Better Starts with Who

i wonder often

curious as i am

this morning when i woke up

i wondered what your mindset would be

as you were going to listen to these ted

talks today

are you calm and relaxed

are you stressed and overwhelmed

are you with me or are you somewhere

else

i wondered what had happened to you over

the past few months

since that pandemic started

i wondered whether you were in a better

place now

than you were then

i wondered why or why not

and then it was time to take a shower

albert einstein has a quote

and that quotes says in the midst of

crisis

lies great opportunity

we live in times of disruption

of stress of uncertainty and of change

and i love it i see opportunity

all around me

wherever i look but

it’s fair to say that the past few

months

have also taught us how fragile we are

the past few months have shown us and

it’s still

mind-boggling to me that a virus

can put this world to a complete

standstill

remember those blue airplanes standing

on the runway

at schiphol airport parked side by side

idle waiting for this pandemic to be

over

and then we adjust it like we always do

resilient as we are as human beings we

started to find a new reality

we started to go online with our lives

our work and our schools

today the largest online meeting

business

is worth 70 billion us dollars

that is more than the six largest u.s

airlines combined

that’s how fast disruption can go

that is how fast disruption can make

or break your future

so i wondered how did you adjust how

would you

did you adjust do you have a new reality

or are you one of those people that

cannot wait to go back

to the old times or perhaps

everything happened so quick and you

were so busy

that it was all in a blur and in a few

months from now you will wake up

and you will think by yourself what just

happened

what just happened

we live in times of change

and it will go faster and faster and

faster if you are waiting for it to go

slow down

i can tell you that’s not going to

happen

now is the opportunity to take advantage

now is the opportunity to find

something better now is the opportunity

to find something

that you will look back at in a few

years from now and think by yourself

that corona period was a blessing in

disguise and i’m better for it

and that better starts with who

earlier this week i walked on the saudis

in amsterdam

the last time i had been there before

was early june

there was absolutely nobody it was

completely deserted

it was a bit busier this week but still

not like it was before

way before before that it was a pile of

ants

like a pile of ants bankers lawyers

consultants tax advisers recruiters

and drug dealers

every day in amsterdam forty thousand

lines of cocaine

are being distributed in the saudis area

alone

twenty thousand you don’t believe me

i didn’t believe in myself either when i

heard it for the first time

so i started asking around and basically

everybody confirms the same pattern

sometime during the weekday a big black

mercedes shows up

scooters arrive and people take their

merchandise to their clients

so who are these clients who buys that

stuff

not the barista not the gentleman at the

checkout in the supermarket

not the person who bakes your fries

these are the people in suits and in

business clothes

let that sink in for a little bit

every day people need substance abuse to

keep up with the pace

to keep up with the performance required

to let the rat race keep on going slaves

to the rhythm

part of the rat race these people work

in offices

and those officers are filled with

managers and managers of managers

and ultimately we get two bosses

now here’s the question that i have for

you do you think those bosses are aware

those ceos are managing partners do you

think they know

of course they know otherwise they

wouldn’t be a good boss

so why not they do why are they not

doing something

these bosses have silently accepted that

this culture exists

that this culture is okay why

yes why because of the same performance

because of the pressure on performance

because of the pressure from clients to

do things faster and faster and faster

and because of the fact that the rat

race needs to continue

their bonuses depend on it their

lifestyles depend on it

so these bosses cannot wait until

everything goes back to normal the old

normal

i mean these bosses

cannot wait until that black mercedes

returns

because that means that the red race

will continue

i wonder what you’re thinking right now

i wonder

whether you see crisis or opportunities

are you one of those people

do you know

i wonder how

this is going to continue

there was there is a book actually it is

it exists

written by ernest hemingway called the

sun also rises

and in his book he writes about

a person called mike and mike went

bankrupt

mike is asked by another character so

how did you go bankrupt

and mike says two ways gradually

and then suddenly we live

our lives gradually until suddenly

something happens

we live our lives until we are faced

with

something like a pandemic a filled

relationship

a reorganization sickness or death

suddenly we are human beings again

suddenly

we realize what matters most in life

suddenly

we know what we care about

the people we love the things we love to

do

are you willing to create suddenly

before nature technology or some human

being does it for you

are you willing to live your dream

or will you continue to live someone

else’s dream

those were some of the questions i

started asking myself towards the end of

my career

it is march 22nd

2016 at nine o’clock in the morning

when my next journey continues

and starts i’m in my office i took the

metro to work

and my phone rings it’s my wife lenka

calling

strange because i had just spoken to her

earlier that morning

so i pick up the phone and i say i say

hey what’s up and she says are you okay

and i said yeah sure why not and she

