|
 Antonia Ax:son Johnson moved to Stockholm from New York when she was ten years old. At the time, she didn’t speak a word of Swedish and she certainly did not feel at home in her new country. “My mother, as a Brazilian, was a sort of odd and exotic bird. I think that she felt very lonesome and alienated from Swedish society, which of course influenced me a lot,” she says. What is more, Antonia grew up with parents who told her that the family would have been happier in New York, or somewhere else, away from Sweden.
Why then, did this unfamiliar little family move from Park Avenue to the Northern tip of Europe? Because duty called. Antonia’s father, Axel Johnson Jr., was summoned back to his home country to take care of the family business. And Antonia, the English-speaking ten-year old, the “spoiled only child,” was next in line.
The Axel Johnson Group is a business conglomerate that includes three legally and financially independent groups with billions of dollars in net worth, thousands of employees and operational stomping grounds on both sides of the Atlantic.
Gen Yers like ourselves may frown upon entry-level jobs, dreaming instead of going straight to the top without the grunt work. Inheriting a company seems like it would be the sure way to escape that dreaded tedium: putting in your dues. Not so. Before taking over as the Chairman of the Board of the Axel Johnson Group, Antonia went through a trainee program whereby she learned the ropes from the inside; first in the personnel department, then in finance, book-keeping, strategic management and finally in an operations job as the head of the plastics and chemicals division— spending several years in each place. When her father unexpectedly suffered a stroke at the age of 64, it was time for her to take on a position for which she did not yet feel ready, “I had to step in without quite having enough time to prepare myself. I would have liked to have at least another 5 years in operations. And then there was the question of whom I was to work with. Many of the leaders in the company were my father’s old buddies and collaborators and they of course thought: ‘Here she comes, the 32 year old!’ It was really very difficult. You are always questioned if you inherit something.”
And questioned she was. Antonia was not only young and green, she was a woman “in a sea of men.” The years to follow were not easy, colored by major company crises in the early eighties and again in the nineties. The leadership role may have been hers by birthright, but Antonia never rested on her laurels, focusing instead on hard work in order to re-build and re-focus her family’s company. Today, there are few people who would question Antonia’s right to the throne. She has proven that she is not simply an heir; she is the rightful ruler of her growing empire.
Antonia’s experience is also a golden nugget, serving not only as an unusual model for a business career, but as a remarkable example of merging work and private life. After marrying and having four children at a very tender age, she fused the two sides of the work-life equation by divorcing her first husband and marrying Göran Ennerfelt, the CEO of the Axel Johnson Group. And so, for the past 24 years, CEO and Chairman have also had the titles Husband and Wife.
Read on to find out what one of the world’s most powerful businesswomen looks for in a leader, how she views our emerging generation, and what differences she sees between the Swedish and American corporate worlds.
 What is it like, working so closely with your husband?
“It is great. It has worked really well. It has been a true partnership. I was married for seventeen years to my first husband, who is also the father of my four children. I went through a divorce, and then Göran and I were married. But before that, there was so much gossip and talk and questioning. It was really difficult. But we just decided, ‘let’s not bother about gossip.’ That is really something that you can learn in life, to just say, ‘don’t listen but do what you think is right.’ And that is what we did.”
How do you separate work and personal life?
“It is all mixed up. It is like an ongoing annual meeting at our kitchen table! So no, we don’t really separate it. As we are both so involved and engaged in what we are doing, we talk about the business all the time. But it has never been negative. It has been an advantage.”
What do you look for in a leader?
“Someone without a hidden agenda. Someone who is driven by ideas or ideals and not necessarily by personal prestige or money. Over the years I have worked with and met CEOs who are very money-driven, and I always find it difficult to work with them because the only thing they think about is: what is in it for me financially? Especially in the US, it is very tough there. But on the other hand, in the US people need more money because they don’t have the welfare system that we have in Sweden. People need money to send their kids to good schools, colleges, healthcare...I think there is less fear in Sweden than in the US. Part of this fear is financial, a fear for their private finances.”
From your experience as a large international employer, how do the Swedish and American work cultures compare?
“I think it is easier to be an employer in Sweden, because we have a system of a lot of mutual confidence among people, less fear, less hierarchy, less bureaucracy. But I think the disadvantage is that Swedes are less direct than Americans. Americans say exactly what they mean and what they are thinking and they say it to the point, whereas we are more subtle.
“But the US is strange. There is one system on the surface that is very polite, very professional. But then there are sub-systems that have to do with how people behave. And these systems don’t really tie in with each other. There is a sexist, boys games, boys language attitude, very much so in corporate America. Really. I have run into it so many times. And it is difficult because it runs very deep. There is a kind of deep conservatism too. I think it has to do with American society having been built by brave pioneers and entrepreneurs. They were locked into very conservative values, which I think has to do with being a young country.”
 Why are there so few women in top leadership positions in Sweden?
“I think we have very open systems today in our companies. I really feel that women have a lot of opportunities. There are less and less negative attitudes against women, against promoting women, about women being bosses and so on. That has really changed. So I think the problem we have today is at the very top. Why are there so few female CEOs? And the thing is, it is not just a women’s issue, it is a man’s issue as well. We are finding that it gets more and more difficult to get even some of the best men to agree to be CEOs. In Sweden, that is. In the States we don’t seem to have that problem yet. In the States, it is still easy to find willing candidates. In Sweden, it is getting harder and harder.”
Why do you think less and less people in Sweden appear to want to be CEOs?
“I think less and less men want to be CEOs because the pressures of being a CEO and the volatility of it—dealing with the media and the stock market and whatnot—are just tremendous. They really have to be money-driven, penny-driven, to do it, which is also not what you want in a leader. Or, you need to find a system in which people would be more comfortable working. The typical male career is starting at a low point and kind of climbing the ladder, and when you are at the top you have made it. But then you are also not free anymore. And I think fewer men now want to do that. As it is becoming okay to have parental leave, also men are understanding that there are different ways to have a career.
