Think wider
See clearer
Reach further
Complexity and System Thinking, Keynote speaker, Innovation consultant
To see the whole, or not to be whole
Complex challenges always call for a strange mix of humor, perspective, high ambition, double doses of discomfort, daring, decisiveness, and professional expertise. I "know" this from decades of experience in very diverse and often intense work situations. I switch "on" and get moving where others see the word "impossible" and where individuals, groups, and organizations slowly but surely make themselves totally ineffective by stubbornly clinging to patterns and mental models that no longer fit.
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If you are looking for someone to reassure you, I am the wrong person. If you are looking for someone who gives you a sharper, broader, happier, and more empathetic — but often also more painful — view of what is really going on, and you have the motivation to push through, then we are talking.
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Promise: it will never be boring.
I bring: a life learning curve with many twists, turns, clashes, and aha moments, an intense love affair with complex and chaotic processes, intriguing insights and methods, and the intuition that you must always keep moving. Bonus: a soft 'g'.
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Indeed: I'm not your average kind of guy. Read more....
How I work
Step one is think wider. I use the inside-outside advantage: I see what people can no longer see from the inside, because they have been stuck in it for too long. I recognize the patterns of fragmentation, stagnation, and avoidance that slowly render organizations and systems harmless — even when no one dares to name them.
But seeing alone is not enough. That is also exactly where many consultants stop.
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Step two is breaking through and taking decisive action. Not sugarcoating the problem. Not comfortably tidying up the stalled system. But making the systemic leap that truly changes something — the shift in perspective that makes people think, decide, and act differently.
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I do this based on a self-developed neurobiological-social framework: the Dynamic Consciousness theory. No checklist. No step-by-step plan. A living framework that understands why people and organizations get stuck — and what is needed to break through that. Read more about Dynamic Consciousness here.
What you can ask me for
Vital systems expertise
Energy, water, mobility, healthcare, education, security — the systems we thought would always be there. They are rattling. They are reaching their limits. And the rattling of one system ripples through to all the others.
I illustrate how fragmentation works, where the system logic breaks down, and what breakthrough is needed to reverse the negative spiral. Not as a report. As a movement.
Innovation accelaration
Innovation has been promised for years and rarely delivered. Not because people don't want it — but because organizations are structurally set up for repetition. The new does not fit into the existing order and therefore remains in limbo.
I help organizations make the systemic leap from repetition to renewal. By breaking through what holds that renewal back — not by circumventing it.
Keynote & Masterclass
There are speakers who inform. And there are speakers who shift the focus in the room.
I do the latter. Not by telling beautiful stories, but by naming the discomfort that everyone in the room already feels but has not yet put into words. The moment a room falls silent—not out of boredom, but out of recognition—that is what I strive for.
I speak about systems thinking, vital systems, polycrisis, cognitive-emotional lock-in, and the question of how organizations and societies regain the capacity to see the whole picture. Drawing from a combination of scientific depth, field experience across three continents, and the restlessness of someone who cannot stop seeing what is really at play.
A keynote with me is not a presentation. It is a shift in perspective.
Anyone who wants to go beyond the perspective shift can take a masterclass with me. Then we dive deep—using the inside-outside advantage and Dynamic Consciousness Theory as a framework. Not as theory to be learned, but as a tool to apply directly to what is happening in your organization or system. A masterclass is always tailor made for your particular challenge. Half a day, a full day, a few days... it al depends om your challenge. The masterclass never ends with "only" insights, but with action.
Keynote & Masterclass
MY INSPIRATION HEROES
Antonio Damasio
"We are not thinking machines that feel. We are in fact feeling machines that think"
Mariana Mazzucato
'If we want growth today to be more innovation-driven, more inclusive and more sustainable, then we need a more active state, not a less active one. Yet we still hear the dogma that we should just fix market failure by focusing on science and infrastructure, and to "level the playing field".'
Iain McGilchrist
'Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole'
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Peter Godfrey-Smith
“Sentience is brought into being somehow from the evolution of sensing and acting; it involves being a living system with a point of view on the world around it”
"The biggest misconception about figures? That they are objective."
Donella Meadows
"People who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about system thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are likely to assume that here, in system analysis, in interconnection and complication, in the power of the computer, here at last, is the key to prediction and control. This mistake is likely because the mind-set of the industrial woirld assumes that there is a key to prediction and control"​
Sanne Blauw
