can be, well, not many of them are that successful. So why, how did you manage to make so many successful acquisitions at ASA? Well, I can go deep into it. But in, well, let's go deep. Yeah, we acquired first ASA and with sales about 500 million or reading crowns of 50 million
US dollars, lots of lots of people. And then is it an overcrowded company and the company was making losses. We, it was, what was interesting with lock companies is that they, you have so many variants. You sell, you sell locks that fit into every door. If you sell a new lock and doesn't fit into the door, you have to change the door. So we basically produced everything we ever produced. And it was a mess in the whole production. We did basically a Toyota lean manufacturing process
work. And we reduced from, from basically a thousand people to 500 and the company became very, very profitable. And that's when we thought this is, you know, we used to say that if you, you didn't know what what people was going to buy in the next day because we had 100,000 variants. But when the year had passed, we had sold exactly the same as last year, maybe with two plus percent of growth or something. So we knew that we needed flexibility day by day, but not
over a full year. And when we learned that that's how we simplified the workflows and got to those numbers and high profitability, and then we realized there's a lot of lock companies out there and they all shared the same problem. They were all fashion-off and family-owned, one, the oldest JPM from 1649 have always made locks. And we bought one after the other and rationalized and we grew. Well, you bought a hundred, right? Yeah, and we grew from about this 500 million that we were
first to about 25 billion. That's a lot of a lot of low companies we acquired. So what's the first thing you do when you buy a company? So now you're buying, so now I have a locks company, Nikola Tangen locks a hundred years old because he was founded by my grandfather or the guy before him. What do you do? The first thing you do, basically the day after the press release, we would go to that company and we would say to management and we had very often bonded quite a lot with management.
So they trusted that we were coming with a positive story and we basically said, let's meet everybody. And some said, you mean the whole management team? No, me and everybody. Ah, the white color workers, you know, everybody. But then we have to go to a sports house or something, a hamburger stadium or something. Yeah, that's a good idea. That's do that. And we got and we we talk with everybody because you know, there's an old saying that if you are in order to be a happy
child, you need to be seen, you need to be loved. And if you're a son, you probably want to be a little better than your father. And and and it's the same thing here. Now you get acquired. What does this mean to me? They acquired us. We just had a strategy conference. Does that matter? And I just got to became the sales head. Does that matter? So you have lots of questions. And the whole momentum in the company starts stops. But if you then go and see them, you go up on
stage and say, Hey, I'm called Henry. This is my my buddies here. And I'll tell you how we work and what we would like to see him. We think you could be part of a great story. And and it was like sort of it was a little bit like when you know, when you're born spaghetti and you put a little oil in the whole boiling stove stove and the water gets much calmer and and all the nervousness. So you
were the oil leaves. We were there. I think we were in the only one. When I speak to other CEOs, they mentioned you as one of the people who have this incredible ability to create trust. What's the key to create trust in a situation like that? I think it is that you speak the truth. That you have and that might seem easy. But but but when you acquire it's also a matter of you have to thought through what just rad the is and you have to be whatever you say if you start to walk
back on that. It's not going to it's not going to be easy. And we were very clear. I mean we think we can create an absolutely wonderful company and we can well lead it together and listen to that. But of course change means that we have to we probably have to do layoffs. We have to become more effective because that's how we create the resources so we can invest and become an even stronger company. But you don't have to be brutal. It's it's quite it's almost self generating
a momentum that that carries the company on the group forward. Well you say you don't have to be brutal. But then you to go over a CEO of Ericsson and which was just after the dot com. And some people would say that reducing the staff from 110,000 to 47,000 is pretty brutal. Yeah the brutal comment was about that so I blog. Okay. So then so you were not brutal there but then at Ericsson tell us about that experience. Yeah and let me first say that when when when they when it all
hit the dot com burst there we were about 110,000 people and there was targets. We were 85 when I got in and we said we we continue to reduce until we were down to 47,000. That was massive. We we took out 50 million dollars of cost every week for 100 weeks. Wow. This was this was huge. But the thing is that those that work in a telecom company like Ericsson they know what the market is like. So there was you didn't have to explain why we needed to do it. It was more about how to do
it. And there was of course tough and and and we had we had we had we continuously agreed on numbers that we need to reach and the people in the management team they had to sign they got the quota they got the papers and and they did it. If you look at it at the end of the whole process these were very skilled people. So basically I don't think many of those that we laid off were unemployed for very long. They very quickly were absorbed by other companies which doesn't mean
