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I believe the right people in the right roles can transform an entire organisation. For…
Articles by Torbjorn
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Changing focus in a in world that’s being re-imaged by the COVID crisis
Changing focus in a in world that’s being re-imaged by the COVID crisis
By now it should be clear to everyone that we live in a complex world, where patterns and inter-connectivity is not…
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Evolving business environments
Evolving business environments
Take how Asian airlines have evolved for example due to their natural geographical and sociology-economic…
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisInnovation is not optional. Neither is managing what it breaks on the way. That is the argument Nam Soon LIEW makes in “Risks of Innovation and Transformation”, in the Singapore Institute of Directors' Bulletin for the second quarter of 2025, and it applies with unusual force to how organisations are currently adopting artificial intelligence. The pattern I see is a rush to deploy before the foundations exist. A use case is identified, a tool is bought, and only afterwards does anyone discover that the underlying data is inconsistent, the governance is undefined, and nobody agreed who is accountable when the system is wrong. The benefits then get consumed by the cost of fixing what should have been built first. For governments the same failure has a longer tail, because a poorly-governed public system erodes something harder to rebuild than a balance sheet. The discipline that helps both the public and private sector is deceptively simple: ask what the worst legal and ethical outcome of this deployment could be, and answer it honestly, before a regulator or an industry body defines the answer for you. Organisations that have run that exercise first tend to move faster afterwards, not slower. Has your organisation asked that question out loud yet — or is it waiting to be asked? #Governance #AI
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisMost boards can hold a fluent conversation about artificial intelligence. Far fewer have done the unglamorous work of deciding which jobs it should touch. In “Harnessing AI for Business Transformation”, published in the Singapore Institute of Directors' Directors Bulletin in the second quarter of 2025, Steven Yates argues that the familiar People-Process-Technology model with Data at the centre no longer fits, and proposes a new framework of Actors, Data and Governance to ensure humans remains central to AI integration. It is a useful reframing, and the part I keep returning to is the triage it forces. Three categories, and a board should be able to name examples in each. - Roles being replaced, where the task is genuinely automatable and the honest response is a transition plan rather than a communications strategy. - Roles being augmented, where the work changes shape and the people in them need retraining rather than replacing and - Roles that must remain human, where judgment, accountability or empathy cannot be delegated to a system — not because the technology cannot approximate them, but because someone must remain answerable. The third category is the one most often skipped, and it is the one with governance consequences. If no board member can say which decisions must keep a human signature on them, that question is being answered by default — in the procurement process, by whoever configures the system. Could your board name a role in each of the three categories today? #Governance #AI
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisMercedes-Benz sold 30% fewer cars in China last quarter, and the reason should worry anyone selling a premium or differentiated product into Asia. The company booked a €704m impairment on its Chinese business, and earnings before interest and tax in its car division fell to €49m from €783m a year earlier. Volkswagen, Audi and BMW have all cut guidance on the same market. Mercedes attributed it to intense price competition, particularly from local manufacturers, and cautious consumers. Price competition is the explanation offered, but I am not sure it is the whole story. Something more awkward is happening: the definition of what is good enough has moved, and it did not move in Stuttgart. For decades a European premium badge carried a settled meaning — engineering, longevity, status — and that meaning travelled. What has changed is that domestic manufacturers now meet the standard that local buyers actually care about, which increasingly means software, interior technology and the experience of the cabin rather than the drivetrain. The product did not get worse. The definition of value was rewritten by someone else. This is not really a story about cars. Any organisation selling into this region on the assumption that its own definition of quality is the operative one is exposed to the same reversal, and will likely notice it in the numbers before it notices it in the market. Who is defining value in your market — and are you certain it is still you? #Strategy
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisThe most persuasive case for sustainability I heard in Bangkok had nothing to do with the climate. It was about supply. A regional operator explained that their reason for diversifying energy sources was not a target or a disclosure requirement, but the fact that a single point of failure in their supply chain had already cost them a quarter's production once, and they had no appetite to find out whether it would happen twice. I have been circling this argument for a while. Sustainability has been sold to boards for a decade as an obligation — something reported, audited and complied with. That framing was always vulnerable, because obligations get trimmed the moment conditions tighten. And conditions have tightened. The resilience argument is sturdier, because it survives a downturn. A company that has diversified its energy inputs, shortened its exposure to a single corridor, and understood its own dependencies is more robust in a disrupted world regardless of what one believes about the climate. The environmental benefit is real; it is simply no longer the part that persuades a chief financial officer. That may be the most useful reframing available: stop asking boards to accept a cost, and start showing them a risk they already carry. Does that argument land in your organisation, or does sustainability still sit in the compliance column? #Sustainability #Energy Ponlawat Pichitchaichan
