Share
Matters of Consequence
Moving Forward in the Never Normal
What does it mean to move forward in a world where disruption has become the baseline? At the Nordic Business Forum 2025 in Helsinki, the Future of Sustainability podcast explored this question with keynote speakers, contributors, and participants from across the event.
Howard Yu, LEGO Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD, explained why the most future-ready companies reject the trade-off between short-term performance and long-term transformation. “The best companies do not balance. They excel at both,” he argued. Yu pointed to industries like automotive, where software capabilities are now indispensable both for competing today and for preparing for tomorrow’s mobility. His message to leaders: identify the few capabilities that strengthen both horizons and pursue them with discipline. “Budget is not a plan,” Yu emphasized. “Strategy is about making trade-offs and scaling what matters.”
Peter Hinssen, entrepreneur and author, added a mindset perspective. He described today’s reality as the never normal, a state of continuous disruption where stability no longer applies. “In the never normal, resilience is not about bouncing back. It is about bouncing forward,” he told the audience. Using Microsoft’s reinvention under Satya Nadella as an example, Hinssen illustrated how companies can transform by letting go of what he calls “yesterwork,” the routines and processes that once delivered results but now hold organizations back. “Yesterwork is the silent killer of organizations,” he warned. For Hinssen, leadership today is about cultivating curiosity, creating reversible “two-way door” decisions, and building organizations designed to learn at scale.
On the HS Visio Live Studio stage, Riina Bhatia, Research Scientist at VTT, broadened the lens to society as a whole. She reminded the audience that seven of nine planetary boundaries have already been transgressed. Moving forward, she argued, requires redefining growth itself. “Economic success cannot simply mean ‘more,’” Bhatia noted. Instead, harmful sectors must shrink while those that contribute to well-being expand. Metrics beyond GDP—covering health, education, and resource efficiency—are mature enough to be adopted, she emphasized.
Voices from the forum floor reinforced these themes with practical perspectives. Atte Jääskeläinen, President of Finnish Innovation Fund SITRA, stressed that progress begins with honesty about where we are now. Without this, ambition risks being built on illusion. Juha Mattsson, CEO of Futures Platform, highlighted the importance of agency: foresight and signal detection only matter when leaders act on them before certainty arrives.
From the next generation, Sara Makkonen, Commercialization Associate at Aircohol, called for courage and openness. She urged decision-makers to give new technologies the space to succeed, even if that means allowing for failure along the way. And from the aviation sector, Finnair’s Senior Sustainability Manager, Tarja Koski, reminded listeners that transformation in hard-to-abate industries will require incremental steps and broad collaboration rather than quick fixes.
Taken together, these voices sketch a clear picture of what moving forward means in 2025. It is not about restoring stability or accelerating blindly into the future. It is about clarity of priorities, courage to dismantle what no longer serves, and discipline to invest in what matters most. Leaders must perform and transform at the same time, bounce forward instead of back, and redefine success to align with both human well-being and planetary limits.
Moving forward is not a slogan. It is the discipline of leadership in the never normal.
