Entries by Erik Snijder

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“So, anyway…” words of wisdom by John Cleese

Recently I came across a Google Talk with John Cleese who was interviewed about his memoirs “So, Anyway…”. To call it an interview is a compliment to Jason Sanders who did his best to guide the conversation. Despite the no-doubt well-prepared questions, his guest didn’t need a lot of cues to engage in a very […]

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The Art of Possibility

Lately I came across the work of Benjamin Zander. He was the conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra for 20 years. He is also a renowned music teacher with students from all over the world. Apart from his musical career he co-authored a book called ‘the Art of Possibility’.  In a TED-talk about the Transformative […]

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Turn the Ship Around! (or any other type of organization)

In my current engagement I came across the ideas of David Marquet, a captain in the US Navy with interesting ideas about leadership. He isn’t the first articulating these kind of ideas but his context is unique as a nuclear submarine is an unlikely environment for a social experiment. Moving from a leader-follower culture to a leader-leader […]

Sourcing for a better world?

The drivers for sourcing are quite diverse, but more often than not ‘cost savings’ is high on the priority list together with ‘focus on core business’ and ‘quality improvement’. Very rarely sourcing engagements are seen as an opportunity to increase happiness or change the world for the better. But there are exceptions and I would […]

Robotics: can your work be automated?

A recent trend in Shared Services and Outsourcing is Robotics Process Automation (RPA). In the early days labour arbitrage and industrialized delivery models were used to optimize processes and bring down cost. Twenty years later we see that additional value needs to come from new initiatives and RPA is a good candidate to deliver onthis […]

Canada, Eh?

There are several ways to make decisions in life. My type of personality would generally rate the rational approach above the more emotional attempts to get to a conclusion. Normally I would do a risk analysis, talk to people who’s knowledge and opinion I respect and I would draft a list of all the pro’s […]

Parkinson’s Law or why we procrastinate while we can…

Management Consultants as a species are always busy. Client meetings, presentations to prepare, reports to finish, networks to be maintained, we are running all over the place. But to be fair, our level of activity varies over the year. When working on three or four client engagements at the same time our agenda’s are back-to-back […]

Life without Facebook…

Early in the new year is the time to think about life’s priorities. Numerous people start 2015 with the best intentions to live healthier lives by eating better, exercise more and if applicable stop smoking. When making up your mind about things to change this year, your Social Media behaviour may be part of the […]

Crowdsourcing, a phenomenon that is here to stay

Sourcing consultants should aspire to understand every aspect of sourcing. My question is whether that should include ‘crowdsourcing’ as well because this is an upcoming phenomenon. At first glance crowdsourcing seems to be something in the area of Social Media but I think it deserves a more thorough assessment as it can be relevant in […]

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Best Value Procurement, a one-size-fits-all solution?

Well over a year ago I had several people who talked to me about Best Value Procurement (BVP for short). For different reasons they were all very positive about this approach and its potential benefits. Fragmented stories and various recommendations were a reason for me to go to the source: the Performance Based Studies Research […]