You can also listen to the blog post read by Colin himself here.

Does this sound like you?

• You are not Finnish, but you live here
• You have a hypothesis on how Finnish businesses can increase their Value
• You are not tolerant of doing things a particular way just because they have already been done that way
• You don’t speak Finnish or Swedish
• You want to help but you don’t want to change everything immediately (all at once).

When I mean “Finnish Board”, I don’t mean one of the global Finnish companies whose boards are typically very international, such as Nokia, Kone and Stora Enso. I mean one of the many great Finnish companies whose boards are predominantly Finnish nationals and have a real potential for expansion.

If so, read on. If not, “easy pass”.

1. You are not Finnish but you live here

We are a completely British family who moved to Finland in June 2022, but not for one of the “Big 3” reasons people come to Finland. The Big 3 in my experience are “work, love and study”, pretty much in that order.

If you were going to classify our reason, it would be “cultural fit”.

We left the UK in 2020 due to Brexit. My wife and I wanted our children to keep the EU Rights they were born with. We couldn’t claim another EU nationality, and having spent two years outside the country while I was building my company in the US, we took the plunge and moved ourselves during a pandemic (not easy) to Poland and then Finland.

The only connection I had prior to moving to Finland was that I had angel investment in a Finnish edtech startup called KideScience in 2019 and had two long term Finnish friends in Marko and Keni. In Finland, we were looking to immerse ourselves in nature, an equitable society that valued independence, and a community that wanted to take on some of the world’s biggest challenges.

We found all of them. We live here. This is home.

2. You have a hypothesis on how Finnish businesses can increase their Value

I have spent the last two years fully immersing myself in the Finnish tech ecosystem. I was truly helped by the 90 Day Finn programme that my family and I experienced when we first arrived here from August-October 2022. This gave us a cohort of peers to work with and an excellent deep dive in the Helsinki ecosystem, which is a great place to start.

Since then, I have built out my own thesis based on where I believe Finland should play in the Value Cycle. I have narrowed my focus to Energy, Intelligence and Dexterity with the growth of one leading to the expansion of the others.

I believe that board members who are grounded in Finland, with international experience and a thesis for the selective bets that Finland has and needs, help ambitious companies grow.

Equally and probably controversially, I believe that international talent serving on a Finnish board and not grounded on what Finland does brilliantly has too many blind spots to be effective.

3. You are not tolerant of doing things a particular way just because they have already been done that way

Every immigrant learns how to navigate a system. They see it for what it is. Those born inside a system don’t see the Matrix. An international on a Finnish board can use their unique perspective to praise Finland and its companies for what they do well, and push for improvements where needed.

I happen to come from an entrepreneurial background, but I also spent years working inside bigger companies and governments, so I tend to be drawn to complex problems that require scale and momentum to overcome. Whatever your superpower, use your insight to reinforce the best and challenge everything that is subpar.

When I say challenge, I do mean challenge in a “radical candour” type of approach. If you are not familiar with the term, then I strongly recommend reading the book by Kim Scott or attending her presentation at the Nordic Business Forum 2024 in September. Radical Candour is what happens when you care personally and challenge directly at the same time.

As an international living in Finland with children in school and the intention to live here long term, I personally care what happens to this country. I am also gifted with a personality and set of experiences that will lean towards me, challenging directly to help companies achieve a better outcome.

4. You don’t speak Finnish or Swedish

One of Finland’s strengths in international business is how widely spoken English is. I would argue that Finland should simply “seal the deal” and officially designate English as a third language, ensuring that all public services are accessible in English.

In my opinion, this would not bring in a wave of immigrants to your shores. As usual, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but it would help Finland move forward in terms of its business share globally and make life easier for those who have chosen to move here. It’s also a relatively “cheap” card to play as you are simply capitalising on the investment you have already made.

Having an international on your board and changing the language of meetings to default English isn’t abandoning your values or your heritages, it’s simply adopting the more commonly accepted “operating system” to force that change throughout your organisation for your company’s benefit. If you are an ambitious Finnish company, you adopt English as your corporate language.

5. You want to help but you don’t want to change everything immediately (all at once)

It’s really easy to join a new organisation and try and change everything all at once. Although Boards in Finland tend to be less “operational” than those in UK and USA, there is still expectation that you make improvements in the pursuit of being an enduring great company.

In business, we tend to overprofile the “first 100 days” and miss the impact of decades of compounding growth. In my experience, those who make the greatest impact or contribution often wait.

I spent my first 10 years of professional life coaching Olympic athletes to achieve long term success. We were working on four and eight year cycles. This was all about incremental improvement and very much an aggregation of marginal gains approach.

We selected for a talent density, we were rigorous in our approaches and focused on long term results. However, the nature of elite sport is that you test yourself against the best in the world. Those results help you measure your progress.

Each board I have served on has weirdly felt just like my initial team. We had clear processes which we optimised, we challenged ourselves and worked closely together and with the wider team. We were obsessed with improving operational efficiency but without becoming “operational” ourselves.

Sitting on a board is not just taking a seat and playing a role. You should care personally about the company and its outcome. If you care and challenge directly, this isn’t board command-and-control but instead builds a culture of collaboration towards building or maintaining an enduring great company.

Author

Colin Brown is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and built companies in 17 countries. He coaches teams of late stage private and public companies with a strong bias to AI, Gaming and Infrastructure. Colin has been a World Bank Consultant for the last four years, working on programmes in the Middle East and Africa. He leads the advisory service in Epicenter Helsinki, is a Boardman Member, and has sat on boards in the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Colin joined Boardman’s Boardman Buddy programme in 2024 and is paired with Hanna Sievinen, and he says Hanna has been a fantastic guide to life on and in Finnish Boards.

Read about Boardman’s English-language membership