What I do
At a government ministry, the procurement process changed. Before, people called the supplier directly, and when the invoice landed, they forwarded it to finance to sort out. After, the new system asked for a purchase requisition, goods received in the system, then the invoice would match and pay itself.
People kept calling suppliers. Finance kept getting invoices nobody could match to anything. So I asked them why.
They had already had the training. They knew the steps. They had just never connected the dots between the new process and their actual Tuesday morning. Knowing a system exists is not the same as changing what you do at your desk.
That gap, between the training that happened and the behavior that didn't, is what I have spent 20+ years closing. Different tools, same gap: ERP rollouts, AI pilots, CRM migrations.
Why this matters to me
I care about people first. Technology second, only because of what it can do for the people who have to use it. If the system works and the person still dreads Monday, I do not call that done.
The work I have done has been important, and the lessons have been earned, often the hard way. They should not stay locked in my head.
The truth is, I have leaned on five of these rules for years, long before I ever put them into words. The Vonk Playbook is where they finally got written down, not as a soft skill bolted onto the launch, but as the work itself.
Where I am now
I want to do this work bigger. More stages, more audiences, more rooms where transformation lands instead of stalling. More leaders who care about the human side, more organizations who want their rollouts to actually work.
And more conversations with the next generation: women stepping into digital adoption work, and young people across the globe deciding whether to shape technology or fear it. I want to inspire them. I want to be in their corner.
By day I work at Oracle. By everything else, I am building Arlette Vonk: the Playbook is the first piece of it, and there is more on the way.
Let's talk
If any of these felt familiar, I would love to hear about it. Send me a message, find me on LinkedIn, just reach out.