NAVIGATING CLEAR-EYED
THROUGH
UNCOMFORTABLE TIMES
How do you ensure that your repertoire of possible actions aligns with the persistent sense of unease surrounding you? What is so fundamental that you must never lose sight of it?
For leaders in public, non-profit, and for-profit organizations who wish to broaden their thinking, sharpen their perspective, and take action in the face of complex, persistent challenges.
I won’t necessarily put your mind at ease—after all, the reality around you doesn’t do that either.
Think more broadly, see more sharply, go further
EXPERTISE
Three questions for the same system
Variety is the stock.
Resilience is what that stock does over time.
Vital systems are what matter.
"In his very own way he put the necessary approach to vital systems on the map. An approach that is now being followed in several other cities."
Linda Molenaar
former corporate director at the City of Rotterdam, now Deputy Ombudsman at the Dutch National Ombudsman
Three ways to increase variety
In the room
In the workshop
In the organisation
Keynotes & Masterclasses
From discomfort into motion
Which discomfort needs to be on the table in your room? I build the keynote or masterclass around that, using stories from biology and systems thinking that resonate and stick.
Repertoire: vital systems, resilience, polycrisis, ecologising, systems thinking, innovation.
Recent example: Navigating clear-eyed through uncomfortable times.
Workshops & momentum
Zoom in, zoom out, pass on
Three workshops, three half-days in three weeks, in a building that is itself in transition. The Atelier maps the polycrisis around your organisation, the Studio what change does to you and your team, the Lab teaches you to do it yourself.
For boards, management teams and programme teams that don't want yet another plan, but movement.
System governance & Strategic sparring
Unorthodox, beyond reassurance
Walking alongside you for a while: as outsider-insider in your team or board, as coach in six good conversations, or facilitating a peer group. Walking, eating or at the table.
For leaders and teams who want to go beyond the safe, familiar analysis.
I switch "on" where others see the word impossible, and where people and organisations slowly make themselves ineffective by clinging to patterns that stopped fitting long ago.
I bring: a learning curve with many bends, collisions and aha-moments, an intense love affair with complex and chaotic processes, and the intuition that you must always keep moving. Bonus: my laugh, and a soft southern g.
The expression
Imagine a search
We failed ourselves
Burned the earth
Massacred nature
Guided by our own shadows
Amidst these shadows,
where enigmas spin.
where limitless optimism
Forges a trail, a trial into darkness
Imagine a search,
one that does not lead to a solution.
of failing and searching
Why would a consultant and speaker create music about failure and the act of searching?
The polycrisis surrounding us cannot be resolved through superficial checklists or reassuring management jargon.
True resilience—the genuine capacity to learn, adapt, and endure—begins when we have the courage to look discomfort in the eye and approach its complexity with a nuanced, deeply felt perspective; free from rigid categories or pre-packaged solutions.
This piece of music, which I composed with my son under the name "Martique and Son," serves as the philosophical undercurrent of my work.
I bring this full spectrum—encompassing intensity, sharp insight, and unorthodox thinking—to the stage and the workshop. Not to offer false comfort, but to help navigate with clarity through the fog of persistent, complex challenges.