Organisations succeed when people commit and thrive. I work with founders and leadership to identify and solve problems to release the full growth potential: building trust, culture and purposeful processes that enable people to thrive, and bringing focus and reducing founder dependency.
Helping founder-led organisations grow on healthy foundations
I’m a generalist and a human-centred leader. My approach to helping organisations is open-minded, systemic and result-driven.
Susanna Laanikari, Founder of the Grounded Company
Ambiguity in an organisation eats productivity and innovation. Small problems grow into big ones over time.
I help you to create clarity, identify the most critical bottlenecks to unlock the full growth potential by figuring out ways to address them — through people, systems, and structures.
Services
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Fractional COO
Embedded senior operational leadership for companies where growth has outpaced structure, with a fraction of the cost of a full-time role.
This model brings senior execution capability into the organisation to build lean operating systems, unblock decision-making, and support the founder’s transition to strategic, visionary leader. -
Strategic Sparring Partnership
Focused support and challenging for founders who want to stay ahead of growth challenges, how and when needed, without adding execution overhead.
This flexible model provides a trusted sounding board for key challenges and decisions, and injects on-demand support when needed, helping founders build readiness for scale before problems become urgent. -
Collaborative Capacity Model
Building a model that combines traditional employed teams with cultivated freelancer communities—enabling financial resilience while maintaining quality and culture.
This model transforms employment costs from fixed liabilities into variable assets, while building a competitive advantage through community.
“As interim COO at Gubbe, Susanna was able to identify where the real need was and helped us direct our focus to the right things, namely interpersonal trust, leadership structures, and creating clarity.”
— Meri-Tuuli Helin, Founder & CEO of Gubbe
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Effective and growth-oriented organisations
Organisational development and change
Helping organisations grow through flexible but structured practices that improve efficiency, strengthen collaboration and empower decentralised decision-making.
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Trust-based leadership that drives performance
Leadership and team development
Building leadership that creates clarity, a culture of trust and openness, and establishing capabilities that foster a sense of ownership, empower the team to commit, innovate, collaborate and grow.
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Turning strategy into clarity and action
Operationalising strategy to drive the vision
Helping clarify priorities, bring focus, and connecting strategic direction with day-to-day work to help people commit and work towards a shared direction.
Get in touch
If you want to hear more, please reach out to me.
Book a 30-minute intro call
You can also send a message or call me:
susanna@groundedcompany.fi
+358 50 4386 489
Koskelantie 25 F 51
00610 Helsinki
Finland