Take Command.
Of yourself.
Start there.

OVÄLD HAGNILSK AB

OVÄLD HAGNILSK AB offers an integrated concept in Protection, Safety and Quality – Hägn, Hövisk and Habil. We provide training, lectures, courses and books covering ISO standards, ISM, ISPS, MLC and RCV2050. We serve everyone who wishes to become and remain impartial and independent in their judgement.

To be oväld means to remain free from undue influence, use your own judgement and make decisions on an objective basis. This requires knowledge, competence and an understanding of the relationship between authority, responsibility and consequences. Remaining oväld requires this ability to be maintained and tested through the work being carried out.

Our work draws on experience from international shipping and operations where protection, safety and quality need to work in practice. We connect standards, regulations and management systems with the individual’s ability to understand their assignment, make decisions and take responsibility for the results. Trust, Competence and Leadership are the foundation.

With RCV2050, we work through Observation, Analysis, Decision, Action, Result and Feedback. Feedback provides a basis for correcting shortcomings, developing the work and preserving what works.

What do you or your organisation need in order to move forward? We start with your needs, the capabilities available and the result to be achieved. That is where the conversation with OVÄLD HAGNILSK AB begins.

Torbjörn on the background

Several years ago, I wrote a text in which I tried to describe my view of the future through a mathematical formula. It concerned the competence needs of organisations and how knowledge, experience, responsibility and leadership fit together. The text set a process in motion that has since continued through books, columns, conversations and educational materials. The first website is now available, where I am beginning to bring the results together: OVÄLD – Take Command at holkner.se.

The website is the next step in making the content accessible and giving anyone who is interested a place to begin.

My starting point is experience in international shipping since 1981. As a master mariner, ship’s master and DP/CSO, I have worked with people, organisations, regulations and decisions where responsibility has concrete consequences. Protection, safety and quality need to work in everyday operations. This requires trust, competence and leadership. The same questions arise when I look at working life and society ashore: What evidence is available? Who makes the decision? Who has the authority to implement it? Who follows up on the result? Where does responsibility lie?

In the presentation, I describe this as an analysis of responsibility. Processes may exist, roles may be defined and systems may be in place, while the desired results still fail to materialise. Everyone can be involved without it being clear who bears responsibility for the whole. When decisions, responsibility and consequences are separated, it becomes difficult to steer the outcome. My starting point is therefore a clear point of responsibility: one function, one name and one responsibility, with authority appropriate to the task. The work then needs direction, and the results must be followed up. The question is not whether responsibility exists. The question is where it lies.

The Take Command series builds on this. It begins with taking command of yourself, continues with becoming OVÄLD and moves on to responsibility for others and the organisation. Start Again! means using experience from what has been done as a basis for the next decision. One part of the background is the three-day course for seafarers that I had prepared for Chalmers Professional in spring 2020. When the pandemic arrived, the planned course did not take place. I have since continued working with the content and developed it into books, online courses and lectures.