said well

i was just on my way to work in the car

and i heard on the news

that bombs had exploded at the airport

and in the train station

and in the metro station

i put down the phone in shock and i knew

immediately what i needed to do

i was part of an integration team we had

people all over the place

we had people flying in and out of

brussels we had people

traveling between amsterdam and brussels

we had people taking the metro to work

we needed to know first and foremost

whether everybody was safe

and okay it took us a while but then we

found out that everybody was okay

nobody got hurt but it got close really

close

one colleague had just gone through

security on his way to get a plane to

the united states

and heard the bombs go off behind him

other people

were in the metro approximately at the

same time

when the bombs went off

that evening we were supposed to go to

the netherlands by train

but we couldn’t get out of brussels

brussels was in complete lockdown

so we took the car in the car on the way

to the netherlands where we had our

first combined meeting

we reflected and we came to the

conclusion

that the world as we know it

had gotten worse again and not for the

last time

the next morning i woke up

with a picture of a jet airways flight

attendant

on the front page of the newspaper

lying on a bench in the departure hall

her

yellow bright yellow uniform completely

drenched in blood

she became the face of the attacks i

think you have seen the picture

shortly afterwards we started the

meeting we jumped right in

and i hesitated in silence

i was thinking by myself

this cannot be true this cannot be

happening right now

are we starting this meeting as if

nothing happened yesterday

i hesitated a little bit more and then i

decided to interrupt

and i said i really need every to hear

every voice

i need to hear how everybody is doing

we decided to have that conversation we

decided to do that check-in

it took us over two and a half hours

we had a wonderful conversation i dare

to say that it was maybe one of the more

impactful conversations i’ve ever had in

my career

we talked as human to human we talked

about the things that we

that matters most to us we didn’t talk

that much about business

not at all i think actually

we became closer as a team because of

that one conversation

knowing each other because it was two

teams coming together

that didn’t work together yet but we

became closer during those

uh two and a half hours than any any

exercise could have brought us

reflecting that evening on the events a

seat

got planted in my head

imagine imagine you’re

at the foot of a mountain a mountain

that you’re about to climb

you can see the path to the mountain the

mountain is the top is up there

now imagine you’re at the edge of a

desert

what do you see now sand

nothing but sand

there’s a book written by steve donahue

called shifting sans

it’s a brilliant book that talks about

how he crossed the sahara

about change in his book he describes

that mountain climbing is about the

destination

and crossing a desert is about the

journey

after that seed was planted i started to

realize

that i was no longer in the business of

mountain climbing i was no longer

climbing

the mountain of bonuses and budgets and

goals and performance

i was in fact on a journey

across the desert change meaning

and learning became more important for

me

why maybe because

the my contacts had changed i got tired

of flying every single week between all

kinds of cities

maybe it was because i was past halftime

some people call it a mid-life crisis

einstein calls it a mid-life opportunity

and i actually agree with him

maybe it was because i had still so many

seats

in my head that i needed to plant and do

something with that i

decided that it was time to start

dreaming again

the company and i parted ways roughly

two years later

a new beginning for me a new journey

started

i left the comfort zone of corporate

life

i have always been very focal about

comfort zone

and what you do with comfort zones a

comfort zone

needs to be left you need to cross the

edges

of your comfort zone that’s where

learning begins

that’s where you find meaning that’s

where you find your dreams

that’s where you find you better i get

it

what’s better for you might not be

better for me

we are different people we have

different opinions about what is better

but better

always starts with who

better always starts with who you

are you cannot find better truly better

if you don’t find out who you are first

so who are you

do you know do you truly know

do the people who know you know

i learned three things

in that whole process patience values

and energy the first one is patience

there’s a desert proverb another there’s

a proverb that says

the more you stop the further you go you

cannot cross the desert

you cannot cross the sahara if you don’t

stop

i had to learn how to stop i had to

learn how to pause

and think truly about what i wanted to

do

i had to be okay with the uncertainty

i had to stay in the messy middle

until clarity would arise

i also had to reconnect with my values i

can tell you when you work

so long in a corporate environment you

talk a lot about values i often

and always talked about values but the

moment that all falls away that whole

world you start reconnecting with your

own values

and because of my values of family

freedom curiosity

authenticity and learning i knew that i

was moving in the right direction

the last one was energy i started

writing

i wrote down every single thing i needed

to know

about what gave me energy and what

drained my energy

and over time i started to get grounded

i started to know what i really cared

about what really mattered

to me so

as i walk out of the shower i continue

to wonder

are you grounded have you found your

voice yet

thank you

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