A professor is standing on the platform at Ås Station. The platform is full of tired commuters on a bitterly cold Friday morning. Jan Ketil Arnulf has plenty of time, otherwise he would have driven his electric car to his workplace at BI in Nydalen.
“I have a difficult relationship with everything about trains,” he explains.
In the past he has criticised NSB, and now Vy, for what he calls a dreadful train service. He has written articles about it. and he has promoted emergency brake campaigns. Once, when the trains were standing still, he even cycled the 25-mile stretch between Ås and Oslo.
“I wouldn’t say that I like to provoke people, but it is my privilege as a professor and teacher to get people to see things from different angles. I believe that you can learn a lot of good things from that.”
He eagerly explains the ritual which is about to unfold as the train slowly glides into the station. About the hunt for a good seat.
Action strategies
In his capacity as a psychologist and researcher he has been interested in organisational psychology and leadership for a number of years. He talks about how leaders both lead and learn best if they work with action strategies, rather than being performance-driven. It does not help to know what the goal is if you do not know how to get there.
“There are very few people who stop smoking because they have been on a course. You stop because you avoid smoking. The latter is much harder than understanding that it is hazardous to health. In the same way, leadership is something that you learn best at work, when you are able to translate theory into practice.”
The doors open and with a few quick steps Jan Ketil secures a vacant seat, before he deftly fishes out his laptop from his rucksack. The Professor falls into deep concentration as he studies some Excel spreadsheets containing analyses of his employer’s research on leadership training.
The hunt for reality
Like Dean Executive, he is responsible for developing BI’s further education services. He has previously written about how effective action strategies develop from having repeated meetings with reality. The information that students receive in the classroom needs to be mixed with large doses of reality.
“My ambition is for us to be somewhere where people who are already working can visit and enhance their perception of reality in ways which they will subsequently be able to apply in practice. It’s not always that easy.”
But what does he do himself in order to seek out reality?
“Well that’s something you’re faced with all the time, but it’s also all about your attitude. Personally I have always liked having contact with organisations. One of the most interesting things about my job is travelling around and visiting companies to see what they’re doing and how they do it.”
Inside the train a father tries desperately to get his small boys to calm down. One of them says that his little brother is a troublemaker. “So are you”, his father counters. Jan Ketil talks about meeting business leaders and companies at both home and abroad.
“Once I joined the board of a company when they said that it would be great to have someone who was educated, because “between us we only have a total of four years attendance at sixth form college”. That wasn’t a problem for them. They had a turnover of NOK 100 million.”