that you kick the kind down the pitch. So others maybe the opportunism was lost but so if you think about that laying off 60,000 people 30,000 in Sweden and you say that it's three jobs in every job Ericsson has. It's creates three other jobs. You're over a hundred thousand and then you take families on top of that. So so this was a huge thing. What did it do to you psychologically? Well I think we were so determined to get it right and and we were the only of all our competitors
that actually I think got through it in a decent shape. So it became a bit of an inspiration also and I got an email from a worker co-worker that wrote to me that when we had after I think beginning of Q4 when in 2004 when we had a positive result that said today I did not take off my badge when I jumped on the subway on the way home. I mean people people were proud of the whole change and and drive change when you know it is necessary is not hard because the alternative is
harder. When you look at the telecom sector today what do you think? Well it's I don't know too much in detail of course Ericsson goes through certain troubles that are not necessarily related to the sector. Precise some of them may be self-inflicted but and they say so themselves. What's interesting with Ericsson that's been around since 1874 and they they were had mechanical system, electric mechanical systems. They had electric electronic systems transistor driven
integrated circuits and then came software. Every time companies have been lost among their competitors and Ericsson keeps going through has an incredible ability to keep driving through and driving with change and I think it has a lot to do with this also that if you if you're nervous about change then then you shouldn't be a Ericsson but if you if you're a Ericsson you're nervous about not changing because they know everybody are engineers they know that doing no change is
is going to take us down. So you have to change. I had one of my fellow co-workers there that came out of a meeting they had when they reorganized the division of one of the biggest divisions and he came out through cessacly out of the meeting and I wasn't part of the meeting and he said hi how are you doing? It was fantastic. We've completely new one. It's going to be fantastic.
What are you going to do? I have no idea. I'm sure I'm going to find something and when you can get that spirit in the company then you can go through very dramatic change and I think that's what the reason why Ericsson is still around after hundred four years. No I love change but how do you how do you find people who to like change? How do you screen for them? Well I think you foster
them actually. I mean if in Ericsson everybody is so used to it. If you take on the other hand if you take BP which was much more difficult because they were if anything there was a totally committed to supplying the world with energy and doing so with fossil fuel and they they were determined that this is going to be for a long long time and their change more dramatic change was was
clearly a threat to to the communist existence. Well talk about let's talk about you know BP so you took over as the chair and then after two weeks bang, de-forderized catastrophe. The oil spill the world has ever seen. Tell us.
No I was of course I mean first of all I was elected two weeks before and but in the first age and but I had joined us chairman a few months earlier but obviously I did not much about the industry so that that was tough but but again there's a there's a kind of raw strength in a
company like the to deal with the changes. People left their homes with a pack back to go for two weeks and report they could come from Ghana or they or or or Angola or they could come from Massabhajone and they just needed to go over and help and they would eventually be there for
half a year or something and with whatever they brought for two weeks. I mean there was such a company spirit such a company strength but it was obviously a very challenging time for the company and and and and my my little knowledge it was there was some pluses in being new because
if you go to America and BP at the time was bigger than Exxon in America in in the oil and gas production so but we were the the the present management gets incredibly questions and and question and it gets hard to sort of stay and and and like the Americans say I've been having
during your watch so I'm sorry and they are used to that so but I was a new guy so I guess that gave me a bit of a leeway it it was tough we also we have split into then so internally what do you do internally would you have I mean you need to inform inform inform and and focus on
what the keys they call this here the employees need to inform them all the time you need to inform the board members the board members that came from all over the world if they were sitting watching CNN and the sodas bill going a basically called every board member every day for a hundred days
just short update five to ten minutes just saying what was happening so they were in the loop they knew what were happening and the investors newspapers are brutally tough but newspapers write what for example shareholders wants to hear so if you have shareholders on your side you are you you
you you can deal with the papers but if you don't have shareholders on this side then then you are what is what is the cre what's the key here to to the external side of of this crisis well the problem we had which was almost unimpossible to manage successfully but it was
a Fukushima was a little bit the same I mean here we have a rig that is on fire and and and and everybody was convinced we can turn out the fire but a rig with these four pillars that is floating on open on the upside so as the fiber guys were pumping in water eventually it sank
so now you have a rig that have sank and it sank to the bottom but there was no leak and and then after five five days you start to see cracks in in the pipe the oil pipes that goes from the seabed up to the platform when you crush that it's like a Coca-Cola store that you crush and bend
in three four ways and and in the beginning those bands hold but after time they start to crack so so you have a situation with the burning rig a week later it sinks a week later two weeks later it starts to see some some leakage of course in the beginning it was just muddy water after it had
