Karen Tobiasen launches consulting firm BreathingBusiness

23 October 2020 Consultancy.eu

BreathingBusiness is a new consultancy which aims to alter the way businesses manage change and tackle complex challenges. The transformations advisory firm has been founded by Karen Tobiasen, former Chief People Officer at Nordea.

In an age of uncertainty and disruption, there is mounting pressure on organisations to overhaul their previous business models in order to keep up with the times. This is easier said than done, however, and the majority of business transformations either do not deliver the benefits they were intended to, or fail outright – often due to substandard change management and a neglect of the cultural challenges staff face during a transformation.

This is why business expert and entrepreneur Karen Tobiasen believes now is the right time to launch a new transformation consultancy.

The founder of BreathingBusiness explained, “With another industrial revolution, a global pandemic, social justice movements and climate change, transformation and change isn't just inevitable – it is necessary for solving our complex business and societal challenges. And only when human transformation is fully integrated with the organisational transformation can we reduce our wasted capacity and come fully alive – as businesses and people.”

Karen Tobiasen, Founder of BreathingBusiness

Tobiasen added, “Businesses have spent decades optimising supply chains, operations and technology systems – our operating models but we've barely begun to optimise our inner operating models as people to enable us to fully unfold our potential. In my experience, 20% to 30% of the human capacity and potential in organisations is wasted as unproductive time, non-constructive thoughts and limiting actions.”

Across three decades of business experience, Tobiasen has held a plethora of senior roles in a number of different sectors. She was a Senior Consultant with Mercuri Urval, the Global Head of SAP University, Chief HR Officer at Philips Lighting and most recently Chief People Officer with Nordea – the largest bank in the Nordics – among other roles. Since leaving that last role in 2019, she has used her experience to become an author and motivational speaker, working to imbue others with her knowledge of the importance of the human side of business transformation.

Launching BreathingBusiness is another route for her to do this, with the new firm looking to “revolutionise the way we manage change, tackle complex challenges and enable successful transformations,” according to a release from the new consultancy. Leveraging deep expertise in human transformation, BreathingBusiness aims to co-create and implement solutions that have both immediate and lasting impact.

The consultancy will look to address these challenges through a series of offerings focused on helping organisations. These include designing and deliver full cultural and organisations transformation to make sure culture feeds and enables strategy; catalysing high-impact, effective teams that can solve complex challenges; and equipping leaders to balance all stakeholder needs.