Arnold Beekes

Divers and Employees Professional deep-sea divers are trained to deal with tough circumstances. It is unnatural for human beings to be underwater for a long time. Oxygen cylinders, diving gear, and training are needed. When they have to dive very deep to search for a black box of a plane or to repair a pipeline, it can be dangerous. Many long-time divers are quite unhealthy. They can get caisson disease, a   condition   resulting   from   a   too- rapid   decrease   in   atmospheric   pressure,   as   when   a   deep-seadiver   is   brought   too   hastily   to   the   surface.   Decompression is a must.  You will find a similar situation with a lot of employees. Why? Through upbringing, education and the command & control style of management, most of us have experienced at least 25 years of conditioning. The conditioning that we are not good enough and...

Illusions are often used as  a tool of conditioning . To make you do something that others want you to do. It is unnatural and therefore they need to brainwash you. Think about it: is it normal to shoot other humans (what soldiers do), is it normal to sit daily 10 hours in a cubicle looking at a screen (knowledge workers) or sowing T-shirts all day without a break (factory workers in Bangladesh)?  Are you also fed up with the myths that are being told? Like that you will be happy when you have a new car or get a promotion. Truths that are not been told? Like that losing weight is tough and requires discipline for the rest of your life. It is time to wake up. The challenges, globally and locally, are so big that we can no longer afford to accept these illusions as truth. We need to see that we are conditioned to be mediocre. It is time to throw off the blinkers and the reins that are limiting us.  Are you ready to exchange your illusions for reality, are y...

In the industrial age, which has been replaced by the information age (but many people still don’t realize this yet), life and work was divided like this: -       -   Citizen -        -  Companies -        -  Cities -        -  Countries As citizen, we did work in companies, which where located in cities. If we did work in other cities, the commute challenge was added to the equation. And it did matter in which country you did live and work. These old ways of living and working are now rapidly changing. Lifetime employment for a company has completely vanished. Especially large companies are having difficulties in adapting to the information age. Almost all (needed) innovation comes from small companies, specifically startups. Countries are also loosing their power. The level of trust is also here (like with companies) at an all-time low. People don’t trust...

Last week, I did attend the Open Innovation Festival in my city, Amersfoort. It was a nice event, but I really don’t understand why they called it “open”. There was nothing being discussed where ideas were sourced from the community. There were no initiatives to truly engage the local community. It was more about what innovation is. Well, the way it looks to the local government. The mayor and general council gave a presentation about what innovation is. That was really shocking as the content was really poor and missing the point. They did exclude disruptive innovation from the menu! They said that they were only interested in incremental innovations. At the same time cities are confronted with a lot of challenges and a more demanding population. A consulting agency did share that they are experiencing huge problems in aligning all stakeholders (citizens, public servants, management, council and board). If you stick to the old rules and are not open to...

Yesterday I did watch a program about the banking industry and how they are ‘behaving’ after the crisis (which they largely caused themselves). It was very clearly explained that the managers and the sales people were driven to sell as much products (especially mortgages etc.) as possible. Their bonuses were put in place to stimulate that behavior. So, we all know what the result was and still is. If you manage your sales force by means of aggressive bonus schemes, you are not putting the needs of your customers at the heart of your operation. Then you are far away from being customer-centric. Actually years ago when I did start to work for DEC, it was one of their principles NOT to pay bonuses to the sales force. The reason was that they wanted the sales force to focus on delivering quality to meet the customer’s needs. This policy worked very well, and the company grew at a very fast rate. When the market slowed down, they decided to introduce variable ...