6) Catherine Janson og Kjerstin Wester: The power of two!

Truls Jørgensen og Audun Fauchald Strand — Heis Podcast · podcast · 2025-12-01 source ↗ Reader 🖥️

Dual Leadership Informal Leadership Psychological Safety Public-Sector Digitalization Technology Leadership (Heis)Trust

{'english': "Two-person leadership — 'the power of two' — is not a designed pairing or a formal structure but an emergent, trust-based working relationship between leaders whose strengths are complementary and whose explicit rule is 'if something feels off, say it once'; when it works it produces psychological safety, faster organizational metabolism (one leader pulls long-arc direction while the other lands structure and detail in real time), and a refusal of the leader-as-individual-hero default. The conditions that make it possible are not personality alone but a culture of explicit non-competition, mutual fremsnakk (talking each other up in their absence), and willingness to operate fluidly across hierarchical configurations — over, under, sideways — without the relationship breaking. The episode is also, by demonstration, an argument that this dyadic leadership is itself a competence layered on top of conventional leadership skills (listening to technologists, translating across disciplines, setting OKR-style direction, accepting that mistakes will happen) — and that you discover the pairing rather than plan it.", 'norwegian': "Toleder-relasjonen — 'the power of two' — er ikke et planlagt par eller en formell struktur, men et fremvokst, tillitsbasert arbeidsforhold mellom ledere med komplementære styrker, hvor den eneste eksplisitte regelen er 'sier vi det én gang hvis noe skurrer'; når det fungerer, gir det psykologisk trygghet, raskere organisatorisk metabolisme (én leder drar de lange linjene mens den andre lander struktur og detalj i sanntid), og et avhopp fra forestillingen om leder-som-ensom-helt. Forutsetningene er ikke bare personlighet, men en kultur for eksplisitt ikke-konkurranse, gjensidig fremsnakk og evnen til å bevege seg fritt mellom hierarkiske konfigurasjoner — over, under, sideordnet — uten at relasjonen knekker. Episoden er også, ved demonstrasjon, et argument for at toleder-praksis er en kompetanse på toppen av vanlig lederkompetanse (lytte til teknologer, oversette mellom fag, sette OKR-retning, akseptere at det vil skje feil) — og at par-forholdet oppdages, det planlegges ikke."}

