A highly sought-after Nordic anthropologist, author, and speaker, Normark helps companies enhance efficiency, innovation, and collaboration. His principles are especially valuable during digital transformation, leadership shifts, or international expansion
Dennis Nørmark’s approach to operational excellence revolves around eliminating inefficiencies, fostering cultural intelligence, and improving organizational effectiveness. His work challenges traditional corporate structures by identifying pseudo-work—tasks that create the illusion of productivity but add no real value. By addressing these inefficiencies, he helps companies streamline processes, improve decision-making, and create a more purposeful work environment.
Dennis Normark is a well-known and highly sought-after Nordic based anthropologist, international bestselling author and speaker. He works with international organizations such as Novo Nordisk, PWC, Fuji, IBM, L’Oreal, Microsoft, MSD, Shell, Smith + Nephew, Takeda, Vattenfall, Leo Pharma, Deloitte, Coloplast, Oticon, Roche, Maersk, Novozymes etc.
He is the author to 9 books – both non-fiction and fiction – focusing on the future of work, time management, culture, efficiency, leadership, simplicity in organizations and modern work.
Furthermore Dennis Normark has established himself as an important consultant and speaker in the business world. He is known for his appearances on numerous TV and radio shows mainly in the Nordic region. He is sought after for his extensive knowledge of people and cultures, as well as his ability to convey it in an engaging and accessible manner.
The latter ability has developed from his extensive experience in the world of theatre as an actor, playwright, and director. He has a background as conceptualizing chief consultant in market leading consultancy firms and is a professional board member in the media industry and education. He is a professional speaker with around 100 presentations and keynotes a year.
Keynote by speaker Dennis Normark:
Never before have organisations invested so much in streamlining, efficiency and digital tools, and yet many teams feel they have less time for the work that actually creates value. In this keynote, Dennis Nørmark explores why “more systems” often leads to more coordination, more handoffs and more internal work, and how to reverse that trend.
Based on the ideas from the international bestseller Pseudo Work (2018, co-authored with philosopher Anders Fogh Jensen) and supported by interviews, research and real workplace patterns, the talk maps the most common forms of low-value activity: meeting overload, email churn, reporting routines, registrations, slide production, overlapping KPIs and policies that expand over time.
The message is that that many organisations unintentionally create friction through unclear priorities, unclear decision rights and well-meant controls that multiply. Complexity is man made and not a natural law, not even in large organizations.
Participants get a practical framework to distinguish value-creating work from activity, identify hidden coordination costs, and implement “minimum viable bureaucracy”: the right level of governance, with fewer unnecessary loops.
This is an upbeat, actionable session designed for leaders, HR and teams who want better focus, faster execution and a calmer operating rhythm, without compromising quality, compliance or accountability.
Typical takeaways
Keynote by Dennis Normark:
The pyramids are collapsing. The old command-and-control structures no longer deliver the results they once did, and employees are demanding that their leaders be humane, empathetic, and kind. We are witnessing a revolution in leadership.
But, in fact, leaders who were brutal, narrowly performance-focused, and controlling have been the exception in history, argues Dennis Normark with the help of anthropology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology. Humans are adapted to servant leaders who demonstrate humility and create results through a community of free and autonomous individuals.
Today’s leaders can learn from the leaders of the past and even from leadership as practiced in indigenous societies. Through inspiring examples of contemporary "chiefs" from successful organizations, Nørmark offers radically new insights into ancient wisdom about leadership. It is a story about who kindness pays off.
Keynote by Dennis Normark:
Organizations are changing radically in these years, and old ways of working and leading are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Old theories about what created motivation, productivity, and efficiency are no longer valid. Hierarchies are crumbling, and the younger generation demands new forms of collaboration and leadership.
Simultaneously, attracting the talents of the future is becoming crucial, but this requires organizations to orient themselves differently in relation to new demands for freedom, self- determination, pluralism, meaning, and flexibility. In his keynote, anthropologist Dennis
Normark examines the global trends affecting our labor market. It is not only technology that is changing things, it is the very tectonic plates around our work life and management that is changing too. And organizations need to get ready for it.
Watch Dennis Normark in action!
Watch Dennis Normark in action!
Watch Dennis Normark in action!
Watch speaker Dennis Normark in action