sunk on the seabed it was stirred up but but so the this one of those of whatever you said of a situation update it was worse the next day or the next week and it's just worse and worse and a worse and and that's you you chase your tail it's to you can either say nothing and
and look like an idiot or you say something and look like an even worse idiot the next day because things are not what you said so so this was about as tough as he gets I think as a crisis who did you call for advice well I I had several board members that were that were really sort of
emboldened in all the discussions I called them and and they were very very very supportive you need to understand that you have the support of your board I had also an outside crisis consultant if you like that dealt with all the big crises that you saw in the world and very very experienced
and and and especially for me because I just arrived in London so I mean I didn't know uh journalist I didn't know the investors I so these consultants what did you tell you what kind of advice well he said focus on those that can fire you focus on shareholders focus on on
on the employee on the board and and and focus on the employees and and that was that was true and I did that now Obama could have fired you too anyway well I yeah I mean he was a president yeah he was I guess he could but you know Obama was he was new as a president
he was he had he had he had just had his health bill he tried to do his first first attempt on him on the bomb a car and that had failed and his next big thing was now the energy field and he opened up new drilling and further out up in the in the in the northern waters and Alaska and then
this obviously again failed and he had the midterm elections coming up half year after the explosion so I mean he wanted to show progress and and of course he was he was out there and said all those things I mean I will make sure BP pays and all of that but we were we were
determined almost from the beginning there of course take some time to gather your thoughts but we whatever happens we need to find an agreement with the American administration we cannot have this biggest oil spill and then at the same time in being some form a battle with the administration
so when it was when it was written as I was summoned to the White House that was after six weeks of continuous pushing for a meeting and and what we agreed in the meeting with the fund 20 million four old those that were affected by the spill that that we would clean up and
and that we would have an independent judicator which ended up being can fineberg would be 911 and such so that people that were effective wouldn't have to go to courts and go through court systems he would deal with the claims immediately and start distributing money that that was all our
suggestions what's the key to rebuilding reputation after a situation like that yeah I mean first of all I guess one have to understand that you are walking on a thin line here you can't have anything more so you need to you need to be exceptionally careful and I would say the way the
company worked through we had BP you know was from the old days and one of the first to to find oil and then then when all the crown colonies broke through Iran and Egypt Nigeria and all that happened it became a rather small British company that had started to look for oil in in the North Sea
and found oil and started to rebuild from there and then found oil in in Alaska improved obey so it had started to grow back back up again the the and eventually then through the acquisitions of Amaco and Oracle became the biggest oil and gas producers in the in the US so
it was a it was a serious blow for the company but because we had our a bit of history by acquiring different places it also meant that if you took an oil railer in Azerbaijan and moved him to the Gulf the protocols may not be exactly the same so when we started the movie and people to help
with the spill that became the driver of a complete overhaul of every way we worked so that that it was completely harmonized throughout the company so the company of acid normally is became stronger and better after the accident now then you moved on to Volvo what's been your priorities
at Volvo because you've been going through a lot of change there we have gone through a lot of change the first priorities were were obvious because if you compare to our our competitors be Daimler or Skani at the time trade on today we always had a lower level of earnings and we also
were much worse in in trying to follow the cyclic cyclicality which is typically in our industry of course and and of course they both related because the company was what kind quite bureaucratic was not slimline trimmed and so the first thing was to really drive down simplify simplify simplify
and drive down the the break even level to a level where we could make much more money and therefore could be much more on the offensive because we also knew that any transformation was around the corner so so and and of course there was a lot of cost being driven out and Martin Lundstadt
the new CEO was actually probably an as successful high-resue remake because he was Skana which was much smaller but was absolutely a trimmed well-run company, exemplary company and typically in the auto industry you you come up either through sales or you
can come up through development or you can come up through production but very few actually rotate around and learn all the different trades but Martin had he had done all of it so he came more or less fully trained for taking on this much bigger job and and I mean they didn't we were
actually lacking that sense that we were absolutely in good form when the covid hit and and there we showed that we we really could take that swing and and and then we have an after that I think we demonstrated we continue to sort of do better and better in in in every aspect but that was also key to deal with the third challenge which is climate change. Talk about being fully trained what are the experiences that you've taken from your previous jobs into the chair of Volvo?
