Former Northvolt trio launch 100-day task force for companies in crisis

The idea took shape over lunch earlier this autumn. At the time, Malin Knave was preparing to leave her role as Chief People Officer at Northvolt, having first helped drive its rapid expansion before later leading major efficiency programmes and mass redundancies.

She chose not to stay on as new owner Lyten attempts to restart the business.

"When I joined Northvolt, we were at the peak: new capital, new factory plans, a bit of a high-life feeling. Then everything shifted," she says when Impact Loop meets her and her two colleagues at the consulting firm Trio Taskforce in Stockholm.

"Bored an entire dinner party"

Also at the table that day was consultant Tom Roald Billgren, who has worked across several industrial companies, including Stegra.

"We bored an entire dinner party by talking heavy industry and the green transition. Somewhere in that conversation we realised how similarly we think about how companies should operate when times are tough," says Knave.

She then thought of communications veteran Erik Zsiga, who stepped in as Head of Media Relations when the Northvolt crisis was at its media height – and worked closely with her throughout the turmoil.

Now the three are launching Trio Taskforce to support companies already in crisis or drifting towards one – positioning themselves as a more action-driven alternative in a consultancy landscape dominated by analysis-heavy firms.

"The big consultancy houses are brilliant at analysis. The problem is that the report and the 100-day plan don’t actually pick up the phone and call a single supplier," says Knave.

Their motto: more action, less PowerPoint.

"Erik even thinks we should just declare PowerPoint banned," says Billgren.

Three months inside the business

The model is simple: up to three months inside the company, a focus on low-hanging fruit and clear, measurable results. Knave leads on operations and organisation, Billgren on procurement and cost reductions, and Zsiga on internal and external comms.

Smart cost cuts, sharper operations and clear communication – how does that actually play out? There are lessons from Northvolt, Knave says, and above all it comes down to pace.

"We were actually on our way out of reconstruction at one point. I’m convinced we’d have made it if we'd moved faster on the analysis and the actions. The issue wasn’t insight – it was execution. We needed to cut costs faster, move people out faster and stabilise the supplier chain faster," she says.

Their target group is mid-sized manufacturing companies that geared up for expansion but now need to pivot to profitability – many of them impact companies, the trio notes.

"Many impact companies built for growth and breadth. Now it’s far more important to have a functioning core and a clear path to profitability," says Knave.

But this is not about stepping in as interim executives.

"We work with the CEO, the head of procurement, the comms lead and others. We’re not there to take over line roles – we don’t stay long enough. We come in as a temporary task force, help out and then leave," says Knave.

Crisis experience as a strength

The fact that two of the three were part of a high-profile corporate collapse is, they argue, a strength rather than a weakness.

"You can understand why someone might ask. But what we did in the last one to two years before the bankruptcy was anything but passive. We fought extremely hard to prevent the outcome," says Knave.

Zsiga adds: "Experience of a full-scale crisis isn’t a liability – it’s an asset. We learnt a great deal that can now be genuinely useful elsewhere."