The blog

And so the year of 2011 has come to an end. It has been a fun year for me, in more ways than one.

Now I know more

I have learned a lot this year when work­ing on my var­i­ous assign­ments. It has been a true plea­sure to get insight into com­pa­nies and indus­tries I oth­er­wise would have come nowhere near. 

I held two cours­es in effi­cien­cy for Siemens in Fin­spång in Jan­u­ary, and learned how a steam tur­bine works, which I pre­vi­ous­ly had no idea of. 

In Feb­ru­ary and a cou­ple of months after that, I helped an excep­tion­al­ly moti­vat­ed and focused project-man­ag­er at SAAB in Linköping to improve his work-struc­ture through indi­vid­ual ses­sions. While doing so I learned a great deal of how the avi­a­tion-indus­try oper­ates and functions. 

Just before the sum­mer I got to see and expe­ri­ence the large amount of things an account man­ag­er in a real-estate com­pa­ny need to han­dle simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, when doing indi­vid­ual ses­sions with Trol­län­gen Bostads AB.

From work­ing with För­lagssys­tem I learned how to get the max­i­mum util­i­ty and val­ue for your mon­ey when pur­chas­ing con­sul­tant ser­vices. The care­ful­ly select­ed and com­bined pack­age of ser­vices they assem­bled for my com­bined course- and indi­vid­ual ses­sion-day with them in August was sim­ply brilliant. 

Dur­ing the spring and fall I have seen the staffing- and recruit­ment-indus­try from with­in when work­ing with Prof­fice and Experis (pre­vi­ous­ly Man­pow­er Professional). 

I learned how close­ly you can coop­er­ate with the final cus­tomer from the ortho­pe­dic com­pa­ny Zim­mer (who just so hap­pens to be very good at doing so) and how orga­ni­za­tions are affect­ed by finan­cial cut­backs when work­ing for Tryg­ghet­srådet (whose cus­tomers con­sist of orga­ni­za­tions in the process of liquidation).

In con­junc­tion with a course I gave for Swedish Nation­al Board of Trade in Sep­tem­ber, I had the great priv­i­lege of meet­ing Sweden’s most promi­nent expert on anti-dump­ing-tar­iffs and sud­den­ly find myself know­ing a lit­tle about what it is like to be a Chi­nese bicycle-producer.

Anoth­er area which I now con­sid­er myself more knowl­edge­able in is hair-replace­ments. I held a course on struc­ture for the man­age­ment team at Carl M Lundh in Octo­ber, which is part of the world lead­ing com­pa­ny Ader­ans. They also taught me that you say ​“on Limhamn”, not ​“in Limhamn” (as most Swedes say when speak­ing of Limhamn, a sub­urb to Malmö).

In Novem­ber I got some insight into how a typ­i­cal day of a cor­po­rate insur­ance sales­man at Trygg-Hansa looks. How do you plan elec­tric instal­la­tions at large con­struc­tion-sites? Well, I learned how when giv­ing a course at Rowi­da this past fall. Grant Thorn­ton enlight­ened me of the more del­i­cate chal­lenges in the account­ing-indus­try while I gave a series of talks in Stock­holm and Hels­ing­borg for them dur­ing the past year. 

And in the last cou­ple of weeks I have been utter­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by the suc­cess-sto­ry of the com­pa­ny Rox­tecs based in Karl­skro­na, which the employ­ee I am help­ing through indi­vid­ual ses­sions at the moment, have entrust­ed me with.

Nice peo­ple

A true indul­gence in my line of work is that I on a dai­ly basis get to meet so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple. When con­sid­er­ing the degree of ​“cozi­ness”, pleas­ant work­ing-envi­ron­ment and pos­i­tive inter­ac­tion, a few assign­ments in par­tic­u­lar stand out.

I have nev­er before been so well looked after when giv­ing lec­tures as I was by Atten­do when deliv­er­ing talks for them in Nynäshamn and Var­berg. I am giv­ing anoth­er talk for a dif­fer­ent depart­ment in Jan­u­ary, and am tru­ly look­ing for­ward to doing so. 

