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 [...]
People unite and gather to make great achievements. When these gatherings become formal we call them meetings. And everyone will agree that there are good and bad meetings. Sadly enough, in most organisations the bad ones dominate over the good ones. And it is sad indeed. Because you disengage from the group and that, in [...]
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. [...]
There’s a fine line between pushing others into something new and letting them decide for themselves. It was only a matter of time. The decision to cut the budget by more than 50% was formally not yet taken, but only a miracle could save the organisation, a big music school in the South of the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
‘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 [...]
Where are we heading to and why? Most change programmes are about adapting to economic times (being able to sell more or to keep the level of sales). But the discussion on why we need a certain change on a deep intrinsic level is hardly addressed. When asked, the most probable answer will be that [...]
I never realised that the US is a very efficient market until I met a former Marketing Manager from Unilever who had been promoted to Asia. He explained that with one single marketing campaign he could reach a huge market of wealthy customers. With 300 million inhabitants sharing the same language and culture a single [...]
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.
