Is there something in the region’s glacial waters that firms in other parts of the world can learn from?
Erkko Autio, professor and chair in technology venturing and entrepreneurship at Imperial College Business School, points to four distinguishing features. “Nordic businesses are much less hierarchical. That’s one thing. The second is that these are high-trust cultures that give employees a high level of autonomy. Work life balance is the third factor. Finally, there’s an emphasis on collaboration and consensus rather than dictation,” he explains.
Anna Nivala, CEO of the Gothenburg branch of Swedish civil engineering consultancy Bengt Dahlgren, says that Swedes joke that “[we’re] the only country where the coworkers make decisions and then the CEO has to adjust. Democracy in that sense is very important, but it makes for a solid ground for psychological safety when you can say to anyone what’s on your mind.”
The four pillars of happy, Nordic companies that Autio highlights—autonomy, low power distance, work-life balance and collaboration—come as a package.
“Nordic businesses are much less hierarchical.”
A commitment to work-life balance, for example, is critical for empowerment, says Nivala. “When Bengt Dahlgren founded the company 74 years ago, he had a slogan that a hungry engineer was not a good engineer, and he used to treat his employees to blueberry pies and invite them to his house,” she says.
Today, there are “a lot of small things all of the time that happen to make you feel that your personal life also matters,” including regular fika—coffee and cake breaks where teams get to know each other without talking about work—subsidized company ski trips, and lectures about mindfulness or preventing calendar creep.
This level of caring and personal openness—owning mistakes is part of being present as a whole person—filters into the business culture. “Sharing with each other that you’re going through a divorce or having difficulties with this or that makes you trust each other more,” Nivala explains.
But when the iPhone ushered in the smartphone era, the company couldn’t make the transition a second time and eventually exited the market; it now specializes in telecommunications equipment.
“Sharing with each other that you’re going through a divorce or having difficulties with this or that makes you trust each other more.”
The much-dissected failure partly came from strategic errors, but Autio also blames the company’s system of middle management committees: “The committees were empowered to decide which approaches to move ahead with. They ended up in a situation where the middle managers kept voting down each other’s initiatives, and that reduced Nokia’s capability to respond to industry change.”
That isn’t to say that consensus culture prevents innovation or agility—Autio offers Sweden’s vibrant start-up sector as evidence to the contrary. Nivala also says that once consensus is secured, things tend to move faster because everyone is aligned.
“Often you can think it’s the leader’s responsibility, but you need to talk to every coworker about creating this kind of environment,” says Nivala. “It’s not just what is the boss going to do, it’s how are you going to contribute? And what do you need to contribute?”
