Another inspiring executive shares his insights and personal journey to become a leader and non-executive board director in this increasingly digital world. Meet our next insightful leader Håkan Österberg.
Håkan Österberg is an experienced change executive, with broad experience from international companies such as Ericsson, and is now a sought after advisor and digital board director.
Håkan is passionate about leading transformation in disruptive times and he believes that we need to be proactive in a time of major change and manage and monitor needed experiments. He also puts emphasis on ensuring that we, as leaders, are responsible and create true sustainable businesses.
Håkan’s journey to become a #Change Leader & #Digital #Board Director
So how did Håkan Österberg become an experienced change leader and now a digital board director? Håkan has a long stint with the telecom company Ericsson from leading different units through broad changes as well as entries into new markets. Listen to Håkans ’s introduction;
Håkan believes that his experience of riding through massive disruptive change, where you need to be very focused on both restructuring as well as building up new areas at the same time have been instrumental for his experience and knowledge today.
Håkan learnt extensively from taking active part in leading units through major change at the telecom company Ericsson. Ericsson, as well as its customers the telecom operators, have been and are continuing to go through disruptive changes. This means that Ericsson is continuously engaging in researching the effects of digital on the industry and producing insightful research reports like “The economics of networked society”. Authors of the research from Ericsson can be found in the reports. Håkan did not contribute to the research, but worked with similar challenges as the ones mentioned during his time at Ericsson.
Photo: Pixabay, CC0
Additional to being insightful in projecting the impact of digital, leaders and companies need to ensure that their organisations become more agile and organize for continued change. Another valuable research shared by Ericsson revisits “Organizing for Change”.
#Digital and #Sustainability Impacting Board work
Håkan shares his view of how digital is impacting board work and how important it is to put the uncertainties for debate on the top of the board agenda. He shares the importance of getting structures, decision points and culture to support experimentation. Listen to that and to his view of what we need to ensure to create sustainable businesses.
You can hear that Håkan is passionate about our responsibility as leaders to ensure we think through and build true sustainable businesses.
The challenge of responsibly leading the workforce into the future is also on the top agenda for many boards and leaders to understand and explore better. This can be seen in a summary from the recent meeting on “Viewpoints on Workforce of the Future” with the European and North American Audit Committee Leadership Networks.
Photo: Pixabay, CC0
World Economic Forum shares a whitepaper guiding on how leaders need to plan for and engage in reskilling the workforce for the digital era which gives some useful pointers “WEF White Paper Reskilling”
In a recent meeting of many global voices of corporate governance and sustainability, arranged by Futureboards led by experienced board leader Turid Solvang, where Digoshen Chair Liselotte Engstam was fortunate to attend, leaders debated how businesses can respond to creating long-term value. The keynote speaker was Professor Mervin King, one of the world’s most influential leaders in corporate governance and sustainability, author of the outcome based corporate governance code of South Africa “The King IV report”1 sparking debates on changes needed in current corporate governance all around the world.
Inspiration, what we can learn & furniture
Håkan believes that we need to ensure we all remain focused on our individual and collective ethical leadership going forward, and he also believes that we need to spend more time on reflection, which is also illustrated by his choice of furniture:
In a recent research done by INSEAD, Board Agenda and Mazars on the challenge boards have in the direction of Company Culture, we find that many boards and leaders need to up their game “Survey reveals that Boards Struggle on Corporate Culture”
“Executives and non-executives need to up their game in corporate culture and be open to learn and develop. That is a challenge; the ability to truly learn is not easily triggered in boards. Corporate culture starts with the board and the board space: what kind of interactions, behaviours, language, and data does one observe? How packed is the agenda with technical content, or too many topics to discuss?”
says the professors from INSEAD that conducted the research Erik van de Loo, professor of organisational behaviour, and Jaap Winter, visiting professor of corporate governance.
More insights and becoming involved in #digital and transformational #change
To get more insight of what Håkan Österberg knows and shares, we recommend you explore and build more knowledge of digital strategies, disruptive transformational change and building sustainable businesses. Besides exploring the links shared in the article above, we share further insights in the three topics below.
