Author Archives: pedro.gomezgarrido

Before Aksel died, Christoffer’s life could be described as perfectly happy. He had a good restaurant which was going really well and he was engaged to a lovely woman with whom he had a very good relationship.

After Christoffer’s father died, his mom was clearly pushing him to take over as the CEO of the firm. At the beginning, I think he acted correctly by talking to his wife about the situation. But after that, when they informed the employees about the father’s death, he immediately told everyone that he was going to take over the firm. This was an emotional decision; he just looked at everyone there and let his emotions guide him for saying that. In situations like this the best option they had was to have family counseling. They should have had several meetings with an expert in this kind of situations that could serve as a mediator between the family members.

If you think about the family situation they were clearly in tension because of the both the fact that the father had just died and the fact that they had a deficit in the company financed by a bank that wanted to take the firm. After Christoffer made the decision of taking over the firm that created another tension which was between him and his wife Maria who didn’t want him to do that.

If you think about the relationship between a person as important as the CFO of the company (in this case Nils) and the family, I don’t think it was quite good. He was a distant person who didn’t have any type of communication with anybody but the CEO. After the father died he seemed to get closer to the mother because she was the one taking the decisions for the moment, but overall there wasn’t an atmosphere of trust between the family and him.

When the situation of Ulkirk and the rumor occurred, I think it was the ideal circumstance for having a family assembly in which everybody could talk about their feelings and how do they think they should handle the situation. They never asked Ulkirk if the rumors were true or not, they just believed Nills.

I absolutely agree with the possibility of discussing the situation with him. Sometimes things happen and you don’t even realize they did. You just do something stupid with no bad intentions and it’s misunderstood by someone who gets you in real trouble. So that’s why a conversation is never a bad option.

The board of Directors of the company was composed by the mother, the CFO (Nills) and eventually Christoffer when he accepted to be the new CEO. This was very strange because of how big the company was, it was supposed to include more people in the meetings but those were the ones I could see.

In the situation of letting go Nils as the CFO of the company, I would’ve acted differently. I would’ve told Nills the situation since it was informed to Christoffer by the owners of the merging company, and just be honest with him. Not all of sudden tell him that he’s not going to need him, I don’t think that was classy.

When Christoffer and his mother ran-into Ulkirk and Benedotke at the restaurant, they acted so rudely. They are family and if the run into each other in any place they have to at least say hi. They acted as if they didn’t care and when you are dealing with family issued you always care.

When they were at the dinner after the merger and Christoffer talked about the future, he demonstrated autocratic leadership style. He was talking about things that affected his wife without talking to her in advance. That was probably why she left the dinner with the excuse of the headache.

After Chistoffer’s wife left him he became very unstable emotionally. He began drinking, he was transformed.  He even tried to rape a woman that was cleaning his pool area. He clearly needed psychological help immediately.

In terms of the the primary values that you want your successor to have, I would say that Christoffer seemed to express the value of integrity before his father died. If you think about commitment, he probably had that but not with his family business.

When the father died he became a workaholic. He didn’t spend any time with his wife, he became cold like his mother and seemed not have any emotions with nobody.

The nature of Christoffer’s succession was normative. He was not into the business before the father died. Indeed he was concentrated in his own business. When the father passed away he was pushed by his mother to take over as the CEO of the firm so he made it to accommodate the family (which is the definition of normative succession), in this case to accommodate his mother.

A succession plan was not developed before the father died. They had no idea who would take over if something happened to Aksel. If they would’ve had a plan, immediately after Aksel dead they would’ve know that they needed an immediate meeting with the family, board of directors and owners of the business. Probably with a succession plan already prepared they would’ve had a resolution that explained what’s going to be the role of everybody in the company from this moment on, the new CEO of the company would’ve taken place immediately, and the whole process would’ve been smoother.

If I were Christoffer, from the beginning I would’ve let my brother take over the firm. He had worked there for several years and he loved the company. I already had a good life and I wouldn’t ruin it because my mother wants me to.