Business management for human beings

Building companies fit for the future is building companies for human beings

Employee centric management

Management innovation can only be done by challenging current approaches. How many times did you heard about « customer first », « customer is king », … Are we sure this is the only way? Is this always the right way? Certainly keeping customer experience in mind is a good way to do business because it has been proven by lots of successful businesses.
What about the employee? Do we care about him? Why is « burnout » employees the new normal? Why do most companies squeeze their human resources as much as possible before changing them? What is the root of this problem? Maybe they squeeze their employees because they know that their employees will leave at some point … why? Because we don’t care about them !!
What if one tries to put the employee first? A happy employee will do a better work and serve the customer better. He will also stay longer, keep and develop his knowledge and develop confidence around him about the product. Worth trying huh!?
Well apparently this is something that some companies start to try. And I think it could become a new standard !! There is no reason to continue squeezing employees … there is no reason working becomes unhealthy !! Have a look at the video below to get convinced 🙂

Have also a look on some interesting comments in the feed of the video here.

Business creativity

But what about motivation? Most common beliefs are that the more you reward people, the more people will be motivated. And this is apparently true, but not in any situation. This is only true for mechanical tasks. When it comes to creativity, it’s another story.
Surprisingly money don’t make people more creative !! You have to give them free time and confort ! So guess what? We are again speaking about caring about your employees if you want more creativity in your work environment. This is aligned !!

So keep in mind that customer satisfaction is key for business, but employee satisfaction is key for survival !! Which one is the most important? I don’t know ! But make sure you keep both on top of your priorities as a business leader.

Why is our democracy outdated?

I’ve always had a strong interest for public affairs, democracy, and in particular for the decision mechanisms used by our governments. I like studying history, and find the evolution through which ordinary citizens progressively got their voices heard a fascinating (and loose end) subject.
Luckily, I was born in Belgium, a democratic country, at peace since 1945. Our grandparents fought wars to defend some ideals, and thanks to their sacrifices we are now able to peacefully debate and promote our ideas. I was hence convinced that our democratic process was nearly perfect, and accepted with great enthusiasm when I got called for civic duty in May 2014 general elections.
Observing the election mechanics from the inside, I discovered an absolutely appalling voting process which completely broke my illusions. It was a total farce. I was serving in one of the “pioneer” precincts for electronic voting: to comply with Belgian law, the referendum was processed on 20+ year old machines, using magnetic tape bands, a system so rudimentary and fragile that many votes got misreported or lost due to wrong manipulations. The complexity of voting was such that countless people left the poll stations without having the certitude that their choices were being accounted for.
Furthermore, people didn’t vote for ideas, and few had a good understanding of who most closely represented their opinions. Rather, they would choose easy to remember names, or faces they recognized from TV, basically giving their voices to those politicians with the best media exposure and the most recognizable faces. That day, I understood why Belgium’s outgoing Prime Minister was invariably wearing a bow tie.
I was appalled at the complete disconnect between the electoral process and the basic notion of participative democracy, where decision makers should review ideas and promote them if a majority of their constituents feel positively about them. The lack of transparency in the voting process, and the difficulties in recognizing who defends which ideas could easily be solved simply by adopting some of today’s established technologies. I found that our politicians are expert communicators through Twitter and Facebook when it comes to spreading their ideas, but deliberately behind in their listening abilities.
I was of course aware of these shortcomings, but never realized to which point they completely distorted the democratic process. Through my civic duty experience, I came to the realization that I had the technical tools, the project management skills and above all the emotional drive to create a better solution. I want to enable every citizen to “audit” any politician’s past actions and positions. Furthermore, I want to create solutions that allow to “match” a politician’s stances with our own, simply through semantic analysis of the “big data” trail we leave behind, such as comments on news pieces or other public information. I basically want to enable the democratic process to function as it should. I am full of ideas to empower democracy 2.0, and I’m surprised of the lack of people working on that to focus their entrepreneurial energy.

How to build leaders?

I acquired leadership skills through my role of lead roped party climber. Aged 18 I already took mountaineering clients under my responsibility. I became a recognized alpinist in Belgium, organizing climbing expeditions in Kirghizstan, Mongolia, China, Vietnam and Bolivia. Nowadays, I belong to a special situations team uniquely qualified to rescue people stuck in inaccessible locations.
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Some thoughts 1 month after Nest'Up accelerator program

nestup
I wanted to share you my thoughts after my experience at Nest’Up startup acceleration program last spring. For those who don’t know what it is yet, it’s a Belgian startup incubator part of the TechStars network.
Although I have been working for 7 years in a lot of startup environments as software engineer, I must admit that I never really experienced what is entrepreneurship in itself. I realize that there is a different state of mind between :

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