Simon Koolwijk

If you do a google search and you type ‘Chief Executive Director’ and you click on photos, you will notice that 90 % of the photos are white males and 10 % white females. You will hardly notice people from another ethnic background. When I was watching the Tedtalk of Arwa Mahdawi, a consultant and expert on diversity and inclusion, I was touched by her story, that the streets in our big cities are changing into multiethnic and diverse places, while our board rooms of big companies are still predominantly white and male. Arwa Mahdawi is wondering ‘Why is the face of power still not changing?’ According to Arwa there are in the US more CEO’s leading big companies called John (17), than there are women being CEO (7).  Somehow, there are still a lot of unconscious biases, which need to be tackled, while the benefits of a diverse and inclusive workplace are outstanding. According to research; Racial diverse teams outperform non-diverse ones by 35 % Teams where men and women are eq

Agile is an attitude and not a technique with boundaries. An attitude knows no boundaries. So you do not ask yourself 'can I use agile here?', but 'how do I behave agile in this situation?' or 'how agile can we be in this situation?' Alister Cockburn, founder of the agile movement Alister Cockburn calls himself a modern-day bard . He travels from continent to continent, to tell and share his stories of companies and organizations he visited.  According to Alister Cockburn, the key of agile is learning from each other and it is important that this process is facilitated by doing and reflection. Learning is actually a key by-product of a process, when you are producing a product or service for a client.  According to Alister Cockburn ‘Servant leader’ in this aspect is an outdated terminology. In an agile working environment Alister Cockburn is talking about the ‘Hosted leader’, somebody who is accepted by others.   Watch this video interview with Alister Co