She is the Chief People, DNA, & Culture Officer at TimeXtender, and a Co-founder, along with her husband and CEO Heine Krog Iversen, both of whom founded the company in 2006. TimeXtender has been growing in re venue, customers, partners, and employees ever since.
Given the company’s 14-years of success, for that accomplishment alone, Anne is a successful entrepreneur. But her entrepreneurial spirit goes much deeper, and is shown day in and day out with her innovation, inventiveness and ideas for organizational progress and resilience.
Along with being an entrepreneur, Anne is also what we might call an “intrapreneur ,” one who creates and implements new business methods and models inside a company. At TimeXtender, she has identified a unique corporate DNA, and from there, built, advocated for and advanced numerous initiatives to guide a thriving workforce at this growing company. A great example of this has been her leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown that has occurred across many regional economies.
We’ve all felt the pain of the global pandemic. Layoffs. Shutdowns. Remote. It’s been a turbulent 2020 for sure, but TimeXtender, a global software company providing the fastest way to build and manage a modern data estate to support advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), has had the good fortune to continue to move ahead and actually achieve new levels of business growth.
The company has had to adjust, like most organizations, to maintain business continuity while moving from office workers to dispersed teams and remote work; all this, while trying to adjust to slowing business economies. However, given its purpose-driven leadership, and strong grounding in core beliefs, the company has fared well and better than one might expect: TimeXtender is on course to exceed 70 percent in new customers compared to the same time period last year.
This is quite remarkable given the uncertainty of these times. So, how was this achieved?
It starts with a combination of technology innovation and work-culture innovation. For its work culture and progressive workplace, TimeXtender has been recognized time and again. Led by Anne, the HR team regularly evaluates its culture and keeps a close e ye on business climate, looking for ways to improve operations, systems and programs for the organization as a whole.
Just prior to the global pandemic hitting, Anne and TimeXtender’s management team implemented organizational purpose circles (OPCs) throughout the company. With OPCs, TimeXtender was able to adapt rapidly with a “new workplace” and continue its business progress as, what Anne calls, “One Global Team” – working from anywhere.
While technology innovation is at the heart of TimeXtender’s mission, its creative, technical developmental focus could not reach its potential without this supporting – and innovative – work culture.
The OPCs run alongside its long-standing corporate mindfulness program and its following of Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” program. All in all, purpose-driven leadership has become the central theme for the company, as OPCs enable TimeXtender staff to be mostly self-managed, translating into an organization that has become more innovative, creative, and sustainable. This has also led to an environment that is adaptable and suitable for current times.
OPCs have propelled TimeXtender to improve processes by leveraging freedom, strengthening trust among employees, and achieving greater success with a structured framework. Purpose circles inspire individuals to get more in volved across different areas of interest. This modern-day organizational framework is helping the company advance to new levels of agility, productivity, sustainability, and innovation, inspiring employees towards greater personal and organizational growth.
With OPCs, group synergy has come alive with extensive idea sharing, mentoring, and learning. Blending individual purpose with organizational purpose provides encouragement for each person to strive for a higher purpose in life and at work.
Team members have responded favorably to working in a culture that enables sharing of the responsibilities of technical leadership, management, planning, implementation, and delivery assurance of final solutions. They cherish the opportunity to strive for a bigger purpose while working with colleagues to try and reach new heights, greater success, and ambitious goals and objectives.
And here’s where TimeXtender’s technology innovation and work-culture innovation meet. The company’s OPC environment is supported with a focus on automating workflow, speed on the job, efficiency of tasks, and utilization of technology, driven by purpose, focused on strategies and results — all without mid-level supervision. In other words, OPCs are designed with innovation at the heart of its purpose.
TimeXtender’s innovative and progressive work culture has shaped out nicely with OPCs as the primary business accessory. The company’s corporate mindfulness and other resilience training initiatives also plays a keen role as it is now available on virtual platforms and helps to support its refashioned, remote workplace.
All in all, purpose-driven culture continues to help TimeXtender flourish and maintain its roots as a true technology innovator, even in the midst of the global pandemic and with teams dispersed around the world that are working remote on different time zones.
For their work in the area of building a modern-day business culture, TimeXtender and Anne have won many industry awards, most recently and most ® notably, being named the winner of the Gold Stevie Award in the HR Department of the Year category for Employee Relations Team of the Year.
For these reasons, Anne can be considered a “10 Most Inspiring Business Women Making a Difference for 2021.” We expect to hear more great achievements coming from Anne, the Xtended leadership team and the X-People (as they call themselves) at TimeXtender in 2021.