Well I there are several I think but one one is first of all this is a changing world will will always be and you have to create a feeling in a company of trust in its own abilities so that you think you can excel in change and if you get a hundred thousand people to understand
that it is all about change then you get nervous when you stand still so you get a positive momentum for change that I think I've learned from from Ericsson but I also learned from we were almost religious in as I'm low in driving the workflows and simplifying the companies and
took almost every company up 10% profit margin points and and just by simplifying in best practice and everything so so I think I was a good school in general manufacturing in productivity in in in getting everything every calorie out of the company and its abilities so but Ericsson was
the opposite and I used to joke with my my guy said I said Ericsson is like white water river rafting my last I it's more like fly fishing you know it's very predictable moving on to something slightly different the role of the chair now what's the most important thing a chair does
yeah there there are a few things that I think are really key you can never get away from the fact that you are the ultimate responsible of recruiting the right CEO because you can have the greatest ideas whatever you have to find the right CEO and you have to
find the role where you are able to challenge the CEO to stretch without the CEO feeling stressed or a question or something and create an atmosphere that we are here to do the right thing and and and and have fun at work but the other thing is of course to use use the board as effectively as
you can and I think it's important that the CEO in a company has can look up at his board members to someone that has done something similar taking a company through a dramatic change achieve the taking companies through technology shift whatever so you know you have somebody to
learn from it doesn't work if the CEO looks I don't mean look down in a way that you're negative to the person itself but is much more experienced than the person that is in the board in theory supposed to advise you so to get the right people around the board table in the board room is key
and then how do you how do you then let the discussion go in a room so that you get the most out of everybody's skills and experiences and I I often say to Martin and say to anybody that from time to time the CEO presents an idea and then the discussion starts to go and you realize
after a while that this is not going to go the way that maybe the CEO had thought and and you may say well I'm going to say or Martin may say that maybe we should take this another turn and come back in in a quarter at that time it is so important that Martin doesn't feel the CEO doesn't feel
that this was a failure yeah you want him to feel wow I was lucky to have that discussion with the board I'm so grateful and now I'm going to work on it and come back to make it a much better better choice I think this is something of importance and and that takes of course skill skill
from the CEO it takes from the from the from the chairman it takes was a majority for the board members and it takes majority cleverness from the CEO supposedly one of the most important thing for chairs to remember that he or she is not the CEO yeah is that a problem for you no I
don't know I I've never felt it like that and it depends a little bit also how you work when I go back to a sable it was just companies everywhere so my role while you may recall me as a CEO of a sable which of course was but but I was often in the chair position versus them and and so and
I think I have never been I've never been the person necessarily on the barricades with swinging the flag and and such I may have been that in in some more more theoretical way with because I think it's so important that the CEO must must lead the discussion about the vision and the
direction of travel and all of that how do chairs how do chairs waste the time what's the most common way their waste the waste the time well I I think first of all I the reason why if you think about that you're going to be if you are a chairman for say 10 years or whatever
every day where you don't feel that the company's making some formal meaningful progress even if it you will have a downturn and downsizing in all sorts of difficulties and what have you but every day that you don't do the utmost of advance in the company's position or sort of
help advancing that inspire that it's a waste of time because the same goes with the CEO I guess yeah I think all the same goes for you it's it's actually interesting when I think about it because the the the the company the CEOs I think are them among the most long-term looking people you
can find in society people are saying that we are working in a quarterly sort of leash from shareholders well you have to perform quarterly in relation to the circumstances otherwise the shareholders might make it angry or you take what you do that but let's not fall into the trap
that that's the life of CEO Martin wants that or when I was at the Eric's on whatever your focus is 10 20 years out what is coming the division managers may may look a year out or two years out but you look five 10 years out of course Martin is thinking a lot about where his battery
technology going and where is so and and a board what's interesting with the board is that a CEO changes from time to time the board never changes the board is an institution people in the board rotate but the board is there for a long time with that forever and and that also means that
