Jonas, during your almost 5 years as CEO of Saltå Kvarn you implemented LEAN throughout the organization and developed leadership through KTH's "Sustainable leadership with LEAN". What insights have you and the organization gained from the above work?

We gained many valuable experiences and insights and some are:

*how important it is as a leader to "see the game" and "see the people". That is, be interested, be present and stay informed to understand all parts of the business, the people in it and the different perspectives that always exist.

*the courage to use tough love. This means that you, as a leader, act as a role model and highlight behaviours or attitudes you have seen that deviate from the organization's guiding principles and standards. It is also important for me as a leader to admit mistakes or use myself as an example when I have shown the wrong attitude.

All of the above assumes that the organization's principles are known and established throughout the company, that they are kept alive every day in each team, but also that there is mutual trust and openness so that your colleagues and employees also contribute with the same tough care in relation to you as a manager.

*that methodical improvement work has a major impact on profitability, increased customer value and commitment in the organization. That it is not a quick fix but something that is jointly and systematically created over time until it is an established way of working (principle) and an integral part of the company's culture (standard).

Do you have any tips or tricks you want to share about KTH sustainable leadership with LEAN?

In the training, we stumbled upon two concepts that immediately became important to us: FFA and LFL.

*As a manager and leader, your responsibility is to contribute to the organization's goals through FFA, which stands for: providing the Conditions to achieve the goals, contributing with increased Ability and highlighting Attitude that deviates from the principles or values of the organization. This is called 'leadership contribution'.

As an employee, your responsibility is to contribute to the organization's goals through LFL which stands for: responsibility to Deliver against set goals, to actively contribute to continuous Improvement and improvement work in the business and to increase their own Learning. This is called employee contribution.

Through clear goals broken down at all levels, known guiding principles, clear expectations, openness and dialogue through regular one2one between manager and employee, we increased profitability, commitment and got 4 years of constantly increasing employee index. Win-win-win in other words.

What insights do you have from the above combined with your experience as a UGL tutor for over 10 years?

What has driven me all these years is to see how far you can move an organization and business towards high engagement, high participation and the level of high performing teams. By working in "reality" 50 weeks a year but also having the privilege of combining it with leading annual UGL trainings for a few weeks over the last 10 years, I have one foot in the empirical and one foot in the theoretical. It has provided many valuable insights as a leader, manager and colleague.

Do you have any tips on how to achieve this?

1. Read the book LedarStegen: 5 steps to braver leadership with structure and tough care by Bengt Savén.
2. Try the following behaviors in your role as manager and/or employee and see what the results are:

         -Live as you learn

          -Challenge the targets set

          -Acting on data

          -Go and See

          -Support through a coaching approach

          -Follow up on deviations from standards

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