We are in the midst of a leadership crisis. The rational, ego-driven authority model of organizations that is based on ideas that are over a century old will not work anymore in the future. We can dive deep into this like I did in previous essays about a non-hierarchical leadership…

My drive, my mission is to increase creativity, potential in people. In myself but even more in others. There is so much that can be done to increase creative potential by learning new skills. But the other side of this is to eliminate limiting factors and that is equally important…

The dominant organizational models we use today are based in some way, shape, or form on the principles of Scientific Management. This means cutting work up and organizing it in boxes with management layers. These boxes can be structured in different ways ranging from silos to matrices. Years ago, I…

Design thinking has been around for a while now. I have been practicing it for almost ten years now. All innovations follow the Gartner Hype Cycle and that shows us that the interest in design thinking is waning. There are other ways of working that are related to design thinking like service design, design sprints, and different forms of Agile. All these things have their ups and downs when it comes to popularity. All these things have their benefits and pitfalls. What I like about all these new ways of working is that they allow us to create a different space. It’s a space in which we have tools to empower people, to tap into their unused potential, to make the quiet people heard, to truly co-create solutions, to create a platform for all stakeholders to come together. And that is what the future should look like.

I have been thinking about leadership a lot and the role that design can play in that on this blog. There are lots of ways design can play a role in leading people and organizations to a better place, to solve problems. What I love about design is that it…

Last week, I was listening to a Wim Hof podcast. In it, Wim explained that the body is basically an autonomous system. You don’t have to do anything to breathe, to pump your blood, to process food. The body can take care of itself fine without any conscious interference. About five years ago, I started with cold showers, the Wim Hof method. This method consists of three parts: breathing, cold exposure and dedication. When I started, I used the breathing techniques before I took the cold showers. I used the breathing techniques to help my body deal with the cold exposure. For five years, I used breathing techniques every time I was under the ice cold water, every morning. Until last week. Last week, I just surrendered. I just let my body deal with the cold without my help, without the help of breathing techniques. I turns out my body doesn’t need the help of breathing techniques to deal with the cold. Breathing turned out just to be a crutch, a mental model that is not needed to deal with cold. The journey of cold showers has brought me many wonderful things of which the total surrender is the latest.

To me, strategy is about potential. There is always potential for growth. Strategy is about finding the area where the most potential for growth for an organization is and organizing things to manifest that potential. The goals of organizations are usually not that complicated: sell more products and/or services to make the world better and/or make more money. When a strategy is needed, there is usually some kind of transformation: a shift in the offering is needed to grow or to adjust to changing circumstances. Strategy is the plan to achieve those goals. But what comes before strategy, what is needed to create a strategy is seeing the potential. Strategy is the product of a process of uncovering potential: potential of the market and the context in relation to the potential of the organization.

Radicals are people who change things by going to the root of things. Radical comes from the Latin radix which means root. Radicals are people who live and die by their principles. Radicals practice what they preach. Radicals are people who set their own rules and sail their own course…