Meetings do cost money. Definitely. And you can find numerous tools that help you calculate the costs of your meetings, such as TIM, Time = Money or many more downloadable apps on the internet. But what do these numbers really say? It only tells you how much money you invested in the meeting. And that [...]
The discussion heated up. I simply asked all participants, a management team, to take a stance by physically putting on a scale a coloured dot. For this growing organisation I was curious to know what the management wanted: more systemisation of processes on the one hand or more self-organisation and responsibilities on a lower level. [...]
Alex Osterwalder is hot. He is co-author of the bestseller book ‘Business Model Generation’. The book inspired me as being one of the only books worth reading on business modelling. The model is simple, handy without being simplistic and it emphasizes the idea of testing and failing. Something I recognize from the field of organisational [...]
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 [...]
Simple things are powerful. The title ‘Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite’ is one of those powerful simple things. To refresh the memory: it’s the title of a great little book by Paul Arden. It reads in about 15 minutes and puts a lot of your thoughts upside down. And my thought came to this [...]
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 [...]
‘SME’s are reluctant to invest in innovation. The rewards, read profits, are not clear enough for the immediate focus that most SME’s operate in.’ I was discussing with an expert on innovation and instinctively knew he was right. I’ve had difficult experiences discussing innovation with SME’s. There is interest and curiosity about innovation because most [...]
The admonishment by US House Speaker John Boehner to his fellow Republican became legendary the moment it was uttered. ‘Get your ass in line’ is a rare beauty of the helplessness of the House Speaker during a closed meeting where he tried to rally support from his fellow party members for a debt bill last [...]
There are two rules for an engaged meeting: How well you plan, the meeting will always go wrong, If the meeting does not go wrong, you had a sub-optimal meeting. When I started working as an office clerk some 12 years ago nobody had told me these rules. Being at the bottom of 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.
