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Recent thinking
I write regularly about leadership, organisation and the impact of AI on people and work. No newsletter, no noise, only pieces that are about something.
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Who leads when the system predicts?
What does your view of leadership rest on? This essay for webinar 1.2 sets three perspectives side by side: leadership as position, as personal quality and as a meaning-making pattern between people. AI affects each perspective in a different way.
Leiderschap & AI
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What Remains When the Role Falls Away
The role protects, and that is exactly what makes it hard to set aside. On loyalty, loneliness at the top, and what AI does to leaders whose identity rests on having the answer.
Leadership & AI
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The Difference Between Artificial and Creative. And Why I'd Rather Not Have Known.
Generative AI is remarkably good at combining and exploring, but breaking a frame of thought remains human work. A personal essay on the role of doubt in creativity, and what it asks of leaders who let AI write alongside them.
Human-AI
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When an Algorithm Learns to Listen
Jenny is an AI-driven companion, built by a father for the moments when carers and family are not there. What works, what does not, and under which conditions AI in care can be responsible.
Human-AI
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KNVI Annual Programme: Personal Leadership & AI, Season 2026-2027
The full programme of the KNVI interest group 'Personal Leadership and AI' for the 2026-2027 season: four cycles of four sessions each, from self-knowledge and leadership theory to organizational culture and moral compass, each viewed in interplay with AI.
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Who are you when you have no one to convince?
Every leader knows the moment after the meeting: the decision has been made, but the question of who made that choice remains open. This introductory essay for Cycle 1 opens up self-knowledge as the first condition of leadership, sharpened by what AI exposes.
Leiderschap & AI
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Why Leadership Matters All the More in the Age of AI
After the joke in the team meeting came a silence that lasted just a little too long. Beneath it lies not a question about technology but one about value and purpose. An essay by René de Baaij and Auke de Jongh.
Leadership & AI
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Convert my website to Grav: four words, and then something remarkable
It began with a single sentence and became a full migration from WordPress to Grav. A short, honest account of building a website with Claude, and what it taught me about people and AI.
Human-AI
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AI Leadership: Why the Black Box Calls for a Different Kind of Leadership
Management organizes; leadership gives meaning. With AI as an accelerator, organizations move from convergent to divergent work, and that takes the nerve to say: I don't know either, but we will get through this together.
Leadership & AIHuman-AI
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AI Leadership: what management taught you, and why it now stands in the way
Today, 1 July, a new episode of the KNVI podcast series has appeared: 'Leadership and AI'. A genuine recommendation for anyone in a management or expert role who works with AI and wants to understand what it asks of personal leadership.
Leadership & AI
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Agency Without Illusions 12/12
You do not have to win. You do not have to heal anyone. You do not have to rescue anyone. Above all, you do not have to lose yourself. The twelfth and final instalment in a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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Escalate Formally When Boundaries Are Structurally Violated 11/12
You notice something dangerous: that you are starting to normalise the abnormal. Formal escalation sounds heavy, but sometimes it is the only adult move. Part eleven of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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The Meeting That Never Makes a Decision
The same issue on the agenda six times. Each time more information requested, each time the decision postponed. Not because the information was missing, but because nobody wanted to own a decision that could turn out wrong.
Leadership & Culture
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Build Exit Dignity 10/12
Dominance works best on people who feel trapped. Exit dignity takes the sting out of that feeling, even if you go nowhere today. Part ten of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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Choose Your Battles 9/12
The rule of the strongest does not only feed on your silence, but on your exhaustion too. Choosing is not weakness, it is strategy. Part nine of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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We Have Come to Confuse Leadership with Visibility
A father on his bicycle points at the Binnenhof and asks his child: do you know what that is? The child shrugs. Honestly, I understand that reaction.
Society & Democracy
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Towards an AI Compass on One Page
No technical blueprint, no legal document, no marketing story, but a clear set of choices. The close of a series on implementing AI without losing yourself.
AI in Organisations
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Change the Playing Field with System Interventions 8/12
In a room without fixed agreements, a strong personality can shape reality. In a room with rhythm and record-keeping, that same personality suddenly has to run on rails. Part eight of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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AI Does Not Change People into a Different Species
The screen lights up before the meeting room fills. Someone sighs with relief, someone else frowns. In those microreactions lies the whole field exposed: AI as promise, as threat, as mirror.
AI in Organisations
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Governance and Learning Capacity First, Then Scale
It is not technology but capacity and governance that are the real bottleneck for AI. Part four of a series on implementing AI without losing yourself.
AI in Organisations
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Build an Allyship Map 7/12
The system would prefer people who each think they are the only one. Shame does the rest. Shame creates silence. Silence becomes agreement. Part seven of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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Whoever Decides What Is Visible Decides the Election
What if the prevailing opinion in an election does not reflect the truth, but the result of finely tuned algorithms? On technology, visibility and democratic integrity.