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisThe cheque is the easy part. I have spent this week in Bangkok at AixEnergy , co-located with Gastech Exhibition & Conference, with my colleague Ponlawat Pichitchaichan,Ponlawat Pichitchaichan, and the numbers were never in dispute. Something close to $800bn went into data centres last year and the figure is heading past a trillion. More than 850 gigawatts of capacity has been announced worldwide, about two-thirds of it in the United States. Southeast Asia has over $50bn of AI infrastructure investment on the table, and demand in Thailand has grown by 165%. What I kept testing in the corridors was whether capital is really the binding constraint. I do not think it is. You can move a Norwegian engineer to France and, cultural differences aside, they will largely do the job. There is almost no equivalent mobility between Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Companies move their own people internally; cross-border recruiting is thin. Build-outs in one market end up drawing on senior people from another who have no intention of relocating — and the sites are moving further from the cities, not closer. A gigawatt can be financed in “an afternoon”. The people who can run it across borders, regulators and a decade of operation cannot. That mismatch, not the funding, is what will set the pace of this build-out in ASEAN. Who is actually developing the leaders these projects will need in five years — and where do you expect to find them? #Energy #ASEAN Rystad Energy Bloomberg
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisThis week takes me to Bangkok for Gastech Exhibition & Conference and AixEnergy I am going with one question in mind. Most of the discussion about the energy transition in this region is framed as a financing problem — how much capital, on what terms, from whom. I am less convinced that capital is the binding constraint. Increasingly it looks like leadership: whether there are enough people who can run a project of this complexity, across borders and regulatory regimes, and see it through a decade. If you are there, I would welcome the conversation — whether you think I have this the wrong way round, or if you just agree with me! #Gastech #Energy #ASEAN #Infrastructure
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisSomewhere between the fifth and sixth conversation of a long day, I usually stop listening properly. Not deliberately. The diary fills, the meetings stack, and each one gets the version of my attention that the schedule permits rather than the one the person in front of me deserves. I suspect this is nearly universal among people who spend their days in conversation, and I suspect most of us are worse at hiding it than we think. The correction I keep returning to is unglamorous: leave a gap. Not for preparation or for reading the brief, but simply so the previous conversation has somewhere to go before the next one begins. The weeks where I manage it are not the productive-looking ones. They are the ones where I remember what people actually said. And that's my weekend thought.
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisWestern boards are asking what artificial intelligence will let them cut. That is not the question I hear in Asia. In the United States and much of Europe, the AI conversation at board level is a cost conversation. Labour is expensive, headcount is the largest controllable line, and the technology arrives as a way to do the same work with fewer people. The logic is sound on its own terms and the pressure to act is real. Across much of Asia the arithmetic is different. Labour costs less, workforces are younger, and the binding constraint is not the wage bill — it is finding enough capable people fast enough to keep pace with growth. Here AI reads less as a substitute than as a way to make a scarce senior population go further. The consequence for succession is the part few are discussing. The roles most exposed to automation in the Western framing are precisely the junior and middle positions where judgment is learned. Cut them for cost, and the saving is immediate while the damage — a thinner bench in a decade — arrives long after the executive who authorised it has moved on. A leadership pipeline is not a cost line. It is the asset that determines whether the organisation still has options in ten years. Which question is your board asking — what can we remove, or what can we now attempt? #Leadership #AI
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Torbjorn Karlsson posted thisThe most common misunderstanding about executive coaching is that it is for people who are struggling. I hear it in the way coaching gets offered. A leader is underperforming, or has bruised a few relationships, and someone suggests a coach. The intent is kind. The signal is not. It tells the organisation, and the individual, that coaching is what happens when something has gone wrong. That framing wastes the tool entirely. In my experience the people who gain most from coaching are not the ones in difficulty. They are the ones already performing well, who have run out of people willing to tell them anything useful. The higher you go, the more the feedback thins out — and the more consequential your blind spots become. Coaching at that level is not repair. It is the deliberate work of helping a capable person reach the edge of what they are actually capable of, which is almost always further than their current role asks of them. The organisations that understand this offer coaching as an investment in their strongest people, not a remedy for their weakest. Which way round is it where you work? #Coaching
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Torbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisTorbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisGoodbye Airbus! As a kid growing up in Cameroon, I spent hours looking at the sky with one seemingly impossible dream: to master the physics of flight to connect cultures. Against many odds, for the last twenty years, I have had the profound privilege of living that childhood dream every single day at Airbus ✈️. From designing critical aircraft components to leading global manufacturing operations, the drones programmes and services, and ultimately the groundbreaking Digital Design, Manufacturing and Services transformation, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the future of our beloved industry, this journey has been nothing short of extraordinary. Airbus will always be family, but I felt it was the right time to pivot. Just as I had the courage to chase my first dream, I now have the courage to pursue a second one outside of the corporate world. I am stepping away with a heart full of gratitude. I did not achieve these milestones alone; I succeeded because of you: the leaders who believed in me, the mentors who guided me, the brilliant teams who designed and executed our visions with relentless dedication, and the customers and partners who trusted us to deliver. Thank you for your trust, your challenge, and your partnership. I leave carrying many great memories with me. My first dream was about connecting. The second is about enabling: making the space economy a real source of sovereignty and prosperity for the people in Europe and, just as much, in Africa. That's where I will spend this next chapter: building the physical infrastructure and the ecosystems to unlock that potential. Energized for what's next 🚀.
