The question that has kept me busy my entire career: what makes an organisation effective in a world where the rules keep changing?
I did not find the answer in training programmes or models alone. I found it in twenty years of practice, running my own company, carrying risk and standing in the middle of the complexity myself. Thinking and doing. Skin in the game. Where people and organisation meet.
Those two shape each other, constantly. 1 + 1 = 3.
That third part is where I work: the system that people and organisation form together. With the leader at its centre. Because the organisation has an operating model, and so do you. I work with both.
“Karen maakt zichtbaar wat in organisaties vaak onbesproken blijft, terwijl het juist alles bepaalt.”
“Haar spiegel is scherp, maar nooit onvriendelijk. Precies wat wij nodig hadden.”
“Bij de transformatie van een onderneming is een externe blik super waardevol. Karen laat je afstand nemen. Zij durft te challengen op het hoogste en meest existentiële niveau. En belangrijk: als ondernemer is ze gewoon structuur te brengen zonder de pragmatische insteek te verliezen.”
People + Organisation. 1 + 1 = 3.
A healthy company needs a well-designed organisation. Structure. Technology. Numbers. Profitability. But even the best-designed organisation does nothing by itself.
People do.
With their talent, experience and creativity. But also with their behaviour, beliefs, relationships, insecurities and blind spots.
Because structure shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes performance. Technology changes structures.
Everything is connected. So I don't look at people or organisation.
I look at the system they form together.
An organisation has an operating model. So do you.
At the centre of that system stands the leader. I know that seat. I'm sitting in one myself.
It is the pivot not because you should know, carry or solve everything. But because the way you look, decide and act works its way through the organisation you build.
Your need for control. Your pace. What you avoid. What you rely on. How you respond under pressure. And also your experience, courage, talent and instinct.
As a leader you don't have to be perfect.
But self-aware, yes.
Because only once you know your own internal operating model can you tell the difference between what is yours and what your organisation actually needs.
From there you can offer calm and footing, even when things are not calm on the inside.
One perspective, three ways to work with it.
Transforming from the inside out
Your organisation has to be able to deliver what your strategy promises.
With my own company First Floor I strengthen, together with senior experts, the structures, roles, decision-making, processes and behaviour needed for that. And we stay until it is not only thought through, but implemented.
So that you no longer need us.
Discover First FloorYour blueprint
The higher you climb, the fewer people know your full reality. And the bigger the impact of what you do, and of what you no longer see. I know it, I'm not just a coach. I sit in your seat. I know how it feels and what it takes. Every day.
One-on-one sparring where business reality, leadership and your own patterns meet. Sharp, respectful and without pretty talk.
Get in touchSmall groups where leaders share knowledge, experience and doubt with people who recognise their reality.
More about the round tablesBeyond understanding and analysing. Because what you already know rationally does not automatically change what you do.
The bigger conversation. Ideas in motion.
I write and speak to give language to patterns we often already feel, but do not yet see clearly.
The book, columns and podcast episodes are in Dutch.
Four lenses. One way of seeing.
My work sits where the numbers of the executive committee, the night a CEO lies awake and what actually happens on the shop floor - and in the world - every day all meet.
I work from well-grounded expertise, but above all from the muddy practice. Because on paper an organisation always looks just a little more orderly than when you are standing in the middle of it yourself.
I know growth, responsibility, P&L, risk, success and failure from the inside.
I see patterns across time and place what looks urgent or new today in a wider context.
I understand what drives people, what blocks them and what makes them think, feel and act differently under pressure.
I give language to complexity without flattening it.
These are not four roles I switch between. It is one way of being.
- Education
- MA History · Accredited psychotherapist · ADKAR change manager
- Experience
- Founder First Floor (2018) · 20+ years in management, people & organisation · 10 years running her own psychotherapy practice
- Author
- De Generatieconfrontatie (Pelckmans)
- Columnist
- Trends, De Tijd and Bloovi
An organisational puzzle. A leadership question. Or simply a thought you want to test on someone?
The first step is always an honest conversation. Just looking at what is going on and whether I'm the right person to think it through with.
Antwerp & on location