Ricardo Abdoel - Dean Academy Engineering & ICT, Avans

We contacted The Thrive because we were looking for a partner who could help our team (4 MT members and 24 coordinators) in a development process towards self-organization.”

Bob appeared open and accessible in the first conversation. That was confirmed in a next conversation where Bart joined. Energetic and genuinely interested, they literally helped us to visualize where we really stood and what it took to realize a sustainable next step in self-organization. They were both facilitating and professionally demanding based on conviction and experience. They were fully engaged and that created trust.

That trust grew further during implementation. We started working in a modular way. They brought theory that supported us with our in-context learning practice. Bart and Bob let us experience how we, as MT with our 8 teams and their teams could take the next steps and they gave the right assignments to start bringing out learnings into practice. They have an eye for people, the process and the results. Through appreciative feedback what was really going on was addressed. When necessary, the program was naturally adapted to what we needed at the time.

Feedback from participants “we really paid attention to each other, effective behavior (culture), strategy and structure”. What I see is that we are more open and confident in talking to each other. Most teams have started working more effectively and have created more co-ownership. “I myself have learned to be less future and result-oriented. I have learnt to take a step back and listen better. When I connect with emotion and logic, we can move forward together faster.”