Nicolai Tangen: Well, I have a confession to make because uh when I was a bit younger, I loved earnings calls. I loved first quarter calls, second quarter calls, revenue, margin, cash flow. You know, I read balance sheets in bed a bit like you guys read poetry or do you read poetry? But then I realized that there was something else which was much more important because where did the numbers come from and what made them change? And that's when I realized I needed to spend more time on culture because numbers they tell you where a company has been. Culture tells you where it's going.

Nicolai Tangen: So in the fund we invest 20,000 billion Norwegian kroner. We are invested in 7,000 companies across the world. And when we invest, we have an investment horizon of decades. So when we look at who are successful and who fail, we don't look at quarters. We look at many years, many tens of years. And I've been convinced that it's all about culture because companies which in many cases look exactly the same, you know, same sneakers, same elevators, same banking products, some of them end up winning and some of them end up bankrupt. And we see it everywhere. But of course, no more extreme than in the banking sector. Some end up staying for hundreds of years. Others are gone. And it's not about the balance sheet. It's about the corporate culture. Who do you hire? Who do you fire? How fast do you make decisions? How worried are you about telling the truth to your boss? That's all culture. It's about speed, innovation, risk-taking.

Nicolai Tangen: Now, let's think about 2007 for instance in Finland. Nokia, they controlled half the world market for mobile phones. Half the world market. Then the iPhone was launched. The mid managers saw the next day that this was a real threat to the business. didn't dare to tell the top management because of fear of failure. Six years later, Nokia gone, because of a culture of fear. So where does culture come from? Well, it comes from the top. I have now in the good company podcast spoken to 200 companies. Now according to my wife 200 companies is not not enough to become a good listener. Uh but I'm I'm trying hard. So I sit down with the head of Jiva and I ask him what is your culture? And he says you know what it's about performance. It's about uh uh taking the right amount of risk. it's about empathy. And then I said, well, but you're just describing yourself, aren't you? And he starts laughing and he says, well, and that's exactly why it's working. So, basically, culture is coming from the characteristics of a CEO and it's being transmitted to the corporation. It's not what you write on the wall, it's what you do every day.

Nicolai Tangen: Now, the world is changing faster than any time before. And AI is reshaping all the organization all the organizations. So it's not a matter of should we adopt AI it's just a matter of how fast can we adopt it and what is it that prevents us from do it from doing it in the organization. The companies getting it right they are the companies where people can make a difference straight away where speed matters more than a hierarchy. And the ones getting it wrong have cultures built on fair and cultures where it's about this is the way we've always done it. These companies will be gone soon. But then there is a new term which I love and that is called high agency people. High agency people is people who do original things with speed and with force. and we have a lot of them here today to talk to you. So you will see cultures from many different directions, different countries and different industries. But what all these companies have in common is high performance culture and a level of ambition that is worldleading.

Nicolai Tangen: By the way, way beyond the type of ambitions we typically see in this country because here extreme ambition means beating your neighbor to the ski tracks on the Sunday. But ambitions really matter because if you have high ambitions, you achieve great things even if you fail. If you have low ambitions, you achieve nothing even if you succeed. So the companies we are meeting today have extraordinary growth, market share gains, return on capital and it's been going on over decades and today we are going to learn from them. They are what we in the oil fund called kickass companies.