Göran Nilsson
Göran graduated from Lund University in 1988 with a degree in business administration and later got his PhD at the Stockholm School of Economics in 2003. His thesis dealt with lean production and management. Before that, he worked as controller in two Electrolux-related companies for six years. In 2006, Göran moved to Uppsala University and, during his time there, became co-author to the classic textbook Management Control Systems. As an academic, Göran has always spent a lot of his time working with practitioners through lectures, seminars, an experience-sharing group and as editor of a practitioner’s handbook. Recently, Göran moved back to Lund and started his own company to offer education services to organizations both in and outside academia.
Lennart Francke
Lennart graduated from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1972 with a degree in business administration. He worked 36 years in the Swedish bank Handelsbanken, starting out in the business organization and ending up in top management, including a period as CFO. Three years after having left Handelsbanken in 2008, Lennart joined the senior management of another Swedish bank, Swedbank, where he participated in an effort to change the organization in a more agile direction, albeit admittedly with limited success. Since leaving Swedbank in 2014, Lennart has had a number of board assignments and is currently member of several nomination committees of public companies. Lennart can be described as a reflective practitioner, in fact some of Göran’s former colleagues used to claim that “Lennart is more reflective than many researchers”.
You could argue that Göran, the researcher, and Lennart, the practitioner, make an odd couple, but as implied above we both feel most comfortable in the no-mans-land between research and practice. This may seem strange in a time when research becomes increasingly distanced from practice and practitioners seem less and less interested in theory. However, we fail to see the use of research without relevance to practice, apart from promoting researchers’ careers. We also fail to see the point in continuously reinventing the wheel in the business world. In fact, much of the theory that we put forth in our book (and the same can be said for other modern books about agility, beyond-budgeting, trust-based leadership, teal or whatever label you attach to them) has been well-known for more than half a century.
Use us as lecturers, seminar leaders, discussion partners etc.
We often participate in different public conferences as well as seminars etc arranged by companies. If you want to us to participate in such events we are generally positive to this.
So far, we have particapated in several dozens events and you can see some examples of them below:
