Anna, business area manager for Daresay

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Knightec's newest business area Daresay is led by Anna Lindstrand, who is also part of Knightec's management team. Anna took over the helm of Daresay last autumn after the current CEO left at the same time as the pandemic set the industry in motion and customers' innovation budgets were curtailed.

A work situation that created an uncomfortable gut feeling made Anna Lindstrand leave the advertising industry. She wrote a list of qualities her new employer should have. Most of all she wanted to find a workplace that respected employees and strived to contribute to society.

The choice fell on Daresay, which faced several years of rapid expansion. After five years in various roles, last year she got the chance to take over the company, which at that time had multiplied the number of employees and hired experts from all corners of the world - but which was also in the middle of a cataclysmic pandemic.

After the merger with Knightec, she looks to the future with confidence and excitement:

- It has been a turbulent year for all of us, the corona pandemic affecting the service sector strongly this spring and summer, but the recovery has been rapid. Among other things, Daresay got the chance to help elderly and other less computer-savvy people to keep in contact with their relatives despite social isolation. In addition, Daresay merged with Knightec, which is a major and important milestone.

- We have managed to turn the setbacks at the beginning of 2020 into a good result, better than 2019 in fact, and with significantly more new customers than in recent years. It's the result of a great collaboration and something I'm incredibly proud of.

- We have fought very hard to bring in new business, but at the same time, we have had a sense of security in our government assignments where we have been able to cooperate and be strong together with them. Many of our clients have the digital customer meeting in focus, which has therefore become even more of a priority than before covid.

- The pace of innovation has admittedly decreased slightly in another sense: customers have not wanted to go into large innovation projects because there has been a great deal of uncertainty about the future. We believe that it will come back more and more now that we feel greater security again, it is a big change if you look at the industry as a whole.

Since the turn of the year, Anna has been business area manager for Daresay and is part of Knightec's management team, which she thinks feels very exciting.

- Above all, I feel very confident that I have been at Daresay for so many years that I know the organization inside and out. This allows me to have a strategic perspective and look ahead but still maintain the operational perspective, which gives me security. I think that's a big reason why I was asked. And it feels exciting to do it together with Knightec.

Before joining Daresay six years ago, Anna worked as a creative director in the advertising industry and was responsible for designers and developers there. She describes the environment as challenging and that they may not always do things that gave you a great gut feeling, or that improved society. When she left that job, she wrote a list of what felt important to her when she applied for a new job.

- I wanted an organization that realizes that it is nothing without its employees, where you respect the employees, where you encourage a good work/life balance, where you hire based on diversity both in terms of cultural background but also in terms of personalities. There would be the will to create an environment where people dare to be creative and innovative.

- I found it at Daresay and it feels super important to preserve this and continue working with it in the future. To come to this place that has so many nice things, to lead and take it further and clarify what I came here for, to make it even stronger.

Anna describes herself as a person with great integrity who stands up for her cause, that she has never been afraid to do what she believes in. It's something she encourages her employees to do - integrity, to believe in their values no matter what context they enter.

- Another thing that has affected me is that my family has spent a lot of time in India. My parents also later built a school for 500 girls in India. Living in another culture and learning from it and seeing how you can contribute to other people's lives, has also affected me a lot.

- Many of the values that I associate with my leadership and for which I am also shown appreciation - openness, respect for my employees, loyalty, transparency, courage and justice - are based on my childhood and my upbringing. But at the same time, I think that the experiences and events you have as a young adult and through working life also shape you considerably as a leader. If you dare to be transparent with your own vulnerability and feel safe to talk about your own fears, my experience is that you gain both trust and respect while allowing others to grow.

- I have also gained credibility as a leader through having had many roles in the company, I can understand the employees and look ahead. It feels important to me as a leader that I have gone through things and can feel real empathy for our employees.

Since the turn of the year, Anna has been part of Knightec's management team. Anna describes the dialogue as exceptionally listening and that Knightec is very keen to maintain continuity, that Daresay should continue to be value-driven and strive to do good for society.

- Since I joined the dialogue, I have experienced that one really listens and take in what I say, a great deal of humility. We have seen many examples of bad mergers over the years, where big parts of the staff have been disappointed and resigned. There is an extreme ambition here to really preserve what we have, in many different areas. There are things we can learn from Knightec, and things they are very curious to learn from us.

- There is a great deal of humility from both sides, there is no plan that is carved in stone, but we work iteratively just as we always do at Daresay - we start from what will be best for the employees and thus what will be best for the whole, it feels like a very sensible way to handle the merger. When I repeatedly see examples of Knightec really acting as they said they would, it feels reassuring. There I also get an important role, to make sure that Knightec gets to understand Daresay and vice versa. That is perhaps my most important role now: to show what we are good at, what is important to us, and at the same time make sure that we invite and embrace Knightec.
The changes that will take place through the merger with Knightec are that we will work on the affair together, that we will have client teams with individuals from both Knightec and Daresay.

- Knightec works with both industry and medicine companies, and that type of companies have an incredible need for digitization in the future. This is where we will focus going forward, but also on service development. Hopefully, this will lead to projects where you can work even more multidisciplinary than today. This is also what our employees think is most exciting about this whole trip, and where we are not quite sufficient today.

- What is positive is that we have so many different skills in our respective companies, we could do wonders because it is insane how many different experts we have. Sometimes mergers can be difficult if you have the same skills, but here we complement each other in a way that is rare.

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Anna, business area manager for Daresay

Knightec's newest business area Daresay is led by Anna Lindstrand, who is also part of Knightec's management team. Anna took over the helm of Daresay last autumn after the current CEO left at the same time as the pandemic set the industry in motion and customers' innovation budgets were curtailed.

Read more