Nicolai Tangen, the chief executive officer of Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), has revealed tactics he used to keep his job during the furore last winter when his text messages with Elon Musk became public.
The revelation is made in a forthcoming book on leadership penned by Tangen, according to a report yesterday by Norwegian news service E24, whose journalists gained early access to the book.
Entitled “Everything I’ve learned about leadership - from Askeladden [Norwegian folk tale character], a poker player and the world’s smartest bosses”, the Norwegian language book authored by Tangen and novelist and ghostwriter Ellen Emmerentze Jervell, is set to be published on 11 August by Kagge Forlag.
The publisher described the book as “a handbook for anyone who leads others, and a personal account from the head of an oil fund”.
According to E24, the book is based mainly on the interviews with CEOs of major companies from the podcast In Good Company, which is produced by NBIM, manager of the NOK19.9trn (€1.68trn) Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), and hosted by Tangen.
E24 reported that Tangen revealed in the book the personal impact of the crisis around the publication of texts between him and Musk, which caused consternation because of their informal tone and because they showed the Tesla boss expecting favours from Tangen and being personally offended that the GPFG voted against a large Tesla salary package for him.
“It would have been nice to be able to say that I brushed off a media frenzy like this,” Tangen reportedly wrote in the book. “That I took it like a man, so to speak. Who cares!”
“But the truth is that even though I kept my mask on at press conferences and interviews with newspapers and TV, I had a terrible time,” he wrote.
“I was in the middle of the process of applying for an extension of my position as oil fund CEO – anyone who has read the book up to this point should have an idea of how much I wanted to stay in the job – and I knew all too well that the system around me disliked this kind of attention,” Tangen wrote.
The NBIM CEO referred in the book to advice he received on how to keep your job when a crisis hit, according to E24, saying it was about actively ensuring you stayed on good terms with anyone who could potentially fire you.
“I tried to keep the board, the Ministry of Finance and those who were involved in my hiring process up to date and told them honestly what I had been thinking and doing,” Tangen wrote.
He cited advice from Volvo chair Carl-Henric Svanberg, who kept his job as chair of BP despite the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, which occurred soon after his term began, according to the report.
“In crises like this, which are to do with you personally, I think it’s always in one’s best interest to be as truthful as possible,” Tangen wrote, adding that people tolerated mistakes as long as you did not hide information and told the truth.
“I was allowed to continue in my job too,” he wrote.
In March, Tangen was given a new five-year term as NBIM CEO.
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