Arjen van Berkum | Technology & Contract Management Evangelist

8 mei 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

How to catch yourself red-handed failing self-leadership

So much has been said and written about leadership, leaders and their (expected) performance. In this blog I’m not specifically referring to executives, but to anyone in the workforce; managers, employees and self-employed professionals. What about them? Well, how do they manage their self-leadership? Nowadays we have to live up to fairly high standards. Are they that high? Let’s keep that open for discussion. I think we experience them high level, when in fact they are just different due to the continuous change and the fast moving technology. Agility is something a lot of people have a hard time dealing with, so they are tempted to take the easy road. People have the tendency to constantly demand and forget that performing is what they are hired for from the start. Since when are accountability and performance optional? Why do we accept neglectful behaviour from ourselves to begin with?

27 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

What would be a fair income gap?

An entrepreneur risks bankruptcy and an executive on payroll is fully protected by collective labour agreement. How honest is our income tax policy, comparing the situations of entrepreneurs, executives and employees for example? Salaries and extras should depend on the risk taking and the (possible) outcome. How is this incorporated in today’s society? More and more organisations are freezing salaries and strike out bonuses. Often a good thing, because in most cases there doesn’t seem to be any relation between the amount of money and the performance. In years of financial crisis, increasing lay-offs and redundancies by reorganisations rewards for the already well paid executives may seem unbelievable unfair, even inhuman in public eyes. What seems to be totally overlooked are the circumstances in which people work; in this case not the environmental circumstances, but the financial arrangements. We are ignoring the risk component that people are or aren’t dealing with. Risk should play a crucial role in how income taxes and discharge arrangements are settled. Not only to minimise the income gap, but also to establish fair play on the labour market.

17 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

The CIO ’s X-factor is being a great mentor in the learning ecosystem

In my previous blog I shared my idea of the try-and-fail strategy and how I thought leadership and education are connected. The blurring lines between functional and theoretical technology as well as those between industries play a crucial role in the evolution of the educational system. Or at least, the evolution this system should go through. Up to now innovations in education seem to be held back by a legacy of traditional believes and standards. When I was discussing this subject with peers after publishing ‘This technology era needs leaders that fail’, I received some nice input that stirred up quit some thoughts about this subject. My conclusion: leaders in education and technology should join forces and develop a new approach, one that is applicable in both learning providers and organisations. But an educational system and business world forming a collaboration that can be the solid, sustainable base for ecosystems raises two questions. First, are the current schools geared to cultivate engaged students? Second, is attendance at school a prerequisite for successful education? No and no, I would say. But let’s start at the beginning of this line of reasoning.

Are you with me?

8 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum Leave a Comment

This technology era needs leaders that fail

95 % of everything changes. Constantly. What is the most fundamental change of this decade? Probably the blurring lines between functional and theoretical technology. A lot of theories that seemed unattainable in the past, are now being developed into – sometimes astonishing – functional designs, smart solutions. The transition time between theory and real life applications is becoming shorter. Our ecosystems are more or less enforcing this evolution to take place and society seems to quickly adopt the new developments that this evolution brings along. But are we able to live up to that accelerating cycle? Will the human capital of our businesses be up to speed in time? No, at this point not yet. We need to drastically modernise our education system, that incorporates the societal and entrepreneurial consequences of this technology era. After all, if the future is about talent, the battlefield will be the schools and universities.

1 april 2015 by Arjen van Berkum 1 Comment

Integrated consciousness is every leader’s next challenge

Two famous books I’ve read contain a lot of knowledge on some theories in relation to the economy, the society and the labour market. For a long time, those books have kept a lot of smart minds busy analysing and finding evidence to either defend or contradict the statements made by the writers Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Brilliant minds in their time. In my opinion those books should be mandatory in our education system for some basic understanding about the mentioned subjects. Nonetheless, I think we are heading towards a new era that will invalidate both theories – or at least for a greater part. Still, if you take some crucial core elements out of both theories and you put them together with today’s developments in technology and information management, we could end up with a new theory, a next level. Let’s call it ‘integrated consciousness’ for now. Are you wondering what I mean by that? Read on!

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