Dr. John P. Kotter is a former professor at the Harvard Business School and is regarded as one of the biggest authorities on leadership and change. He has authored 17 books, many of which are bestsellers. ‘Leading Change’, his biggest success was reedited last year a little earlier than his article ‘Accelerate’ in which he [...]
‘I’m creative’ . Too often, I meet people that are unable to utter these 3 words. When they think of creative ideas, they’re never the source; when they think of creative persons, they leave themselves out of the equation. I was in the middle of a deep discussion with a former colleague about work, [...]
Innovation is inefficient. Innovation is embracing uncertainty. You’re standing in a big vast room. And everywhere around, you see doors. There are so many doors that the walls, the ceiling and the floor of the room are actually made up of doors. There’s nothing that resembles a normal piece of wall. It’s just doors, doors [...]
A while ago I came across The Strength of Weak Ties, an article written by Mark Granovetter some 40 years ago. After the article had been refused in the sixties by the American Sociological Review it was eventually published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1973. That was the tipping point, as Granovetters’s theory [...]
Ideas are just ideas. On itself, the value of an idea is nil. If you have a great idea but you don’t execute it, then nothing happens. The world just goes on as it went. And you’ve not made the change you wanted (did you really want to change the world or were you just [...]
I’ve already blogged about how ideas propagate. Richard Dawkins stated they do this the same way as our genes. Ideas travel from mind to mind, are being used, recombine, fall apart, get lost and father new ideas. Our meetings can become so much better From that point of view, meetings are nothing more than [...]
The Russian economist Kondratieff discovered that market economies develop in 50-70 year long waves. Markets follow an up-cycle of growth leading to a period of stability that is eventually followed by a recession and that in a timeframe of 50 to 70 years before the new wave starts. Three important trends The current wave [...]
I love telling stories to my son. Last time we were in the car for quite a long stretch and my 1-year old became bored and restless. My eyes caught sight of a funny sign saying ‘island of birds’. I immediately started off talking about all the birds known to men living on a single [...]
Observation is all about getting new insights. The better you observe, the quicker new insights will come. I was reading the ‘Art of Innovation’, the bestseller by Tom Kelly of the hugely successful design firm IDEO. Observation is a cornerstone in their innovation and design approach. Confronted with an innovation challenge, they start observing the [...]
About you
You're leading a team. And you hold meetings; regular ones, occasional ones.
Meetings consume valuable time so you want to get the most out of them. You want them to energize the participants, develop your team and help you achieve your change or innovation.
About Ruben
I'm Ruben van der Laan and I'm here to make your team flow.
I coach, (re)design and lead your meetings unleashing creativity, building teams and organising expediency.
