After more than 20 years at Sandvik, including nearly a decade as part of the Group Executive Management, Johan Kerstell is now entering a new phase of his professional career. With extensive experience in senior-level HR work, he joins Add Insight as a team and leadership development consultant. His work focuses on the development of executive teams and management groups, with particular emphasis on the interaction between leadership, culture and governance.

From 2016 onwards, Johan served as HR Director and Executive Vice President. His responsibilities included leadership development programmes, culture and values work, and the development of shared ways of working in a highly complex international organisation. His experience spans multiple markets and cultural contexts within an organisation of approximately 45,000 employees, which during this period shifted between different degrees of decentralisation and centralisation. These transitions continue to shape both Johan’s perspective and his way of working today.

From executive management to a consulting role

Johan’s path into HR was not originally planned. He holds a degree in business and economics and began his career as a project manager in IT and business development, including roles at Cap Gemini, before joining Sandvik in the early 2000s. There, he spent many years in a variety of HR positions with gradually increasing responsibility.

Over time, a clear focus emerged on how leadership and collaboration affect both performance and the working environment. This later became a more systematic part of his role through work in leadership development, organisational culture and the connection between strategy and everyday operations.

When the time came to leave his line role, the next step was carefully considered. For Johan, it was crucial to join a context where his experience could be applied broadly and where he could contribute beyond a single organisation.

Clarity of mandate first – then trust and collaboration

At the core of Johan’s view on leadership is clarity. Not all groups are teams. What matters is whether there is a shared responsibility that requires collaboration. A team needs to understand its mandate, what is expected, and which boundaries apply. Only then is it possible to build trust and effective interaction.

“Without a shared understanding of responsibility and purpose, it is difficult to make use of the competence that exists within a group,” he notes.

One theme Johan frequently returns to is curiosity as a critical capability in modern leadership – not as a soft ideal, but as a concrete way of leading in complex environments.

“Leadership today is less about having all the answers yourself and more about being curious – creating space for the knowledge and perspectives that already exist within the organisation,” he says.

Starting from the reality of the business

In his consulting role, Johan brings with him the experience of having held ultimate responsibility himself. This influences how he approaches both assignments and relationships. The work always begins with understanding the business and the actual responsibility carried by the manager and the team.

“In most organisations, it is clear who holds the formal responsibility. Support must therefore start from that point,” he explains.

Rather than offering ready-made solutions, the focus is on identifying the needs of the specific team and creating conditions for clearer accountability, better collaboration and more thoughtful decision-making.

His background in performance management, including work with Objectives and Key Results (OKR) in a global context, adds another important dimension. For Johan, the link between strategy, goals and behaviour is central, particularly in change initiatives.

“If you want something to truly change, leadership has to live what it wants to see – not just decide on it.”

A context where theory meets practice

As Johan joins Add Insight, it is the context itself that has been decisive. He describes the company as an environment where strong theoretical foundations are combined with a clear business focus and high professional integrity.

This is also the combination highlighted by CEO Lina Hedin:

“Johan has extensive experience of working in the very contexts our clients operate in. He knows what it takes to make executive teams work – not in theory, but in everyday practice. This strengthens our ability to work even closer to our clients’ reality. We are very happy that Johan is now joining our already strong team,” she says.

For Johan, the context also offers opportunities for mutual learning and development alongside colleagues with different perspectives and areas of expertise.

A starting point for the next phase

After nearly two decades in senior leadership roles at Sandvik, it was important for Johan to leave in a way that strengthened what would remain. The departure also marked the beginning of a different kind of journey.

Together with his wife, he hiked the entire Gröna Bandet trail, from Treriksröset to Grövelsjön – a conscious way to reset both body and mind ahead of the next phase of life.

Building sustainable teams over time

In his role at Add Insight, Johan looks forward to working closely with executive teams and organisations that want to strengthen their collaboration and leadership in a long-term, sustainable way. The ambition is not to deliver quick fixes, but to contribute to clarity and improved interaction over time.

Johan himself summarises his mission simply: to help organisations create the conditions for people to work together in ways that are value-creating and sustainable over the long term.