About me
The human side
is the work.
For more than twenty years I have worked at the intersection of technology, change and the people expected to make it work. ERP, CRM, AI. Different systems, always the same question: will anyone actually use it?
You have probably seen this
The system is live. The training has happened. The project team has been disbanded.
And on Tuesday morning everyone is still doing it the old way.
You did not get it wrong. Something was skipped that appears in almost no plan: the moment someone decides for themselves that the new way is now theirs.
That decision is not made in the steering committee. It is made at a desk, in five minutes, usually with nobody watching.
Why I do this
I do not think technology is the problem. Most of the time it works fine.
I do not think people are the problem either. They almost always have a good reason for what they do.
It sits in the space between the two. Nobody is made responsible for that space, and almost no time is planned for it.
That space is my work. It has been for twenty years.
What I learned there did not come from a methodology or a course. It came from experience, often the hard way. For twenty years I made notes I never showed anyone, because I assumed that knowledge belonged in my head, and that the only way to pass it on was to stand in the room myself.
That is not true. Knowledge and experience do not have to be sold by the hour. They can be written down, designed and handed over, so other people can carry on with them when I am not there.
So the notes became a book. VONK is the next part of the same idea.
What I stand for
Make it understandable.
If I cannot explain it in plain language, I do not understand it well enough yet. Models are useful. They are not proof that thinking has happened.
Think about adoption early.
Adoption is not something you add at the end of a project. By go-live, people have already formed habits, opinions and workarounds.
Work with what is real.
Advice nobody can act on is not useful advice. Start with the people, time and budget that actually exist.
How I work
I start with questions, not a plan.
Usually with the people who will use the system every day, and not only with the sponsor.
I say so when I think something will not work. Even when that is uncomfortable, and even when the decision has already been made.
The most useful conversations tend to happen afterwards. When the project is finished, or the talk is over, and someone finally tells you what really went on.
Starting small is allowed. One team, one process, one habit. That works better than a programme that has to reach everybody at once.
And I would rather work alongside a team than in front of it. The point is that you can do it without me. If I leave and it falls over, my work was not finished.
Want to talk it through?
No sales pitch. If any of this sounded familiar, I would like to hear about it.
Tell me where it is getting stuck. Sometimes I have something to add, sometimes I do not. We will both know quickly enough.