I have been deeply impressed by the incred­i­bly pleas­ant atmos­phere amongst the staff I have met at The Abso­lut Com­pa­ny when hold­ing cours­es for them through­out the year. 

To get such a warm recep­tion as I got when giv­ing cours­es to the geri­atric care in Haninge Kom­mun last spring and Göte­borgs Stads Intraser­vice this fall, real­ly makes a lecturer’s day! 
And not to be for­got­ten, few arrange cours­es as care­ful­ly and thought-through as Kom­pe­ten­sutveck­ling i Var­berg.

(This is real­ly begin­ning to sound like an accep­tance speech from the Oscars, but it is all worth men­tion­ing – not only think­ing it.)

Almost col­leagues

In some respects I can be con­sid­ered a ​“social lon­er” since I like peo­ple a lot but pre­fer to work alone, but I must say that some of the longer col­lab­o­ra­tions I have had dur­ing the year (and which con­tin­ue this year) have pro­vid­ed me with the ben­e­fits of hav­ing colleagues. 

I got a great ​“tour­ing with the band”-feeling when being on the road with the man­age­ment-net­work Sell­do­ra­do dur­ing the fall and doing sem­i­nar-days togeth­er with the lec­tur­er Pelle Mårtens­son.

Jes­per Lars­son and I taught the com­mu­ni­ca­tions-depart­ment at the Swedish Nation­al Police Board to give Pecha Kucha-pre­sen­ta­tions just before Christ­mas, and just as when I give lec­tures togeth­er with Navid Modiri, it is great to have anoth­er lec­tur­er on stage who takes turns teaching. 

I even acquired Nor­we­gian col­leagues when work­ing on the ​“a whole day of efficiency”-concept I devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cecilie Thunem-Saanum and Pål Stavrum.

Excep­tion­al motivation

It has been said that you become like those you sur­round your­self with. 
I sure hope that the moti­va­tion and ener­gy I have encoun­tered in the entre­pre­neurs who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Acad­e­my of Excel­lence dur­ing the spring and fall has rubbed off on me. 

And if my busi­ness can achieve the same growth rate as BRP Sys­tems in Linköping, which I have worked with dur­ing six months, I will be more than hap­py. Let me put it this way; the num­ber of peo­ple attend­ing our final meet­ing had sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased from the num­ber attend­ing the first. 

Write, write, write

Writ­ing has also been a dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture for this year. I have spent many days in soli­tude, sit­ting com­fort­ably in my bean­bag, writ­ing on my com­ing book on struc­ture. It has emerged dur­ing many hours of soli­tude by the com­put­er while on an air­plane, on a train or at an air­port. Few places inspire me to write in such deep con­cen­tra­tion as these. 

Mak­ing ends meet

The fact that Stiern­holm Con­sult­ing has had a larg­er turnover this year than any pre­vi­ous year is of course also good news. 

Mov­ing for­ward with confidence

And so now we turn a page as 2012 swift­ly approaches. 
I believe I have quite a few things to look for­ward to this year. When I tried to out­line what I knew about the year to come in Jan­u­ary 2011, I could fore­see almost none of the mar­velous expe­ri­ences which were to come and which I have out­line here. 

So there­fore I am glad to already know that:

• I will be writ­ing a struc­ture-school in Swedish major morn­ing paper Dagens Nyheter dur­ing the months of winter
• I will be giv­ing a talk at a con­fer­ence for roofers dur­ing Mars in Madrid, Spain
• My first book ​“Klart! Bli super­struk­tur­erad på 31 dagar” (trans­lat­ed as ​”Done! Become super-struc­tured in 31 days”) will be pub­lished on the 12^th of April
• I will do a tour with sem­i­nars to eight cities togeth­er with Con­fer­a­tor Kom­pe­tens in con­junc­ture with the book-release in April

I also hope that 2012 will be a fun year – for you, for me, for Stiern­holm Consulting. 

Hap­py New Year!