“I think one solution is to look at a career in a different way. A career does not have to be a ladder. It could be a jungle gym. Yes, a lattice! You can move to the side without being out of a career. You can maybe even move down and not be out of a career, because you say that you want more time with your family. But if you say you will step aside for five years or so, that is not considered OK because we are still living in a ladder society. I think that is where the change has to come.”
Are you actively working toward that change? And How?
“I think we do. First of all, by telling people it is OK to take parental leave, also for men. I can see my son Axel, who works in AxFood [one of her companies]. You usually lose a lot of money when you are on parental leave since you only get paid 80% of a certain max salary. But at his company they have a system where they will pay up so that you keep your normal salary during your parental leave. That is one way of supporting it. The other way of supporting it is by saying it is OK, of course. And the third way is to have a lot of information flowing to the mother or father who is away. So that they feel that they are still involved. I know that Axel, for instance, has been called in for a number of meetings so that he will feel informed and will participate in important decision that are being made. He is taking almost nine months in parental leave.
“The employer’s role is crucial, it really is. If the employer says that we accept parental leave, that we support it and think it is fine, then your buddies will do the same. Axel has a group of twelve fathers who are all on parental leave, and they do a lot of things together, every Tuesday and Thursday. They have picnics and grill parties…and they do all kinds of things. When they come walking through town, twelve fathers with baby carriages, it is hysterical. The trouble is that mothers do this all the time and nobody thinks it is cute. Now fathers are doing it and we all think it is cute. What we should say is that it is totally normal, but that is going to take a while. At least they are doing it.”
Do your companies in America offer parental leave for fathers?
“No. We’ve been talking about it, but it is much harder to introduce it there.”
What is the difficulty in introducing paternity leave in the United States?
“Attitudes. First of all, you have very short parental leaves in the States, usually only six to eight weeks. And I think the attitude in America often still is that mothers take care of children and fathers work. That attitude is there and it is so strong. A lot of the women that I have met in the US who have been really successful in their careers don’t have children. They have either not had any, or they have chosen not to have any. I have seen quite a few of those. That is really scary, I think.”
 With globalization, will a generous welfare system like Sweden still be possible?
“I think the social system in Sweden can definitely survive. What we are seeing right now in Sweden is much more competition, a tougher work climate, a tougher financial climate, and I think that is going to put a lot of pressure on the system. In the future in Sweden, there is going to be more of a spread in income. This new government is making it acceptable that there is an elite. Elite schools, and so on. But that also means leaving people behind. I think we are at a tipping point right now, and we don’t know whether this change is here to stay or not.”
How do you think your generation and younger generations compare when it comes to finding work and balancing that work with their family lives?
“We, in my generation, didn’t have that many choices. We didn’t see the world and all the professions as open to us. We were very narrow in what we thought we could choose. And of course we didn’t have all the input from the outside, we hardly had television. You chose a profession according to what your parents had done, or according to some sort of a dream. For my children’s generation, it is more free. But at the same time, it was definitely easier for us because we didn’t have all the choices that you have now. We didn’t have to sit down and choose between one thousand choices.
“And there is a big difference in how my children handle the juggle of work and family life as well. There is much more sharing now. It is interesting, because all of my children have spouses who have very free professions. One is a musician, one is an entrepreneur, and one is a copywriter. So in each case, one of the spouses has more time, or is able at least to decide over their own time and how they use it. Because if both have an 8-6 job, it is an impossible equation. You have to find some time in the family where there is leeway. Kids get sick, you might have a meeting, how do you solve it? Having one parent with a little different schedule is really a tremendous help.”
Do you find that people of our generation, the so-called Generation Y, approach work differently?
“Absolutely. There is a conflict now between the older and the younger generations, but as my generation moves out of the workforce, there will be less of a conflict. But there is a conflict. Because we were really brought up to be very loyal not to ourselves, but to our company or our organization or our union or political party…whatever it was. We were brought up to work for a greater cause. And people now have been brought up to work for themselves. The question is: how do you get ‘themselves’ to be something with a common interest? I think that will require very motivating leaders in businesses, because they have to be able to get everybody really charged up about doing something, of achieving something bigger.”
You are in a very influential position as a huge employer and business personality. What do you think it takes to make real change happen when it comes to the current work culture?
“I have always been driven by ideas, and then I try to find a way to make money out of it. So that it makes good business sense. Whether it is the environment, or health issues, or quality issues, or design…whatever it is. Where idealism and commercialism meet, that is where change is really brought about. But it has to make good business sense. Or else you will never get people to do it.”
 By almost anyone’s definition of success, Antonia is a person to admire: her marriage is a true partnership, she’s a supportive parent with children leading diverse and interesting lives, and, oh yes!, she’s at the helm of a tremendously successful multibillion dollar global conglomerate.
Though absolute power is supposed to corrupt absolutely, Antonia is a laudable employer who strives to help employees balance their work and personal lives. Yet, Antonia is a businesswoman first and foremost. In Sweden, the government helps employers provide parental leave and laws, like The Equal Opportunities Act of 2001, exist to encourage employers to actively promote equality in working life. But Antonia’s companies in the US do not provide measures like paternity leave. Why should they? The government doesn’t require or encourage it and the work culture doesn’t appear ready for it. It doesn’t seem to “make good business sense”…yet.
Perhaps, as Gen Y workers move into the work force, we will let employers know that opportunities for equal parenting as well as for equal business leadership are important to us and, importantly, that work/life balance does make “good business sense.” If we can do that, we’ll have Antonia Ax:son Johnson in our corner—and that is one powerful ally. |
