Tonje Elisabeth Aaroe
Most organisations treat digital transformation as a technology implementation. The culture and engagement work gets deprioritised or it is assumed it will follow the technology. It does not. The result is low adoption, disengaged teams, and change programmes that technically complete but operationally stall.
Tonje Elisabeth Aarøe, Country Manager Norway at FranklinCovey and co-developer of the Empulse engagement diagnostic, helps organisations close the gap between transformation strategy and employee reality.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tonje Elisabeth Aarøe
- She brings a perspective built from both sides of the transformation equation: having seen digital change from inside Google and Microsoft, and then spent years advising organisations on why the people side of it breaks down.
- Empulse, the staff engagement diagnostic she co-developed with Professor Sut I Wong at BI Norwegian Business School, gives organisations a structured way to measure how employees are actually experiencing transformation, not how leaders think they are.
- FranklinCovey’s methodology underpins her advisory work, bringing a globally tested behaviour-change framework rather than a proprietary system built on personal experience alone.
- Her work addresses a specific failure mode – the 70% change project failure rate – with diagnostic and practical tools rather than motivational reframing.
- She has delivered in academic and executive contexts across institutions including BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School, giving her work independent intellectual grounding beyond the speaking circuit.
Biography highlights
- Country Manager Norway, FranklinCovey North; the globally recognised leadership and behaviour-change organisation
- Former Industry Manager, Google Norway; prior enterprise sales and marketing roles at Microsoft
- Co-developer of Empulse, an employee engagement survey built with Professor Sut I Wong of BI Norwegian Business School to measure employee experience during digital transformation
- Author of Ignite Your Inner Game Changer (2017)
- Founder of Growthitude, a transformation and engagement consultancy
- Guest lecturer at BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School
- Certified Prosci Change Management Practitioner; certified NLP Trainer
- Contributor to PECB Insights on digital transformation topics
Biography
Most digital transformation programmes treat culture as the final phase; the communications plan, the change management appendix. Tonje Elisabeth Aarøe’s argument, built over a career inside Google and Microsoft and then sharpened through advisory work at FranklinCovey, is that this sequencing is the primary reason so many programmes fail.
At FranklinCovey Norway, where she serves as Country Manager, Aarøe advises organisations on leadership capability and employee engagement using one of the most widely deployed behaviour-change methodologies in the world. Her practical toolkit includes Empulse, a staff engagement diagnostic she co-developed with Professor Sut I Wong at BI Norwegian Business School, which allows organisations to track how employees are actually experiencing transformation at pace, rather than retrospectively.
Before moving into advisory work, she spent the better part of 15 years in corporate technology and digital sales at Microsoft and Google, working with enterprise clients across sectors on digital strategy and commercial execution. That background means she can describe transformation from inside the organisations that defined it, not only from the consulting room.
She has guest lectured at BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School, and contributes to PECB Insights. Her work sits at the intersection of operational credibility and structured methodology; a combination that tends to land in rooms where cultural scepticism about change consultants runs high.
Key speaking topics
- Employee engagement in digital transformation
- Culture change management
- Change leadership in hybrid and international environments
- Building high-performing teams
- Behavioural change at organisational scale
- Leadership development and execution
- Digital work culture
Ideal for
- CHROs and People Directors leading culture or engagement programmes during transformation
- CEOs and leadership teams managing organisation-wide change initiatives
- Transformation and change leads in mid-to-large organisations implementing new ways of working
- L&D and executive education programmes looking for practitioner-led content on digital culture
Audience outcomes
- A clearer understanding of why employee engagement, not technology, determines transformation outcomes
- Practical framing of how culture and behaviour change can be managed alongside – not after – digital implementation
- Familiarity with diagnostic approaches (including pulse-survey methodology) for tracking engagement during change
- Specific leadership behaviours that sustain team performance under sustained organisational pressure
- A more honest account of how digital change actually lands inside organisations, drawn from inside Google and Microsoft
Talks
A keynote or workshop on building organisational culture and sustaining employee engagement through periods of digital transformation and continuous change.
Key takeaways:
- The link between employee engagement, innovation, and performance with evidence for why engagement is a transformation variable, not a communications task
- Practical methods for improving organisational culture, communication, and work satisfaction during change
- Specific actions leaders and teams can apply to strengthen engagement and protect innovation capacity
A keynote or workshop on how to navigate transformation effectively, with close attention to why most change programmes fail and what distinguishes those that do not.
Key takeaways:
- How organisational change affects individuals and teams, and why the human response to transformation is predictable – and manageable
- Culture change management approaches drawn from organisations that have successfully navigated large-scale transformation
- Perspectives on maintaining competitive performance while adapting strategy and operating models to shifting customer behaviour
A practical session on the characteristics of high-performing teams, the relationship between engagement and output, and approaches to sustaining team performance during change.
Key takeaways:
- The dynamics of high-performing teams and what distinguishes them from functional but underperforming ones
- How engagement directly influences team efficiency, productivity, and commercial results
- Practical methods for building commitment, applying coaching approaches, and creating accountability structures