Digital Strategies
At Digoshen, we believe that leaders in the future need to increase their competence in three main areas Sense at Scale, Involve to Innovate and Align the Actions. You are welcome to take our free survey (https://digoshen.com/research/), to find out your position and directly get a personalized feedback report with improvement suggestions.
The insightful professor Robin Teigland at Stockholm School of Economics, has explored the subject of digital strategy and impact on companies, societies and leaders. In this inspiring presentation, which she has given to many leaders, she shares why “Digital strategies is on top of many C-levels agenda”.
World Economic Forum, WEF, has researched and designed a “Digital Policy Playbook 2017” to help leaders understand the complex dynamics and difficult decisions they will face in managing their transition into the digital domain.
Find more inspiration in Digoshen’s podcast “Exploring Leaders” and check out the regularly updated lists of Digoshen Recommended Podcasts. Listen to to Episode 10 of Exploring Leaders for the full interview with Håkan Österberg.
Leading Disruptive Transformational Change
You can learn from Scott D Anthony and Evan I Schwartz, as they have studied 500 global firms and their ability to strategically reposition their firms and discovered what the best transformational leaders do. You will notice that their findings confirm Håkan’s view, that there is a need to strategically pursue two separate journeys, to both reposition the core and simultaneously find new growth, and to ensure that they use culture change to drive engagement.
The speed and diversity of markets, customers, ideas, and talent is a driving need for Inclusion as a new leadership capability. In a recent Deloitte research on Inclusive Leadership they found six attributes of leaders who display the ability to embrace differences and leverage them for competitive advantage. The attributes are Collaboration, Commitment, Courage, Cognizance, Curiosity and Cultural Intelligence.
Learn more about European and North American Audit Committee Leadership Networks (EACLN and ACLN).
You are of course welcome to explore Digoshen’s corporate and individual programs where we help leaders move into the digital age. Or check out our Social Executive Programs to help advance some of your influence skills.
Building Sustainable Businesses and Corporate Governance
Be inspired by the interview with Professor Mervin King and his view on corporate governance and sustainability. And learn from the first Outcome based Corporate Governance report “The King IV report”1
Read more in the full research report on Corporate Culture by INSEAD, Board Agenda and Mazars.
Learn from leaders at the Drucker Forum 2017 with the theme Growth and Inclusive Prosperity, read the Drucker Forum Special Report 2017 , the article A radical suggestion and view the discussion on the European Forum Alpbach reviewing Artificial Intelligence and Future of work .
Follow many of the mentioned thought leaders and companies also on Twitter; @EricssonLabs, @WEF, @TuridSolvang, @INSEADKnowledge, @INSEADIDN, @BoardAgenda, @MazarsGroup, @EcoDaAsbl, @RobinTeigland, @ScottDAnthony , @iftf.
Find more insights from Digoshen Research Report on company and boards progress into the digital era.
And find more inspiration from some of Digoshen’s earlier blog posts with Non-Executive Board Director Denise Koopmans, Maria Stenstrom, CEO of Volkswagen Group Canada, Lotta Loven, Head of Channels at Swedbank, Cindy Alvarez, Director of User Experience at Yammer
About Digoshen
We think it is important to share insights from inspiring #innovation and #digital1st thought leaders. If you are one of them, or know someone we should talk to, please send us a hint via https://digoshen.com/contact/ or via Twitter @digoshen .
These interviews are shared both on my own blog www.liselotteengstam.com as well as on the blog of Digoshen www.digoshen.com, where I am Chairman of the Board.
At Digoshen, we believe that Companies, Boards and Business Leadership Teams need to understand more of the digital world to fully leverage the potential when bringing their business into the digital age.
To know where you and your company stand concerning innovation, digital business and leadership progress, take our survey at Digoshen.com/research and get a free of charge personalized report with recommendations on how to move forward. The survey is anonymous and takes about 15 minutes to complete.
If you like to keep yourself updated on innovation and digital business matters check out our Digoshen Insight Platform with inspiration, reports and weekly digital magazines.
We provide inspiration and support to help transition business leaders into more insightful digital positions for themselves and their companies.
Follow us on Twitter: @digoshen , our CEO @katycaroan and Chairman @liseeng