Key terms

Propositions

descriptiveA productive two-person leadership relationship is discovered, not designed — it survives changes in hierarchical configuration (over, under, sideordnet) without breaking because the relationship is the unit, not the org-chart position.
descriptiveTwo-person leadership produces a felt sense of trygghet (safety) that materially raises productivity — 'veldig trygt og produktivt' is the consistent experience across configurations.
descriptiveCatherine's strengths are the 'store linjer' — storytelling, vision-generation, knowing where to go — and these are exactly the things Kjerstin describes as not matching her own personality; the complementarity is not invented but factually present.
descriptiveKjerstin's complementary strengths are structure-landing, near-photographic memory for people and prior context, and the ability to bind Catherine's improvised store-linje speech down into legible structure in real time.
prescriptiveThe only explicit governance rule needed for two-person leadership is: when something feels off, say it once.
prescriptiveTwo-person leadership requires the explicit refusal of competitive impulse — neither leader may seek to elevate herself at the other's expense; the default must be to lift the other.
descriptiveCatherine never set out to be a leader; she wanted a seat at the table where decisions are made — particularly when others at that table were making bad decisions. Leadership is means to influence, not an end.
descriptiveKjerstin's path to leadership was selection-by-others, not self-promotion — she 'ramled inn i ting' as colleagues recognized her capabilities; her organization invested in her development through a deliberate mentor-adept program at Ergo Group.
descriptiveThe largest misconception about leading technologists is that it is easy — technologists' culture of direct, impersonal critique reads to outsiders as conflict, and a leader trained in non-technology cultures will initially experience this as personal attack.
prescriptiveA leader of technologists must deliberately invest in developing the non-technology competencies of the technologists — autonomy, ansvar, relasjonskompetanse, kommunikasjonskompetanse — because technical competence develops itself but the others do not.
descriptivecorroboratedTechnologists' ability to depersonalize critique is the trained product of code review — a daily practice of giving and receiving feedback on work invested in over time selects for people who can hear 'this isn't good enough' without identity-collapse.
supports ←Our Favorite Management Tips on Giving Feedback · p11 — Heis-06 claims depersonalizing critique is a trained product of repeated code-review practice; this document's synthesis (separating person from behavior via structure, timing, and invitation) describes the same underlying skill in the general management-feedback setting, corroborating that the mechanism is not specific to code review.
prescriptiveA leader of technologists must understand enough technology to (a) set direction, (b) hire other tech leaders well, and (c) participate at retning-nivå in technology discussions — but should not try to settle which specific technology to use.
descriptiveSuccessful digitalization is not a technology problem — it is the leader's act of sewing together many parallel streams (regelverk, sikkerhet, penger, samfunnsoppdrag, kriminalitetsbildet, teknologi) into a totalbilde that lets people understand what is prioritized.
prescriptiveOKR works as a multi-year discipline (take some weeks to learn, a lifetime to master); the value comes from cascading objectives into kompetanseutvikling that supports the year's specific focus.
descriptiveTydelig retning at scale has a ceiling — beyond a few hundred employees, 'alle marsjerer i takt' is unattainable and probably undesirable; one year of intense OKR work at PIT did not move the medarbeiderundersøkelse scores on retning/strategi, and that is partly because the bar was unrealistic.
prescriptiveAspirant leaders in technology organizations should be spotted early and grown systematically — there is more than one entry ramp (faggruppe lead, ufarlig in-team leader role) before formell ledelse, and this graduated path is itself an advantage technology environments have over other professions.
descriptiveLeadership is contextual: which leadership a person needs depends where they are in the Dreyfus skill-acquisition stages — beginners need recipes, advanced beginners need space to err and learn, competents can teach beginners, experts revise the rules.
descriptiveIn complex technology operations, failures will recur; the only guarantee against making mistakes is to do nothing — itself a worse mistake. The institutional response should be evaluation-as-learning, not blame-as-scapegoating.
descriptiveTop-leader positions in large public-sector tech operations are structurally near-impossible — set up for failure on a long enough timeline; no recent NAV top-leader has 'left across the goal line.'
descriptiveKjerstin's pattern-recognition for people and prior interactions is a cognitive trait she does not work for ('jeg bruker ikke noen energi på det') — it is constitutional, observed in her parents — and it materially contributes to the partnership's leadership effectiveness.
prescriptiveWhen new technology arrives, the leader's question is not 'can we install it?' but 'what is the question this answers?' — work backward from the forretningskrav, not forward from the tool.
descriptiveThe first stress-test of the dyad was the moment Catherine's role moved from peer to formal boss of Kjerstin (when Ola Furu transitioned); the relationship survived only because they explicitly discussed what the new configuration meant for them.

Arguments

A two-person leadership relationship cannot be engineered top-down because what makes it work — complementary cognitive defaults plus mutual non-competition — is either present or not; the structural insight is to recognize and protect such pairings where they emerge, not to design them.

The minimum-viable governance of a leadership pair is one explicit rule that licenses direct naming of friction, plus an implicit norm of fremsnakk; anything more becomes overhead.

Leading technologists at scale benefits from a leadership pair where one holds altitude (Catherine, store linjer, samfunnsoppdrag-translation) and the other holds the landing (Kjerstin, structure, real-time translation, kontekst-switching insight) — because no single leader can simultaneously hold both.

It is structurally hard for any public-sector tech top leader to 'cross the goal line' — and the dominant institutional response (scapegoat-hunting after failures) actively destroys the learning that would make the next leader better.

Technical knowledge in tech leadership is necessary at the level of direction and hiring, harmful at the level of specific technical decisions; the leader's discipline is to stay at the right altitude.

6) Catherine Janson og Kjerstin Wester: The power of two!

Key terms

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