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Torbjorn Karlsson liked thisTorbjorn Karlsson liked thisA new chapter for our MRO Services We are pleased to announce the appointment of Eng Guan TAY as EVP and Head of MRO Services, effective 1 October 2026. Eng Guan will oversee our Airframe, Engine, Component and Nacelle Services, bringing together the breadth of our MRO capabilities under his leadership. As we continue to strengthen our MRO offering as an integral part of our Aviation Lifecycle Solution, this appointment reinforces our commitment to working as one team, harnessing our collective capabilities and delivering greater value to customers around the world. We congratulate Eng Guan on his appointment and look forward to his leadership in shaping the next chapter of our MRO Services. #STEngineering #CommercialAerospace #MRO #Aviation #Leadership
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Torbjorn Karlsson liked thisTorbjorn Karlsson liked thisThis is one of these days when we rally together with pride, excitement, and passion to celebrate a collective achievement. Today, we have made history by performing the 1st flight of the Airbus #A350F in its striking parcel-inspired livery. The A350F, powered by the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines, is a special aircraft that will revolutionise the cargo market with unprecedented performance, technologies and functionalities. Congrats to our flight test crew for this beautifully executed first flight: Experimental Test Pilots Bernardo Saez-Benito Hernandez and Sylvain GUIRAUD; Test-Flight Engineer Ludovic Girard; and Flight-Test-Engineers Laurent BUSSIERE and Jaime Angoloti Benavides. This first flight is the outcome of the great work, the engagement and the dedication of thousands of Airbus colleagues across all our sites - I am grateful to all of them and to our partners. It has been an intense development journey for the last few years, and today is our collective reward. We will now start the flight test campaign that will lead us to certification and entry into service next year. Our pioneering spirit at Airbus remains stronger than ever as we continue to push boundaries and explore new territories. Let’s cherish this spirit, build on our success, and do it again together!
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Torbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisTorbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisA compelling publication from the Aaru team - we tested our simulations against 2,993 questions and 13,727 answer shares, across nine industries and 186 different studies, here are the results... https://lnkd.in/d-xZKZ8UPopulation simulation at the replication floor | AaruPopulation simulation at the replication floor | Aaru
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Torbjorn Karlsson liked thisYesterday I walked out of the Kuehne & Nagel office in Suntec after having handed over my laptop and access badge. Now time for a break - ok long weekend - and then a new adventure to start Monday. The 9 months with Kuehne were great and I want to thank the many great colleagues that made my time there amazing. More to follow next week.