the board has if you take culture in a company for example impossible to change your field post-bots change culture in the in a company from the board seat well it is but you have a responsibility to understand if the culture is sort of right you cannot expect that the new
a new CEO every new CEO changes the culture accompanying so who is responsible for the culture well I think the board carries a big responsibility to understand is this right if it isn't you need to think hard about how you can change it but it's culture takes a long time more than a
10 year of a CEO to change yeah can the chair and the CEO be the same person you think or should it on that I would say if you take take the American way where they are and for example when motor role I think on a like I don't know exactly the details but principally say they on a
Monday announced that they are going to sell their patent portfolio and on the Friday Google have bought it I mean in in in Ericsson I mean we'd take months for us to work up the acceptance from a board to do something like that and so on so you can act much faster because you have a sort of
a strong man at the top but on the other hand it's much harder to challenge the chair and the CEO that person becomes a very strong headed person at the top and I think that have some serious negative sides as well I mean we advocate against it yeah I think it makes sense although from time
to time there are examples when every system can have its examples of where it's really work for if you take the British system where the CEO and the chair is much more active I had I was expected to be three days a week at work and I was expected to travel myself have all
employee meetings meet meet partners and what have you and and if the CEO would say that I think the new strategy is really getting accepted it works really well then when you have a what we call an executive session with only the non-execs they would say Kalhanik you heard what Bob said
do you see that and I was expected to be out and feel that that system is not bad in theory it's actually quite good if that if the two work really well together it can work really well but it's hard to find a good chairman it's hard to find a good CEO so they're likely to hold that
the couple together that's an additional complexity that that works is maybe not so high but if it does it's great if you take the sweeter system when the chair is it's definitely non-executive I think that's a very good system it's a safe system it has a lot of check and balance in there
moving on to corporate culture you said that it's difficult to change the corporate culture during one CEO period now corporate culture is one of the things I spend a lot of time on I think it's incredibly interesting what when you look at corporate cultures what character I say good
corporate culture I think in today's world I think ability and appetite for change is very important and a culture where you talk about issues I I use to always push something I call seek the truth because you have a lot of corporate truths they may say in Ericsson everybody knows
that we don't make any money on broadband okay good good question let's sit down let's take this from from the beginning to the end make sure we understand we're making money on broadband so we can either stop doing it or or change our view on how we're doing I mean to seek the truth and
not get into these kind of statements but you are serious I think that's that's very important I think it's important in in a in a in a management team that you really work through issues so that it's it's the high ceiling in the boardroom and every question is key but once you're out there
you're representative of that team and you stick together you are sort of so so there's is if if if one one person in the management you says something another one says something else then you leave the company in confusion so so really go to the bottom of the issues work them through
and then stay strong and then spend enough time on on sort of making sure you inform the company so that everybody comes along and and understand what the direction of travel is I think these are and if you take culture if you take risk what is the what is the appetite for risk risk is something
positive if you take a calculated risk and without a willingness to take risk you will never win how do you get people to take risks by really talking through these issues because take a risk it's not a good risk taking to throw yourself out of an airplane and hope you've had an parachute on the way down I mean that's stupidity so so risks need to be calculated and needs to be open for debate so you know what you're doing and sitting still is also risk so you have to understand
that the future involves risk what what are the most important cultural changes you have implemented I I would say I used to say I have a couple of months but one one was that seek the truth and know your numbers you if you can organize a company in such a way that you can everybody understands
their financial targets and they can talk about them truly understand the numbers and not just going around with with different kind of statements or whatever but but it's not founded on reality so know your number numbers are key I think to to to know your job have respect for the job and as a
CEO you are you're the highest person in the company you see more you see competitors you see you see all the different activities you have you see customers you see everything you have a huge responsibility to gather all of that knowledge and find and and and put it together
