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, CEO of FranklinCovey Norway 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 and what leaders can do differently.
- 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, and to target interventions accordingly.
- She runs FranklinCovey’s Norwegian business, so her advisory work applies tested behaviour-change methodologies, The 4 Disciplines of Execution and The Speed of Trust among them, to live execution problems inside client organisations.
- Through 2025 she led DigitalHelse Follo, a digital health transformation run jointly by five Norwegian municipalities, which means she has carried a multi-party change programme herself rather than only advising on one.
Biography highlights
- CEO, FranklinCovey Norge since 2021, leading the Norwegian practice of the global leadership and behaviour-change firm across strategy execution, leadership capability, trust, and inclusive culture
- 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
- Programme lead for DigitalHelse Follo, a digital health transformation run jointly by five Norwegian municipalities, contracted through Nordre Follo kommune (2025)
- Guest lecturer at BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School; contributor to PECB Insights on digital transformation topics
- Founder of Growthitude, a transformation and engagement consultancy; author of Ignite Your Inner Game Changer (2017); certified Prosci Change Management Practitioner and NLP Trainer
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.
As CEO of FranklinCovey Norway, Aarøe advises organisations on leadership capability, execution, and employee engagement using one of the most widely deployed behaviour-change methodologies in the world. Leaders she works with use The 4 Disciplines of Execution and The Speed of Trust as a shared working language for aligning teams on a small number of goals. Alongside that sits Empulse, a staff engagement diagnostic she co-developed with Professor Sut I Wong at BI Norwegian Business School, which tracks how employees are experiencing transformation at pace rather than retrospectively, and connects it to specific leadership routines.
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 guest lectures at BI Norwegian Business School and Durham University Business School, and writes on digital transformation for PECB Insights. Through 2025 she also led DigitalHelse Follo, a digital health programme run jointly by five Norwegian municipalities and contracted through Nordre Follo kommune.
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 and execution
Audience outcomes
- Why transformation outcomes are set by employee engagement and leadership behaviour long before the technology goes live
- How to sequence culture and behaviour change alongside digital implementation instead of after it, using FranklinCovey’s execution methodologies
- How pulse-survey diagnostics track engagement during a change programme and connect it to specific leadership practices
- Specific leadership behaviours and routines that sustain team performance and execution under sustained organisational pressure
- An account of how digital change lands inside organisations, drawn from Google and Microsoft and from a live public sector transformation across five Norwegian municipalities
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