Born and raised in Sweden, I now find myself on the other side of the world in beautiful Australia. Living in Sydney near the beach I now only have distant fading memories of walking through snow and sleet during the (many) dark months of the year in Northern Europe. I was lucky during my undergraduate studies to get a job with a consulting firm that looked at organisations a bit differently to many other consulting firms.
My time with at this consultancy firm provided me with great insights into the workings of organisation. Not least from the many very capable and smart people that were so generous when it came to sharing their knowledge and supporting me on my developmental journey – both professionally and personally.
I am deeply interested in organisations and their behaviour. The type of questions and challenges I’m grappling with are (amongst others):
- understanding how complex systems at times seem to have a mind of their own,
- how well intended efforts to introduce change often end up achieving the complete opposite to what was intended,
- how can we design better ways of working together to create organisations that are both great places to work and also achieve great things for their customers.
This blog is intended as a placeholder for my own reflections on the vast amount of interesting material I find on the net. If you happen to come across it and would like to comment on any of the content I encourage you to do so. It could be a great opportunity to push the thinking to a different space so it would be greatly appreciated.
All the best
Stefan
stefan norrvall 
Dear Stefan,
I am a management consultant from Norway working primarily with lean manufacturing in small and medium-sized companies and local civil services. I will be travelling to New South Wales in July this year to visit my son. The background for this mail is that it would be of great interest to me to share experiences from Norway that would be relevant to you and at the same time learn more from your approaches to lean manufacturing and continuous improvement.
The company I work for, VINN (www.vinn.no), has 16 consultants and is based in Narvik in the northern part of Norway. I am in charge of development and execution of our lean manufacturing projects. We are currently six consultants involved with lean transformations. A brief project portfolio overview will be forwarded to you should you be interested.
I am also involved in the national professional network on lean manufacturing, Lean Forum Norge (www.leanforumnorge.no), currently chairing the regional network in our part of the country. This gives me a broader perspective on the status and challenges of lean manufacturing in the industry as well as private and public services in Norway.
An overview of my professional background is shown below.
Should you be interested in a meeting, then please let me know. Based on your feedback, we could set the agenda and preparations. I plan to attend the Meetup session on 24 July.
The time period in question would be from Tuesday, 1 July through Friday, 1 August.
For your information, your name and company came up as one of five which I am pursuing.
Best regards,
Bjørn Bergan
Special advisor (spesialrådgiver)
Tel +47 95 88 36 36
Background
Age 53
Education
Master of Science, Civil engineering, mastered in concrete technology (graduated 1986)
Master of Management, Norwegian Business School (2007)
Professional career
16 years in international chemical industry
BASF Construction Chemicals, European HQ in Zurich, Switzerland. R&D department manager and European marketing manager (1989-1994). The company name at that time was MBT
Borregaard LignoTech, worldwide HQ in Sarpsborg, Norway. R&D department manager and European marketing manager (1994-2002)
BASF Construction Chemicals, Scandinavia. Business development and product manager (2002-2006)
7 years in management consulting
Revita Consulting, Oslo (2 periods, 2006-2010)
Norut Narvik (2010-2012)
VINN (2012-2014)
Love and applaud your use of images, humor, cartoons! I use such also and love to quote Pogo/Walt Kelly as a “we’re all in this together” way. Carry on!