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 …
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 …
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 …
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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All articles and blogs about change start the same. The proof seems overwhelming: Change is hard. Both for people and organisations. But is change really that difficult? Or is the way we want to change making it difficult? How can we change in small steps? Jochem wants to make the world a better place (ambitious …
We all know the story: change projects are often thought through well, yet many seem to be unsuccessful. Many organisations do a good job, come up with useful changes, but then…. Changing doesn’t seem that simple.. Before I tell you our view on change, I would like to go back in time. To our puberty. …
Next to the start of our company, Jochem and I were also training for a full triathlon (3,8km swim, 180km cycling and 42,2km run). Together. Jochem slightly faster than me, but with the knowledge that you are doing it with somebody. Knowing, that somewhere on the track somebody else is fighting. A kind of teamwork. …