More episodes
View all episodes
13. The weight of caring
31:16||Season 2, Ep. 13In this episode of Matters of Consequence, host Michael Hanf speaks with Joanna LaFleur about responsibility, care, and the weight of decisions that don’t fully resolve. Joanna spent more than a decade running dementia care communities, where the choices she made shaped people’s daily lives, their safety, and their dignity. She reflects on what it means to work in situations where there are no clear right answers, only options that feel less harmful than others. They talk about the realities of caring for people with dementia, the constant balancing between safety and autonomy, and the emotional impact of making decisions that stay with you long after the moment has passed. Joanna also shares what it took to step away from that work after years of burnout, and how she now supports families navigating care in their own homes. A conversation about responsibility, limits, and what it costs to keep showing up.12. The danger of good intentions
30:47||Season 2, Ep. 12In this episode of Matters of Consequence, host Michael Hanf speaks with Jessica Hoeper about professional dangerousness and the uncomfortable realization that even well-intentioned professionals can cause harm.Jessica spent many years working in child protection in the United States, making decisions that shaped the lives of families and children. Early in her career she believed her role was to determine whether parents were doing things right or wrong. Over time that certainty began to shift.In the conversation Jessica reflects on moments where hindsight changed the way she understood her own decisions. Experiences later in her life, including becoming a parent herself, made her see situations she had judged very differently.They talk about the power professionals hold, the difficulty of questioning one’s own intentions, and why self-awareness and curiosity may be some of the most important tools for people working with others.A conversation about responsibility, hindsight, and learning to live with decisions that look different over time.11. I will never not be adopted
33:56||Season 2, Ep. 11Adoption is often told as a story with a clear happy ending.A child finds a family. A life is made possible. The story is considered complete.But for the people living inside that story, the experience can be far more complicated.In this episode of Matters of Consequence, Michael Hanf speaks with writer, educator, and solo performance artist Liz DeBetta. Through writing, poetry, movement, and performance, Liz has spent years trying to understand what adoption does to identity, belonging, and the body.Her solo performance Un-M-Othered grew out of that process. Not as a message or solution, but as a way of making visible experiences that are often kept in silence.In this conversation, Liz reflects on growing up as an adoptee, the long search for language to describe internal experiences, and the difficult conversations that can begin once the story expands beyond the familiar narrative.10. Living between past and future
32:22||Season 2, Ep. 10Philip Aminoff joins Michael Hanf for a conversation about responsibility across generations.Philip is a Finnish entrepreneur and fourth-generation owner in his family’s businesses. He grew up with expectations that were already there, not as pressure, but simply as part of life.The conversation explores what it means to make decisions that do not end with one’s own lifetime. Decisions shaped by family history, long time horizons, and by people who are not present.They talk about inheritance and restraint. About holding things that are not yours to spend. And about why civil society matters when thinking beyond business and the state.A calm conversation about stewardship and about how past, present and future remain connected.9. What never fully heals
31:06||Season 2, Ep. 9In this episode of Matters of Consequence, Michael Hanf talks with Dr John A. King.John is a survivor of child sexual abuse and trafficking. He shares how recovery has been a long, ongoing process for him, not something you finish or get over.They talk about living with trauma over decades, about managing recovery rather than fixing it, and about what stays unresolved even when life becomes good again. John speaks openly about time, patience, and what it takes to keep going when some things cannot be repaired.Move info about the Phoenix Collective: rise.phoenixcollective.app8. What stays once the magic ends?
31:42||Season 2, Ep. 8In this episode of Matters of Consequence, Michael Hanf speaks with close-up magician Moritz Neumeister.Moritz works just a few centimeters away from people, in moments where trust forms in real time and the experience depends on not fully explaining what is happening. He talks about earning a living through illusion, about situations where magic feels less like play, and about the responsibility he carries when different audiences experience the same moment very differently.A conversation about doubt, care, and what stays once the magic ends.Matters of Consequence Trailer
01:22|Matters of Consequence is a podcast about people who chose to act when something felt important enough not to ignore.Host Michael Hanf speaks with guests from different walks of life about what happens before action and what follows after. About doubt, responsibility, trade offs, and the cost of staying with a decision when things get complicated.These are conversations about people in motion. Not about perfect answers, but about living with the consequences of what we choose to do.7. What does it take to fight for your right to compete?
39:11||Season 2, Ep. 7If you watch the Winter Olympics today, women’s bobsled is part of the program.That wasn’t always the case. In the early 1990s, women were banned from competing in the sport.In this episode of Matters of Consequence, host Michael Hanf speaks with Alexandra Allred and Liz Parr-Smestad, two of the women who were part of the early effort to change that. They talk about what it was like to be involved in opening bobsled to women, the physical risks involved, and what that period of their lives looked like from the inside.6. What happens when community has to become family?
33:36||Season 2, Ep. 6In this episode of Matters of Consequence, I talk with Jen Nylin, owner of the fashion boutique Jenny in the City in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.Jen lives and works in Minneapolis. We talk about what daily life feels like while the city is under pressure from ongoing federal immigration enforcement, and about how communities respond when ICE activity becomes part of everyday reality.This is a conversation about lived experience. About being a parent, a neighbour, and a small business owner while uncertainty, fear, and responsibility shape daily decisions. About community becoming family, and about the quiet work of protecting what matters when there is no clear end in sight.