into a strategy you can visualize the people so that they see the picture you know this thing with the the the the the the the guys that are building this temple you may have heard about but you see in on a cartoon that people are cutting stones yeah and you ask a guy what are you doing
where you cutting a stone and you ask the other one is as we're building a temple if you can help everybody to see the temple to see the the goal and I in all that I also think that we had as a as a code word in Eric's on the other side as a cornerstone was respect you need to deal with
all your people with respect the the if you you have people that you have bosses that come into a room where people are sitting and and they talk for a while and when they go out everybody's exhausted and think we need to take a break here we have other bosses that comes in and people are ready
to a flood of the moon they they get so energized so you have people that eat energy and you have bosses that that great energy what's the difference between them what what is the key to create energy why I think it is you mean is it something you can train or is it I think it starts with a clear
understanding of what the challenges lie what capabilities you have what the vision of the company is and if you can describe that and you can describe the strategy and you you can take people on your journey that that I think is the the winning formula it's not very complicated but but I
think it requires that a boss truly takes on the leadership itself I am now the boss of this company and I am responsible for making sure that we have a directional travel that I can explain so many comes aboard you have others that come in as a boss and say well they have to choose one
they choose me and I'll do the best I can how do you make how do you make sure that there isn't too much bureaucracy in the company well I mean I think it's sort of for me bureaucracy is just something that shouldn't be bureaucracy you need to take all that out that is how you sort of clean
the company clean the the PNL from all all the workflows needs to be straight you you anyone that I mean there shouldn't be anyone in the company that isn't contributing every day to where you want to go you know it's a good question I've thought about for a long time we're also a
kids company yeah it's you have to you have to just clean it out it's not easy yeah no and we used to joke about it when I was back in all the ABB where there was so much reports and people say just stop sending in stop sending in the data for the report and see if anybody asks and
nobody ever asks I mean not so sure they would have gone down so well in this fund but hey we'll give it a go this is back to the end of the 70s so be on the rules again I'm sure it's for beyond that yeah now moving on to leadership one can more conflict between being an effective leader
and efficient leader they are in a way two a bit different things now how can how is a leader most effective well first of all I would say that effective is is really the name of the game efficient you know I think when I started in the end of the 70s beginning in the 80s you you had this
idea of the monster leaders that worked twenty four two hours a day and then I could read the speed read something and they could do absorb and I would dictate the letters while they were at the dentist office or whatever clinic I think the effectiveness is your ability to engage and inspire
people around a target that everybody shares and how do you do that well I mean there is no first you have to don't complicate your strategy make it easy make it easy explainable make sure you have the meetings I and where everybody can hear it first hand I mean we had in
Erickson because it was so fast the whole strategy development or the whole development of the industry so we we had every year we set up that we had three four workshops with maybe 75 people 100 people each in three four parts of the world and we constantly mapped all the everything
everybody saw what was it they were what was the experience what was it they were missing what should we think about no that that was put together as a as a strategy approach and then we had worked on that hard in the management team then we invited the 300 top leaders in the company
and and over the three day session and then we went through every single aspect of the company and and everybody could talk for eight ten minutes and someone said for me I cannot I cannot explain the radio strategy or an Erickson for eight minutes that's not serious and I was to say
to them give CNN three minutes and they can explain the second world or how it started how it ran and how it ended in a way that we can understand we're going to have 60 minutes I'll promise you the people will stop listening after seven eight whatever so condense it down to
something you can understand area by area by area and then it ended up with a slide the series of maybe 30 slides for 40 slides that were what we were going to do for the next year then all of these 300 went home and ran all employees meetings with 300 each then we know within
a week we could reach 90,000 people and everybody around the strategy so so I mean the trust in the company that they don't need to worry that there are other ideas that we should consider more they know that every year we are vacuum cleaning the world from ideas and putting together a strategy
no call 100 you of course look exactly same as you did when you first met 30 years ago I saw you where we'll think about the fact is we we are 30 years older are you a better leader now yeah I mean I think you are a leader in different ways I was more I was more energetic than probably
