Scandinavian Leadership - 36 years with Lots and Mindo

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Scandic Hotels - Making business in a better world

Scandic Hotels is one of Scandinavia and northern Europe’s largest hotel chains with 152 hotels, 28456 rooms and 6600 coworkers. The first hotel was established in 1963 and 10 years later Scandic was Sweden’s largest hotel chain. More than 15 years ago Scandic started to develop what today is considered to be the hotel industry leading sustainability program; where good environmental, economic and social aspects lead all decisions.

Frank Fiskers is the CEO of Scandic: "We are absolutely being perceived as leading within sustainability since Scandic has been working with this for many years. It is something we always live by. Our customers become inspired and we create value for all our stakeholders. Together we can make the world a little bit better. Scandic wants to take its responsibility since we believe it is better for the business. You simply make better business in a better world. But I like to point out that we don’t do charity, we are a profit-driven company."

Financial security for Swedish pensioners

The Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP4) is a government agency, which manages a part of the buffer capital set aside to offset temporary fluctuations in pension system contributions and disbursements.

Mats Andersson is the CEO: "We have during the last two years implemented a change process with the help of Lots^®. This has resulted in our producing the best returns of all Swedish National Pension Funds for the first half of 2009. The challenge that lies ahead of us is to keep this good momentum we have reached and continue to develop our organization."

Telenor Serbia “Making life easier for the consumers”

Kjell-Morten Johnsen is Head of Telenor Serbia and Senior Vice President of Telenor Central and Eastern Europe. He joined Telenor in 2000, and from 2006 to March 2009 he headed Telenor Russia.
"I know that the Serbian customers are demanding and used to getting top quality network and innovative services from Telenor Serbia. It is my top priority to improve this company further to the benefit of customers and employees alike.”
“We use Lots^® in our business planning. With the help of facilitator Carl Filip Bergendal we can focus on being creative, as he keeps the structure and helps us focus on the issue. We are in a very competitive business, so we always have to keep focus on the outside world.”

Scandinavia’s largest automobile chain

With 101 facilities in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Bilia is Scandinavia’s largest automobile chain, with a leading position in sales and servicing of cars and pickups. Bilia is the main dealer for companies like Volvo, Renault, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda and BMW.

Jan Pettersson is the CEO of Bilia.
“I have been working with Lots^® and Carl Filip since early 1990s. After a certain period in Bilia, I felt the need of a structured way of working within our business plan. The first year my co-workers were a bit hesitant towards the method, but now after four years of working with Lots ^® everyone feels it is really good. The Bilia group works continuously with Lots^® and once in a year we meet Carl Filip to work with the overall business plan.”

Jan Alhström, CEO of PRI

PRI( PRI Pensionstjänst AB) is a pension administrator. It covers about 500.000 people in the 1200 largest companies in Sweden. The majority of corporations quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange’s high-turnover A-list are PRI clients.

“When I came to PRI, once of the first things I did was to get help of Lots^® and Scandinavian Leadership with the actual marketing and business plan. We had just gotten a new ITP-plan, (an agreement between the union and the businesses regarding the Industry’s extra pensions). We needed to do something about the positioning of the company towards the market. “

Henry Schein Medical Group

Dave McKinley is the President of Henry Schein Medical Group, with over a billion dollars in revenue. “I have been using Lots^® since 1985 and it is an excellent tool. We use it both in strategic and budget planning. I like to use Lots^® for quick management updates as it provides a good thought process for business reporting keeping the team informed on real world dynamics. “The Outside-In discipline is the best part of Lots^®. For established successful companies it can be hard to maintain an “Outside-In” perspective. As it becomes part of the company culture and values, reinventing the business drives creative managers to produce more rewarding results for our customer and us.”

New book: Did you know?

It is impressive how much the Scandinavian people have contributed in the world over the years, from peace-makers, industry, culture, education to sports and science. In this collection of facts you can read about some of the most known contributions that emanates from the Scandinavian people, mixed with some characteristics of the Scandinavian countries.

Scandinavian Leadership Forum is an initiative to define and promote the qualities of Scandinavian leadership as a contribution to global leadership. This will, hopefully, inspire us all to take part in dialogues for increased consciousness, which is a key factor for success in every area.

"We at Scandinavian Leadership is a proud sponsor of the book Did you know? With our tools Lots^® and Mindo^® we make our contribution spreading the Scandinavian Leadership globally" says Hans Åkerblom, founder of Scandinavian Leadership.

about Scandinavia

Less than 0,4 percent of the
world´s population lives in Scandinavia, consisting of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Finland. Its people are spread over an area so sparsely populated that it makes even the Sahara look busy. And yet people from this part of the world have contributed to global progress in greater numbers per capita than most nations could ever dream of.

Read more

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Giant institutions use Icelandic software

Business: Iceland’s TM Software ehf. has been selling its high tech products over the internet to some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. TM Software has sold its own timekeeping and workbook accounting system in 38 different countries, including to many big corporations and institutions. Among the customers to date are both the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Bank – and the New York Stock Exchange and the microchip giant, Intel are both currently using evaluation versions of the software.

© Scandinavian Leadership