Case Kjell Sunde and His Virtuoso Team
In 2002, Norsk Hydro appointed senior manager Kjell Sunde to lead a virtuoso team to handle a looming investor relation crisis.
Where did Sunde work?
Norsk Hydro ASA is a Norwegian aluminum and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. Hydro is the fourth largest integrated aluminum company worldwide. It has operations in some 40 countries around the world and is active on all continents. The Norwegian state holds a 43.8 percent ownership interest in the company, which employs approximately 23,000 people.
The company had a significant presence in the oil and gas industry until October 2007, when these operations were merged with rival Statoil to form StatoilHydro (in 2009 changed to Statoil).
Emergency accident calls for virtuoso team
In 2002, Bloc 34, the potential site for a big oil find in Angola, turned out to be dry. Hydro had made a serious investment in the site. Somehow, senior management would have to convincingly explain the company's failure to the financial markets or Hydro's stock could plummet.
The senior managers understood that this problem was too critical to leave to conventional approaches, but Hydro was certainly not a natural environment for a virtuoso team. Rich in heritage, unwieldy, and traditional, with a strong engineering culture and a decidedly Nordic consensus-driven approach to decisions, the company never singled out or recognized individual performers. In fact, most of Hydro's business activities were specialized and separated. Teamwork was satisfactory but unexceptional, and tension among employees was firmly discouraged.
But given the emergency situation, Hydro needed the best professionals to complete the tasks in time. Hydro delegated Kjell Sunde to assemble a high-power group comprising the very best technical people across the company. Kjell is directly responsible to the CEO of Hydro. The team needed to review a massive stream of data to find out what had gone wrong in the original analysis of Bloc 34 and assure
Where did Sunde work?
Norsk Hydro ASA is a Norwegian aluminum and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. Hydro is the fourth largest integrated aluminum company worldwide. It has operations in some 40 countries around the world and is active on all continents. The Norwegian state holds a 43.8 percent ownership interest in the company, which employs approximately 23,000 people.
The company had a significant presence in the oil and gas industry until October 2007, when these operations were merged with rival Statoil to form StatoilHydro (in 2009 changed to Statoil).
Emergency accident calls for virtuoso team
In 2002, Bloc 34, the potential site for a big oil find in Angola, turned out to be dry. Hydro had made a serious investment in the site. Somehow, senior management would have to convincingly explain the company's failure to the financial markets or Hydro's stock could plummet.
The senior managers understood that this problem was too critical to leave to conventional approaches, but Hydro was certainly not a natural environment for a virtuoso team. Rich in heritage, unwieldy, and traditional, with a strong engineering culture and a decidedly Nordic consensus-driven approach to decisions, the company never singled out or recognized individual performers. In fact, most of Hydro's business activities were specialized and separated. Teamwork was satisfactory but unexceptional, and tension among employees was firmly discouraged.
But given the emergency situation, Hydro needed the best professionals to complete the tasks in time. Hydro delegated Kjell Sunde to assemble a high-power group comprising the very best technical people across the company. Kjell is directly responsible to the CEO of Hydro. The team needed to review a massive stream of data to find out what had gone wrong in the original analysis of Bloc 34 and assure