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Torbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisTorbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisAbout 120 people came out on a Tuesday evening to talk about alternative work models. Tuesday evening (7:30PM, no less!) is when most people are at home, eating dinner and ignoring their inboxes. Instead, they came all the way to Eunos, sat at tables with strangers, and told a room full of consultants what putting themselves out there for fractional and independent work is like. It was about what happens when the career you spent twenty years building decides it's done with you before you're done with it. People talked about being called "overqualified", which is a polite way of saying something that isn't polite at all. But most of the evening wasn't about that. People talked about starting again at 50 and finding it more interesting than they expected. They talked about courses they'd signed up for, side projects that were turning into something real, and skills they hadn't realised they could take somewhere new. Mostly, they talked about wanting their work to matter, and a lot of them seemed quite sure they'd get there. What struck me was the energy in the room. There was some frustration, and it was fair. It just didn't last long, because people were busy swapping names, trading ideas and asking each other "have you tried this?" Most of them had been knocked down at least once. They came anyway, curious and a little stubborn, and wanted to know what comes next. By the end of the night, a few of them looked like they'd started to find out. The Courage Chapter is well named. Deciding that your experience still counts takes courage, especially when the market keeps hinting otherwise. Saying so out loud to a table of strangers takes even more. We'll be taking what we heard into the work we're doing on second careers and more flexible ways of working. It would be a bit rich to ask 120 people to be honest and then file it away somewhere. Thank you Kai Ning and Jesslyn for building a community where these conversations can happen. Thank you Ryo for joining the panel and talking about his own career as a storyteller. And thanks to the wonderful team that I had the pleasure of working with - Lee Yen Dorcas You Jing Weiwei Cheryl Punnag Nikki Jazreel Lim Jun Wei Lui Yan Yang Prama This event is part of an Alliance for Action initiative, jointly supported by Ministry of Manpower and the Skills & Workforce Development Agency (SWDA), that looks at more flexible ways of working. That includes fractional and project-based roles that let experienced professionals bring their skills to SMEs without squeezing themselves back into a traditional job. If you're an SME that could use senior HR or Finance expertise without a full-time hire, or a professional who would like to be part of this, drop me a message. We're only getting started. #AFAACES
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Torbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisTorbjorn Karlsson reacted on thisTwelve years at Edelweiss. What an incredible journey. ✈️ Today marks the end of my time as CEO of Edelweiss and of a chapter that has meant a great deal to me, both professionally and personally. I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved together. During these twelve years, Edelweiss has grown from around 40 to more than 100 destinations and from almost 500 to nearly 1,700 employees. We have expanded our network, opened new markets, continuously renewed our fleet and developed our product, while further strengthening Edelweiss as a leading Swiss premium leisure airline. What makes me particularly proud is what the Edelweiss team has achieved together. The talent, passion and professionalism of our colleagues make Edelweiss what it is today. I have had the privilege of working with so many committed and passionate people over the past twelve years, as well as with many partners who have supported us along the way. Leading Edelweiss has been fulfilling, rewarding and at times challenging. I have always approached the role with a lot of energy, conviction and commitment, and I have truly enjoyed these twelve years. From October 1st, Edi Wolfensberger will take over as CEO of Edelweiss. I am very pleased to hand over the controls to Edi. With his experience in aviation and within the Lufthansa Group, I am convinced that Edelweiss is in very good hands. I wish Edi and the entire team every success for the future. Thank you, Edelweiss. It has been a privilege. ❤
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Torbjorn Karlsson liked thisTorbjorn Karlsson liked thisCongratulations Singapore Institute of Directors on the launch of the SID Board Academy and am thrilled to be the pioneer lecturer and presenter for its first international board program on sustainability in Bangkok,Thailand. What I saw was the Leadership and Stakeholders of the group who were already at the top of their game on corporate governance and ESG reporting: the four large corporate boards who attended the training were relentless and thirsty for new methodologies and best practices on ESG & specifically sustainabilty. Noteworthy that all these four boards were already ranked in the top 50 (or top 5 in trust category) of the SGTI annual ranking for listed companies on the SGX. I truly envy this board of directors who as a group is driven to "Be The Best They Can Be” , even when they already are! A world class role model for boards culture and governance!
Experience & Education
Licenses & Certifications
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SID Director Accreditation
Singapore Institute of Directors
IssuedCredential ID https://credentials.sid.org.sg/0123c16a-a955-4403-9230-03eaaf96c0ed#acc.alLo0kO6 -
CERTIFIED HOLISTIC LIFE, CAREER & EXECUTIVE COACH
Goal Imagery® Coaching Academy - International School of Coaching Mastery™
IssuedCredential ID ul3T0woeK8 -
Executive Programme on AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning
Deloitte
IssuedCredential ID RA\EPAMDL\E-LEARNING Serial No. : d7b3-425b-570b-a6df
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John McKirdy
An important step forward for Barnes Aerospace and our continued growth in Asia-Pacific. Singapore has long been an important part of our global network, and this collaboration creates an opportunity to explore how we can further expand our repair capabilities, technical expertise, and advanced technologies in the region. For our customers, it’s about continuing to invest where they need us—building greater capability, responsiveness, and support to solve increasingly complex turbine engine challenges. Proud of the team behind this work and excited about what we can build together. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Singapore EDB to advance the future of aerospace in the region. #BarnesAerospace #Singapore #AerospaceMRO #ComponentRepair #ThinkBarnesAero
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Justina Tan (IHRP-MP)
Rapid business changes, shifting workforce needs, AI-driven work redesign, and new skills demands have made the role of HR more critical than ever, as noted in the recent Committee of Supply Debates. The Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP) has been working this space, advancing the HR profession by setting standards, promoting certification, and fostering a future-ready professional HR community to drive impact for organisations and enhance Singapore’s competitiveness. Glad to be a part of this purposeful journey and to be given the opportunity to contribute as an IHRP Master Professional. Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP) Aslam Sardar, PBM
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