Bengt Lindström

Bengt Lindström, born 1953, has been an organizational development consultant for more than 25 years. Bengt is one of the owners and the CEO of the A&L Group.
A&L AB (Inc). was established by Bengt and a couple of colleagues in 1991. Since 2004 he owns and runs the business together with Eva Widegren . A&L Partners AB is a subsidiary and Fyrarummaren AB (The Four Rooms of Change Inc) is part-owned with Claes Janssen, Ph.D. since 1994. Claes Janssen is the originator of the Four Rooms of Change Theory and Tools. A&L AB is also incorporating in the USA.

From 1985 until 1991 Bengt was part owner in the OD consulting firm AB Arbetskonsulter where he was active in different positions in management and member of the board of trustees. Before that he was employed as an internal OD consultant and pedagogical expert within the Cooperative Association of Swedish Farmers, where he was focused on management and business development especially in the field of production such as feed milling and grain handling as well as machine retailing. This company group had more than 10000 employees at the time and was commonly owned by more than 60000 farmers. Bengt also worked with owner representation, democracy issues and development of board of trustees.

During the seventies Bengt worked with pedagogical and training development within the Swedish Military Defense system.

Recently Bengt has been working a lot with the public sector but has also several assignments in the for-profit sector and also in the non-profit and peace keeping organizations, such as UNICEF and trade unions. During the late eighties and the nineties Bengt had deep engagements as an OD consultant to different companies within the energy sector such as nuclear power plants, distribution of electricity and gas and marketing. For example he helped one big player in the energy sector to create an innovative, highly productive and sustainable service system for management succession planning.

Bengt has fundamental experience from the position as supportive and confrontative consultant to all kinds of positions, managers, specialists, teachers, chairmen of boards and many more as well as to internal and external consultants including project managers of huge IS and IT projects.

For more than 10 years Bengt has been teaching Organizational Diagnosis and Consulting Skills in the Psychology program at Uppsala University in Sweden. Bengt is also busy with different projects internationally, especially in the USA.

Work life

• 1991- Partowner, CEO and General Manager, OD Consultant, A&L Group
• 1985-1991 OD Consultant, part owner, board of trustees member, AB Arbetskonsulter
• 1978-1985 Internal OD Consultant and training expert in the Farmer's Cooperation
• 1973-1978 Team manger, project leader, and pedagogical expert Swedish Defense
• 1972-1973 Military service, officer training
• 1971-1972 Guard and treater in one of Swedish maximum security prison

Examples of assignment over the last few years

• Management and Leadership training programs, mostly long ones, in large and small organizations and on all levels
• The Leader and the Business planning and implementation of a career development program aimed at first and second line managers appointed by top management to work towards a top level management position in the leading financial institution
• Creation and implementation of Management Succession Planning Systems in big organizations including the phases of finding, developing, keeping and phasing out managers and management functions based on the organizations values, the business' uniqueness as well as informed estimates of the future needs of the specific organization and its customers and other stake holders
• Business analysis and organizational diagnosis
• Support to management teams, boards, project teams and work groups
• Development support to different part of the school system – kindergarten, elementary, middle school, high school, universities and other educational institutions
• Professional development programs for OD consultants, internal and external, HR, OD and management development consultants
• Development and radical change support to large and complex systems – often using Future Search and Breakpoint conferences as breakthrough tools. Bengt has experience from more than 20 completed Future Search programs
• Consultation and change support using business mapping and process orientation of businesses
• External Speaking Partner, shorter and longer series of conversations supporting single employees to handle his or her situation to make more conscious and informed choices
• Business and management support to organizations in severe crisis, when the management system has collapsed or when the organization is on the border of causing substantial damage to the environment.

Education

University studies focused on behavioral sciences such as pedagogics, sociology, teaching-, training-, and learning technologies and psychology. Post university studies in group and organization psychology, professional consultation, communication, large group psychology and large group intervention, democracy and human rights and more.

Bengt has been lecturing on Good Practice in OD Consultation, Organizational Diagnosis and Consultative Work Procedures since 1993 in Psychology Program at Uppsala University in Sweden. For several years he also lectured at University of Lund in HR Program on the topic of The Identity of the HR Generalist and Specialist.

Areas of expertise

Bengt's most valued competence is what clients often refer to as being consultatively present, to be a patient support to the client (or the client system) that appreciates a consultant who doesn’t always have the right answer.

Over the years Bengt has, by himself and together with clients and colleagues, developed, deepened and refined concepts, tools and materials within the following areas:

• Succession planning system – customized systems for finding, developing, keeping and phasing out leaders and management functions. This is done in an integrated way, linked to the uniqueness and logic of the specific business and its value base and ethics. It is future focused and highly productive; one client organization estimated the profitability of the succession planning process in action was three to one, Three dollars in return on every dollar invested in the process.
• Action-Reflection-Learning-based leadership and business development. Building learning platforms on present reality is a simple, but not easy, hard to beat arena for adult growth.
• Group psychology and group development in practice for all levels of managers, based on the Tavistock and A.K. Rice tradition, a powerful alternative or complement to most other team skills trainings. Can easily be built into other management training programs with action learning focus.
• Consultative approach and working skills as well as staff units role in respect of line and production business units.
• Bengt has become known as the founder of the process of Value-based Consulting
• Change support and change management as well as creating more stability in the middle of chaos.
• 25+ years of working with the Four Rooms of Change and 15 years of close collaboration with Claes Janssen, Ph.D., originator of the Four Rooms of Change, researcher, psychologist and author have made Bengt one of the most experienced practitioners in the world.

Bengt has been part of developing the best-practice that we now deliver in the certification programs. Properly used it helps individuals to insights that sometimes have a direct effect on certain important choices or the possibilities to collaborate with someone. In the same way it has proven to be of invaluable help to lots of large and small organizations around the world. Bengt developed the certification process and he is one of the few who has formal eligibility to certify others and to issue company licences, regional and/or country licences.

A few references
Please follow the link to Clients and references.

Contact Bengt Lindstrom at bengt@andolin.com.