Changing tracks is not impossible. Follow your heart and trust your instinct. This is what Henrik Johansson (CFO) at Garmin had to say.

Henrik is a loving husband and father to two girls, he sits in the prime of his career and looks at his future based on what challenges and opportunities lay ahead but also on a good place to work. His outdoor interests, coupled with love for sports is a perfect fit to the brand Garmin. Henrik is still quite new to Garmin having started during October 2022.  He describes himself as “enthusiastic, kind and good listener”. His enthusiasm coming from his enjoyment of what he is doing. In his opinion this is one corner stone of being all you can be.  Flexibility and work balance is equally important and more so in current working climates because of everything going on around us. Flexibility can come more from being a consultant than permanent but it also depends on the company you work for. In this case Garmin is delivering very high on work life balance.

Henrik has had a long career starting as an Accountant and moving more towards business controlling and getting into the business and then coming more into management roles. A career spanning over more than 20 years.  Now he has landed into his dream job as CFO at Garmin. His responsibilities include leading a direct team of 6 managers, located around the Nordic region. Reporting directly to the “”worlds best CEO” and a dotted line to the group CFO in Europe.

Henrik has a variety of experiences in different industries, its expected these days to be diverse in your skill sets, perhaps a little harder to change from industry to industry when being fixed, but more possible if working as a consultant. He says its not so challenging to change industries especially in finance since the same tools apply under the finance responsibility. Henrik feels that regardless of your situation as a consultant or interim, you should always feel welcome to the team and made to feel part of the group regardless, if you are only on a short project. For those who want to enter into the consulting world, Henrik strongest advise is “follow your stomach feeling” and “follow your heart” when deciding your next project, mainly around the culture and values of the company. The work and responsibilities are more or less the same from company to company. Which is why Garmin has become so valuable to him because his stomach feeling matched what he thought was the values and culture at Garmin.

Henrik was humble in saying that we are always learning and we never reach our full potential and we can not say we are complete.  We should challenge ourselves to be all we can be……