Consultant

There are bookcases filled with books on change management, often with the same pattern: first make a SWOT analysis, then make a strategic plan, then change structure and culture. But existing management literature almost never questions ‘the corporation’ or ‘the firm’ as superior operating model. I do that explicitly. I do not want to change existing organizations and traditional business at all, as it’s usually doomed to fail or just delaying execution. A Boston Consulting Group study shows that 70% of the digital transformation projects fail. That’s not the fault of the technology but the way we organize supply and demand of data. I help organizations to transform from firm tot network organization and eventually a decentralized autonomous organization, a Tesla-office you could say.

The problem
Waste is the death of any achievement, especially for HR. A McKinsey study shows that bad data is on average costing businesses 30% or more of their revenue, and that 45% of the activities people get paid for can be automated. Gartner has found that the average cost of poor data quality amounts to anywhere between $9.7 million and $14.2 million annually per organization. An Accenture report shows that up to 30% of total organization costs is spent on checking each other’s databases, 36% of businesses say they are working with at least double the partners they were two years ago. But legacy business systems weren’t built to support this kind of expansion, and soon, outdated systems will be major hindrances to growth.

ServiceNow concluded that managers spend two days a week, on average, on requesting data from other departments. At a macro level, bad data is estimated to cost the US more than $3 trillion per year (Harvard Business Review).

In other words, bad data is bad for business and HR.

These statistics are comparable with those in Europe. In the Netherlands, we could save up to 2,3 billion hours, or 1.8 million FTE, every year if we reduce digital waste.

The traditional solution
To combat digital waste, you could set up a digital transformation program, led by the IT-department or a traditional consultancy firm. But that will not work. Most of the digital transformation and blockchain projects fail. How is that possible if we spend billions of dollars worldwide? The problem is not information technology, but the way we look at work and how we organize it (the narrative that we have to work to earn a living, work addiction, workism, and the pursuit of full-employment). The problem is that we don’t have a shared, reliable and accessible reality despite billions of investments. A blockchain-based digital assembly line will help you to reduce digital waste and improve productivity, but professionals won’t be able to help you with this if they cling to the old organization-DNA. You need them to change, and develop new skills, or find new people.

My solution
I build new houses (network organizations) based on new business- and operating models and then ‘invite’ existing processes to ‘live’ in the new house. As an organizational designer and adviser, I design and build shared transaction networks, based on the concept of the digital assembly line. I work with the double track decision model were you maintain, upgrade and face out (planned abandonment) legacy systems and simultaneously build a new system.

A blockchain-based digital assembly line is capable of reducing interaction and transaction processes, and with that, office work. Put your data on the assembly line and at the end, an education offer, recruitment process, project calculation, or ‘know your employee process’ is delivered. All in milliseconds, all against the lowest costs.

A blockchain-based digital assembly line is an automated concatenation of reliable, accessible decentral databases and processors within an ecosystem. It is an organization concept to organize supply and demand of data in ecosystems at the lowest friction. The assembly line makes it possible for buyers and sellers to do business, without local IT-systems, the use of expensive middlemen, or complex contracts.

In short, you don’t need a local HR-, CRM or bookkeeping system because you (have to, according to GDPR) connect to the personal data service of your employees of organization data service of your suppliers or customer. Not data ownership (big data) is the new oil, but access to rich data, provided by the digital assembly line. Not the technology, but the way we organize supply and demand of data is the challenge.

Prepare now
Organizations worldwide are looking for effective ways to reduce digital waste, lower information costs, and improve customer services. The question is: what will be your role in these challenges?

Managers and professionals should be aware that FutureNext transformation is not about big data or information technology, but about a new context (from physical to digital), that needs new ways of thinking and organizing work (networks and DAO’s), transition (training and development), and just a little bit of automation. FutureNext is durable, digital, and decentral. It’s time for you to prepare yourself, so you can lead your organization or customers in their transformation.

My role
I advise policymakers, strategists, innovation teams, boardrooms, managers and professionals on real societal transformation. I align the business with organization technology, in order to improve purpose of work, privacy, productivity, powerbalance and processes. I advise organizations how they can transform from traditional firms into hubs of shared and distributed information- and transaction networks or business ecosystems and eventually into a decentralized autonomous organization.

My intention is to bridge the gap between fundamentally new organization models, organization technology and practical problems. I experienced the development of internet, as a technology, closely. After twenty years my conclusion is that technology alone doesn’t matter that much. You need a real problem to solve and you need a new more aligned organization model to organize supply and demand with less friction.

It takes time to become aware, to research feasibility, to innovate and develop before you can deploy. Technology is an enabler and important part of this process but first you need an existing solution to improve, then you need design (thinking) and finally the technology comes in. I have experienced that internet didn’t change the way we do business fundamentally. We use it a lot but that doesn’t mean it changes the way we do business (transactions) fundamentally. We changed medium but forgot to change the organization of supply and demand in a digital age. We digitized analog processes but forgot to transit processes into network organization. Internet didn’t change our default, but also obsolete, coordinating mechanism like the firm, the non-transparent market or inefficient government. With the help of the Community Model Canvas and the digital assembly line we can change and solve real societal problems.

I am glad I could help and advise a lot of organizations in their transformation from firm to network organization.

Examples of my consultant services are:

• Training and coaching
• Expert meetings
• Advise businesses, governments, NGO’s and investment funds
• Research, assessments and analyses
• Organization design (awareness, feasibility, open innovation, development)
• Interim management
• Project support

“If the only tool you have is a hammer,
you tend to see every problem as a nail”
(Abraham Maslow)