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Cultural fit (or not)

When companies decide to outsource part of their activities, this will require serious preparation. They invest time and effort in a sourcing strategy with considerations on what should or should not be outsourced. There is attention to the…
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All the best for 2023!

What kind of year was 2022? This time of year is a time of reflection. Last year Covid was top of mind. In this part of the world, that is entirely different now, but in China, the worst is likely to come. Things are returning to normal while…
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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…
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Musical chairs in the corporate world

Career development systems in a consultancy firm have some nasty streaks in it. First I'll explain how it works and then why I think we should abolish it in this form asap. The career development in many partnership firms is a variation on…
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From cost to value

Outsourcing has been around for some time now. After the mega deals in the late nineties, the industry developed quite a bit. Deals became smaller, engagement are now mostly multi-vendor, in some cases with a prime vendor responsible for service…
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Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future

Richard Susskind is a British author, speaker, and independent adviser to international professional firms and national governments and he holds professorships at the University of Oxford, Gresham College and Strathclyde University. Wikipedia…
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The Age of Sustainable Development

Last weekend I completed a course about Sustainable Development on Coursera. The past fourteen weeks professor Jeffrey D. Sachs from the Earth Institute and Columbia University shared his insights in a series of video lectures and suggested…
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Compliance and Integrity

The company I work for is making headlines in the national newspapers over the past couple of months and not all for the right reasons. A settlement to avoid legal procedures in a case about bribing Middle East government officials, signing…
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Elevator etiquette

Lately I have worked on a project where most of the work is done more than 30 floors above ground level. For the Netherlands that is quite exceptional. This country is flat and many cities seem to be reluctant in allowing high rise buildings.…
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Business talk or pidgin English?

The Netherlands are an open economy in which trade is an important factor. This goes back for centuries. You could argue that back in the 17th century the Dutch East India Company was the first multinational corporation. And for a fact it was…
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Consumerisation vs. Corporate IT: 1-0

Recently the company I work for introduced Tibbr as an internal Social Network. It is a nice product suite with functionality you would expect in such a platform. We can now chat, blog, set up communities, and exchange ideas online via Tibbr.…
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Get personal: attention improves performance

In the early days of industrial revolution scientists conducted many tests to better understand what impacts productivity. A well known experiment was to differentiate the level of illumination in otherwise comparable factory halls. Before and…