Five companies.
One leadership team.
In 2021 five software companies from Norway, Sweden and Switzerland merged into Kiona. Two years later CAREL, an industrial group, took a majority stake. In between: seven strategy and leadership sessions with the people who had to turn five companies into one.
Client
Kiona
Sector
PropTech: building technology and energy optimization
Where
17 offices in 8 countries, headquartered in Trondheim, Norway
Period
2021–2023
Format
7 strategy and leadership sessions, including one all-hands day
The situation
Five product lines, five ways of doing things.
Kiona was formed to bring energy-efficiency software for buildings under one roof. The first motto was “business as usual”: keep the customers, keep things running. That worked. It also kept the old companies alive inside the new one, with teams organized around their own product, their own country and their own history.
With a growth plan to deliver, and a new owner with new expectations from 2023, “business as usual” was no longer enough.
What I did
Seven sessions. One question each time.
Between October 2021 and October 2023 I designed and led seven gatherings, in Trondheim, Malmö, Copenhagen and Gdańsk: with the management team, with the wider group of senior leaders, up to forty people, and one all-hands day for the whole company.
The first one came straight out of COVID. Most of the leaders had only ever met on a screen, and many still saw themselves as people from their original company, not from Kiona. In Trondheim they shook hands for the first time. What struck them that day: we’re more alike than we thought.
Each gathering had its own question. Where do we stand, product by product and market by market? What do our plans look like when a colleague from another business challenges them? What is the Kiona spirit, in our own people’s stories? And what does leadership mean here? People worked in product teams for the first few days. By the final day they had regrouped by country and had to make the plans work across products.
The leadership question took the longest. In Trondheim and Malmö, the management team scored itself on trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results. In Copenhagen, the senior leaders put their real dilemmas on the table and turned them into principles. They named the behavior that fits and the behavior that doesn’t. In Gdańsk, the principles became final.
In Gdańsk we did something simple. Every leader estimated how they spend their week. For most, leading got the smallest share; the day-to-day and other people’s requests got the biggest. That started a better conversation than any model would have.
What changed
From business as usual to Business as Kiona.
Along the way the motto changed. “Business as usual” became “Business as Kiona”, with a second anchor the leaders chose themselves: “No excuses”.
By Gdańsk, the leaders had their own eight leadership principles, from “Mindful of time” to “Don’t join the blame game”. When the new owner arrived, the team had a shared language for the company it wanted to be. Whether they keep using it is up to them, not me.
In his words
“I highly recommend Govert van Sandwijk for his exceptional work over the past two years with Kiona, where he has played a central role in planning and executing strategic meetings with our management team. Over the course of seven well-executed meetings, Govert worked with us to clearly define our goals and desired outcomes, particularly with a focus on leadership development. His professionalism and expertise in management and organizational coaching has been clear throughout. In addition, his organizational skills are first-rate, ensuring that each of our gatherings was executed flawlessly. His contributions have been significant to the team’s development and success.”
Trond-Øystein Bjørnnes
Group CEO, Kiona
Merging teams? Changing owners?
Bring me one question about your team. 30 minutes, no pitch.
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