When I was 31, I enrolled in an MBA program at one of the Netherlands top business schools to learn more about executive level management. It was an incredibly rewarding experience in more ways than one, which I will eventually share more about. But if I’m honest, I would say that about 90% of the knowledge…
Imagine that you’re facing a critical decision that will impact the future of your company, like the choice between bootstrapping your next game or taking on investors. You’ve discussed the issue with your team, but you realize that you’re still not sure what the best decision is. How great would it be if you could…
One-on-one meetings are one of the most powerful tools you have for driving alignment in your company. The problem is that most companies don’t prioritize them. For example, in one of my roles at a gaming start-up, I would travel to and from work together with my manager. Our best conversations about the business happened…
In each edition of my newsletter, I include three links to the things that caught my attention that week. In this essay I’m sharing the most popular links that I sent out in 2022, with some of my own essays sprinkled in for good measure. I figured this would be a nice way to share…
Last year, I wrote that 2021 had been a year of small steps for me. Which is funny, because I feel like my 2022 could be summarized in the same way. Yet where 2021 was mostly exploratory, the steps I took in 2022 were all working in the same direction, my efforts slowly compounding. I’ve…
It’s the end of the year, and I’ve once again taken a long hard look at my media diet to come up with the books, movies, games and songs that meant the most to me this year. As in previous years, I’ll note that I don’t restrict my media diet to the stuff that is…
Conscious leadership is all about one thing: a black line. Let me explain. In The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, authors Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp ask us to imagine a simple, black line. As leaders, they explain, we can be either above or below this line. Above the line, we are…
Self-awareness is a crucial leadership skill. You want to make the best possible decisions for your company, and that requires not just knowledge of external factors, but also of your own internal state. After all, that internal state has a big impact on how you approach information, as well as interactions with your team. Better…
In my day-to-day work, I help ambitious leaders build better companies. In practice, this often means helping them and their team to improve their management and strategy skills. If you look at popular business and management literature, you’ll find that many focus on these two skills as well. Providing neat frameworks, models and processes, these…
Some years ago, I had a conversation with my then-manager (who was also the company founder) about the company strategy. “I really don’t think we need one”, he said. “Things are changing at such high speeds, it would be outdated as soon as we finish it. It’s better to just be flexible and opportunistic.” Since…