Society & Democracy
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Purpose, Boundary, Proof Loop in AI
The model is probably right is a quiet shift of responsibility. On how to build in purpose, boundary and a proof loop before speed overtakes wisdom.
AI in Organisations
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The Poison of Unprocessed Anger Seeps Into the System We cooperate loyally, contribute when asked, preach the new gospel. But processing takes longer than change. And somewhere along the way, it becomes the poison in our own working existence. Leadership & Culture
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Silence Is Not the Absence of Leadership. It Is a Form of It
Silence exposes patterns. Who speaks, who stays in the background, where do gaps in the conversation fall? On silence as a full participant in every conversation that matters.
Leadership & Culture
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The Sun Burns Everywhere the Same. The Damage Does Not
Heatwaves hit hardest where windows are single-glazed, where trees are absent, where air conditioning is unaffordable. Even the climate is not colour-blind to inequality, and that inequality is no accident.
Leadership & Culture
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We Call It Efficiency. Do We Mean Distance?
The system gives the illusion of objectivity and makes difficult conversations feel safer by reducing the personal charge. But that charge can be exactly what makes interaction meaningful.
AI in Organisations
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Rules Are Not a Blockade. They Are the Recovery of Agency
Technology that once promised to move us forward now raises questions about who is still at the wheel. On why rules are not a blockade, but the recovery of agency.
AI in Organisations
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An Algorithm Never Makes the Decision
A job you never see, a loan denied on grounds nobody can explain. The effects of algorithms are subtle but far-reaching, and they shift our choices without us noticing.
AI in Organisations
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What We Should Do, Not What We Can Do
Efficiency is not the same as wisdom. Which decisions do we, as a society, want to keep in human hands, precisely because they are too important to leave to machines?
AI in Organisations
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AI Changes Power, Roles and the Undercurrent
It is not only systems that get redesigned when you introduce AI. Relationships do too. Part three of a series on implementing AI without losing yourself.
AI in Organisations
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Setting Boundaries with Procedural Language 6/12
Boundaries are rarely the problem. The language you use to set them often is. Part six of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules and makes people feel small.
Dominant Leadership
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Leadership That Gives Direction, Connects and Creates Space
We work faster than ever, but speed without grounding becomes drift. Leadership is then not a position but a way of being present that creates direction, meaning and shared ownership.
Leadership & Culture
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Training × Learning: The Quiet Engine of Lasting Development
We invest readily in training, yet performance falls back as soon as the pressure rises. Lasting development only emerges when training and learning move together in a single rhythm.
Leadership & Culture
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Do Not Start with AI, Start with Purpose
The easiest way for an organisation to lose itself is to introduce AI without clarity on what it may and may not be used for. Part two of a series on implementing AI without losing yourself.
AI in Organisations
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Move from One-on-One to Plural 5/12
It feels more intimate, as if you are being trusted. As if you are special. But whoever speaks alone can also be isolated alone. Part five of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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Psychological Safety Is Not a Right, and Should Not Become One
Psychological safety is increasingly treated as if it belonged in health and safety law. An essay on discomfort, courage and adult working relationships, and on why the concept loses its force once we turn it into a legal norm.
Leadership & Culture
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Why AI Only Works Once You Take Yourself Seriously First
Most organisations start with the question of what an AI tool can do for them. That feels sensible. It is often a flight forward, away from three conversations that are more uncomfortable than an implementation plan. The first instalment in a series on implementing AI without losing yourself.
AI in Organisations
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Record It as If You Will Need Proof Later 4/12
In healthy organisations, memory is something soft. In unhealthy ones, it becomes a battleground. Part four of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules and makes people feel small.
Dominant Leadership
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Governance as Civilisation 3/12
You believe that if you just explain it well enough, the penny will drop. But where power personalises, status rarely loses to logic. Part three of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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Name the Pattern, Not the Person 2/12
You're unreliable. You manipulate. It sounds like relief to finally say it. But right at that moment, the conversation shifts from what is happening to who you are. Part two of a series on dealing with a leader who bends rules.
Dominant Leadership
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When Dominance Takes the Lead 1/12
An agreement that turns out different in practice. A decision rewritten in a conversation you weren't part of. That is how it starts, almost invisibly. The first instalment in a series about dealing with a leader who bends rules and makes people feel small.
Dominant Leadership
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AI Belongs in a Coalition Agreement, Not as an Afterthought
We talk about digitalisation as if it were a support line for execution. AI shows it works the other way round: the way we govern is shaped, in part, by algorithms.
Society & Democracy
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