PREBEN WERTHER

Short version

• Coach, live together with a wonderfull woman, one daughter age 22

• Raised on a Farm, have 9 sisters

• Happy childhood
  

• Carriere in the Army (20 year og rank Major)

• Master Psysical Training

• Orienteering (military national team)

• Fencing (military national team)

• Team captain for both teams

• Special Forces (Jeager no. 197), CO Training
  

• Change Agent i LEGO

• Coach for Top elite Sport (icehockey)

• Skipper 
  

• Chairman for Yachtclub Neptun

• Coach for Companies (see references)
  

Long version

Coach/trainer, born and grown up on a farm, the only boy amongst 10 siblings, I had a happy childhood and youth with high degrees of freedom. My close relations to farming life have given me a lot of learning about the laws of nature governing e.g. a good harvest. I’m quite handy, and I have learned to see through unstructured contexts early in life. 

My leadership and managerial training was initiated in the army where I rose to the rank of officer. I completed my career (approx. 25 years) with the rank of major. Along the way I have done a lot of continuation  training in such disciplines as psychology and education. I’m a certified Master, Physical Training (a 3-year course). This training brought me in touch with some of the rather elitary sports such as orienteering and fencing. For a while, I was on both of the military national teams, both as an active participant and as a team captain. I won the Danish Championship in both sports. For the last 12 years of my military career I served in the danish special force unit, Jaegercorps (Jaeger No. 197) with the title Commanding Officer Training (CO). I was in charge of the recruiting, selection and maintenance of all training of the unit on land, at sea and in the air.

In 1988, I became the co-owner of  Dansk Ledertræning ApS (Danish Leadership Training), offering services in leadership development, team building, and co-operation training for companies. This was a welcome opportunity for me to translate my military experience and deep human insight into products focusing on the action-oriented and the physical element, mainly taking place in an outdoor environment.

My years as a change agent at LEGO were characterized by change management, new design and implementation of major change processes in the branch of the organisation called the SDU (Strategic Development Units, with a staff of 1,200). The task here was to re-engineer the organisation from a line organisation to a well-functioning matrix organisation, and to cut down product development’s time to market, which was 4 years at the time, to half. This task involved responsibility for the development and implementation of management tools, structures and training plans. Implementing the entire re-engineering process took two and a half years, and the procedures and management tools developed in the process are still in use.

Parallel with the completion of the re-engineering process, I came in charge of a project that was unique in terms of requirements and goals. Since, at the time, LEGO was losing major market shares, I was asked to develop an anti-competitor product from scratch, with a development time of just one year using the procedures and management tools mentioned above. The product was launched in time.

I have since 1994 worked with Lasse Zäll (at that time CEO Scanfutura). I introduced the thinking and backbone of Dansk Ledertræning, and the first steps of the Pathfinder programme took place. Today, Dansk Ledertræning’s contribution is known as Module 2 “The Border”. In 1999, I was hired as a coach by Pathfinder A/S, where my focus was on closed pathfinder programmes, strategic processes and pro-active seminars. In my time as a Pathfinder coach, I have contributed to the development of nearly all programmes up until 2006, and I graduated well over 300 pathfinders, a fact that I’m very proud of. In addition, the numerous seminars have given me the chance to contribute to many fruitful results of development processes in many companies. It was an extremely worth-while period which, in terms of development, nearly compares with my career in the Jaegercorps.

In two periods I was coach/trainer for Petri Skriko and his staff of players in Herning and Odense ice hockey clubs. Petri was to undergo the change from being one of the most successful foreign players in the Danish ice-league to becoming the trainer of the Herning Blue Fox team. The change was extremely hard. My job was to assist and support him in this change process. Petri succeeded in winning silver and gold in Herning, and the following year in Odense – the turnaround from his impending exit from the league to a 4th place in the playoff.

Since 2006, I have had my own consultancy business WolfWay Aps.

A Danish saying goes “It is one thing to read a chart and quite another thing to navigate a ship”. A skipper of my own Nordisk Folkebåd (Nordic Folkboat), I have had the pleasure of having a former world champion in the Dragon class both as a crew and a helmsman. He taught me the truth behind this proverb. The boat is now my preferred holiday and leisure activity, a natural place to recover energy or practice such skills as agile thinking, strategy, decision-making power, consistency, and dealing with situations here and now.

As chairman of the Neptun yacht club in Vejle (approx. 800 members), I have the opportunity to work with all aspects of management in a large organisation of volunteers. The role of chairman is comparable to the role of general manager in a company. The annual general meeting provides me with a framework and a mandate, to be transformed into benefits for the club. My work is evaluated annually by the 800 “owners” and the results are measured as member satisfaction. My ambition for the club is to put it on the sports map again before 2010. The goals include placing the club among the top five for dinghies, surf boards and keelboats. Also, lowering the average age, and establishing a smashing marina. We want to see a forest of white sails on our beautiful fjord once more, and we strive for more major events and a renewed interest in Vejle Fjord.

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