Freedom, Happiness, Health and Relevance

How the employees in your organisation really doing? We often visit organisations where some leaders are thoroughly examining this and others have far less attention for this. That is a shame. Especially since almost every leader will call themselves ‘people focussed’. That’s why we think this should be a topic for every leader.  After noting the big difference in this area, we hear the …

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Are we ready for a real challenge?

Challenge. A word we often hear, very often. Organisations want it, leaders want it, employees want it. Being challenged, accepting challenges and delivering on challenges.   I regularly wonder whether we realise what this means. Because there is no challenges without sacrifice and with a challenge comes the possibility to fail. Because a real challenge isn’t easy. I fit would be …

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Developing through Kaizen (as a runner)

Personal development is HOT: Companies want it, employees want it, everybody wants it! The goals are varied, from ‘developing as consultant’, to ‘strengthening collaboration’. From ‘increasing commercial strength’, and ‘add value on a strategic level’ to ‘communicate more directly’. All great goals, but then… Sometimes goals can be to big and abstract, and that is when we …

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Periodic (Team) Maintenance

We already do it for machines: maintenance. Our car gets an annual check and often a big and small service. We have our boiler serviced; And many other examples.  There are also many examples of where we don’t apply maintenance, when actually we should. For example: Jochem’s ‘old’ racing bike. He maintains his new bike much better than his old one. The latter is mainly used in bad weather conditions (because it will get his new one dirty and that is a shame). However, this deficient maintenance caused a defect making it difficult to ride the bike properly. To solve it he had to invest time, money and frustration. During this time, the bike wasn’t used much. And to top it off, when searching for the cause he found multiple other minor defects. Those minor defects made it more difficult to find the cause of the most relevant defect, as it was not exactly clear what caused what.  In short:  Maintenance is important. Always. For everything and everyone. Yet, we don’t do enough maintenance. Especially in our own personal, business and team situation. We do see a slight shift happening; people working with coaches before there is a ‘problem’. Which is great! Taking time to reflect and check whether you are doing what you like and like what you do. A personal maintenance check.  We often get called by organisations when there are problems in or with a team. Great assignments for us, yet very time, energy and money consuming for the organisation and the teams. Because the direct cause of the problem, often, isn’t easily found. Teams that aren’t functioning well …

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From personal development to building bikes (and vice versa)

Personal development is hot. A training here, a workshop there. All very useful, good that it is being done and let’s continue doing it. But it should not be a replacement for facilitating personal development on the job. From my perspective, this often seems to be the case.   Making mistakes is allowed. I phrase I often …

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Customer focus – 1 situation, 2 employees, 2 experiences

Customer focus is an important theme at many companies nowadays. This includes customer friendly sales- and service channels. In addition, the employee who is in direct contact with the customer has a crucial role, as I have experienced myself recently.  Context  My road bike shifter (the component that allows you to brake and shift gears) stopped functioning. Without …

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Change – New core values: Agile Scrum or Waterfall?

We are frequently allowed to take an in-depth look in organizations who recently formulated their new Core Values. Often we will find these new Core Values in communication channels, like the companies’ website. And that’s about it. When looking at the behavior of employees (including the management) little has changed. Interesting. What goes wrong? We …

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