With a long history of successful transformations and change management in highly regulated environments like banking, telecom, and the public sector, Tuuli Pärenson has been responsible for cultural, organizational, and IT transformations on an international scale. She enjoys driving change and making an impact in a socially responsible way. She is skilled in ICT management, e-government solutions, telecommunications, banking, entrepreneurship, accounting, strategic management, and business development.
Below are highlights of the interview conducted between World’s Leaders and Tuuli Pärenson:
Describe your background and what did you do before you started/joined the company? And who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
I have an amazing husband, three kids, and a dog, I am happily married, and I work for the best employer that I could wish for. It does not mean that there are not days, when I doubt myself, that I am never tired, or that I never do anything ridiculous.
I have a long-term passion for sustainability and ethical governance, that started with studies about social enterprises and social impact evaluation. I wrote my PhD theses on these topics and considered making a career out of them, but that did not work out, primarily because the world was not ready for it.So actually, a career in IT was my second-best option, which I have started to love. I have been the director of development and change management in a bank, led the development of core components of digital societies in some of the most digitally advanced countries, led digital and business transformation in a telecom company, and am now working in an ICT consultancy company, Gofore. What I love about Gofore is that here two of my passions are truly intertwined: human-centricity and an ethical company culture through which we build sustainable digital solutions.
As it is always hard to describe myself, I asked some of my friends and colleagues about it late Friday evening, and I received this response in less than 5 minutes. This probably means that it is true about me:
simple but elusive
diligent but easy
kind but restrained
- too smart but balanced
Tell us about the inception of the company. How did it all start?
The story of Gofore started when four friends decided to establish a company that would become the best workplace for themselves. 20 years later, the idea itself has not changed at all. Now there are more than 1,000 Goforeans located in four countries, and the initial idea has just been scaled accordingly. We still want to be the best workplace for everyone, and we thrive on our customers’ success.
Gofore is led by agile and lean principles, and we truly believe in them. We believe in working together with our customers to help them achieve their goals. That is why we have consciously decided to be a pure-play consultancy. We are proud to be consultants, and we apply the same principles to everything we do: may it be the task in the field of ICT management advisory, security, data, design, or coding. In 2021 customer survey, our net promoter score was 54. That is significantly higher than the market average. How do we do it?
Which are the major services of the company and how do the company to get ahead in the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
Our experts collaborate with our customers to ensure that we focus on what is important and make the best decisions for the specific customer at the specific time.The world is constantly changing, and the speed only grows. We truly believe that how we do things is just as important as what we do.It is also important to help our customers grow the competencies and capabilities that they need to operate in the changing environment.
What are the most important aspects of a company’s culture? What principles do you believe in and how do you build this culture?
I believe that the best part of our company’s culture is, that we create it ourselves. We deliberately avoid micromanaging and encourage each expert to make the best decisions they can.We have even invented a term to describe such an approach: minimal viable management. We believe in agile and lean and that means believing in self-organizing teams. Self-organizing teams are very much about self-awareness, culture, and teamwork and much less about individual heroics or well-defined team processes.
I gave a lecture at the university last week about our ethics and culture, and there was one question in different wordings that came up again and again. Students asked, “How can we ensure that when we give the freedom to our employees to decide about their workplace, culture, and even work equipment, that they don’t misuse it?” I believe our code of ethics answers that question very well: “Even if I do not know my colleague particularly well, I choose to trust him or her.”
The focus here is on the fact that trusting our experts and each other is our choice. Even if there should be someone who might misuse our trust, we will not build our internal culture on the idea that everyone will do it. Of course, we do have practices in place, how to limit the risks and detect the flaws early, but that is a quite different approach compared to trying to control everyone and everything. With minimal controls, we encourage our crew to speak up and act when things need to be changed. No one needs to ask for permission to fix things they know how to fix. That is a very strong driver for innovation: the same principle applies to innovation in our expert projects, company culture, and personal growth. We innovate on a daily basis, and no single person or team at Gofore could keep track of all the innovations we’ve done in the last year.We do not want to control the continuous improvements, because that is the shortcut to suppressing innovation.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
I believe that some of my biggest strengths are not any specific skills but rather a combination of skills. For example, I am very persistent and, at the same time, I do not like routines. That is one thing that I enjoy about my current role: every day is different; things are constantly changing, and I do not know exactly what the next week will bring. At the same time, as we work as a team, we know that we are doing the right things, and we also know that we are capable of adapting when the circumstances change.
The other example is that I do have good negotiation and communication skills, but at the same time I am rather introverted. Knowing that, I must schedule my days and weeks in such a way that I also have time to reload in silence.
The most important advice for new leaders is that first they must know themselves and accept themselves as they are. You do not have to be someone else. You also do not have to have answers to all questions; your key skill is to create an environment that supports finding answers to those questions. Do not forget to play to your strengths! Do what you do well and allow the team to do the rest!