a dassamina I don't have energy but I probably more thoughtful there is some tell me the trade-off between energy and thoughtful yeah you know but I give you the example that you're probably aware you could somebody call to me the time after 50 the time to be wise
you you have you've had your successes you've had you're maybe your failures and and if you're sitting here in the room and say 10 people around and discussing something you will from time to time know I have this great argument coming here and somebody else is talking I need to jump
in first because I want to say this and you realize that this guy or a woman over there they're about to say the same thing so you want to come forward to do to make sure you get in and you come to a point where that's no longer important why I start you think I just think you get
your ego is maybe coming down a bit I mean let's face it in this time of jobs if you don't have an ego if you don't there's something that drives you to spend totally this proportional time working and lots of worries and successes but also failures and all of that there's a there's a
dragon that and if you were to be completely honest was pin your dragon my dragon wow I don't know I I it's a little hard to say because there are you have constantly challenges I think I am probably wiser less self-certain I have I have an ability to
quite quickly understand a situation yeah but the driver what's been the driver is he coming from tiny village you think are you mean what's the driver well I mean I don't know we are all different but but I've had this I don't get tired easily I've always had this drive of doing
things not on my own I'm not the guy that will walk up on Mount Everest alone or sail a long like Frenchman do in about around the world I always I get my inspiration from taking a team I really energize in the team and reaching great targets that that that we have sort of set
but who do you want to show I mean you mentioned that it's important to be a little bit better than your father and that kind of yeah you know I I mean if I get if I really dig into my soul I had a sister that was diabetic from nine got diabetes in 1957 she was born 1959 49 and she got blind
when she was 25 and she she had to transplant a kidney and amputech feed and stuff and and passed away when I was 46 and and my this was I mean I don't really I hardly recall the anytime when my parents sort of didn't always wanted to talk about my sister and this which she had and all of that
and I from early on I always felt that I will always make them proud I would not add to the burden I've always believed that that in the way have contributed to my to my drive and my wish to always perform would that have been the same anyway but I'll tell you another interesting story because I
can do you think that's a my just sorry just do you think that's the reason why you've been operating in Sweden so much you could have gone anywhere in the world and now you are going back to Sweden I'm coming back to Norway we're doing something that we think is good for the well I I I have a
maybe it's because we moved around 15 times so I I love Sweden I mean Sweden has so many issues but I I love King and country doing the right things I mean I'm 71 I should have stopped long time ago when I I left my CEO job when I was 57 I mean I would have been if I wanted to buy
a financially better off I should have continued as a CEO but I'd like to be in companies you know if you think about Ericsson with the in the energy or or in the in telecommunications and beeping energy and volume transportation they all play a very important part in society and that's
that's been but if we are in this soul searching mode I must tell you a story because I think it's a cool story where when I became CEO as an employee and I came from very simple circumstances and my mother and father they lived in a North-Choping South of Stockholm
150 kilometers south of Stockholm and and they told me that I was going to get 120,000 US dollars 12,000 1.2 million Swedish I was going to get that as my salary and I mean for me that was I mean my head was swinging how did I end up here how could this be so what do you do 42
years old I call my mother and said are you are you home tonight of course there were because they never went anywhere so I drove down the 20 kilometers and I sat at your dinner and I tried to get into the topic I mean my father I think he had 14,000 a month in in pension of my mother
5,000 or something and I was sitting there I was trying to get into the topic and I couldn't get them there and then my mother eventually said how about you're going to make and I said 1.2 million and she says wow that's fantastic and then my father looks at me and says is that really necessary
and you know I I must have thought about that is that really necessary hundreds of times and I don't think it is I'm not sure it is so what is necessary I don't know but I I mean the thing is that is it necessary for is it necessary for for you how to make money is it necessary for
the plant is to make money no but if you want to if you want to sort of buy a whole land you have to give them a good salary because everybody's after him and he's it's not many that is like him so where do you get the real pleasure from it is definitely from achieving things together with the group it's that's that's the whole thing for me well Conhanry you have achieved some amazing things uh congratulations and a big thanks for being here today thank you thank you