Author: Letitia Lim

We speak with Olivier van Duüren, transformer, executive whisperer, trend Sensemaker and former Microsoft executive, about his first book, The Dualarity, and his second book, Transforming While Performing, co-authored with Kristof Braekeleire to be released in May 2023.   

What was the inspiration behind your first book and business, The Dualarity?

My business adventure started on 14 August 1994 when I joined Microsoft. I had no idea how powerful that decision would be or how it would flavor my future life. So many experiences, so much personal growth. 

In July 2016, after 22 years, I was ready to cut the umbilical cord with Microsoft. I followed my passion, made room for something to grow while ending an era, and gave birth to The Dualarity, a book and a business. As an independent entrepreneur, I also wrote this first book, about personal and business transformation, which probably has been in the making for 22 years. It provides a comprehensive overview of what is happening in the world, with a big focus on digital transformation, and I thought deeply about how you can respond as an individual and as a business in your transformation. 

I put my heart, body, and soul into this book. It became an imprint of my observations of the world, people, and how I see it shaping. It’s fed with facts, research, and personal learnings of my personal transformation as a person and in business. Writing it helped me to structure my thoughts and experiences, and almost felt like therapy leaving the Microsoft ship. 

Your second book, Transforming While Performing, will be released in May 2023. Is it a continuation of The Dualarity or does it cover something new?

The premise of the book is how to Transform while performing by finding your North Star and getting everyone to act faster. This book will help organizations find their North Star, develop a strategic plan, and get everyone aligned in days, not months. We’ll also talk about how you can see the world and how to transform as an individual and as a business.  

Now more than ever there is pressure on any organization to transform while performing. It is extremely challenging to keep an open mind to refresh your future vision and define a direction of travel. How can you harvest the collective human intelligence to build your strategy and align all stakeholders in a co-creative and inspiring way, so they feel it is their plan, not someone else’s? How do you get everyone to act in days not months? How do you turn transformation into a strategic capability? That’s what this book is about. 

What is special about this book is the strong combination of writing and visualization: half of the book will be visuals.  

I’m co-authoring this book with Kristof Braekeleire, who is a visual facilitator and visual strategist. We believe in the power of visualization. Over the last six years, we’ve had many meetings using large murals and saw how graphic facilitation enhanced group learning and increased participation. Visuals also create a collective memory of an event. So, we’ve used lots of visualization in this book to explain things and give practical tips that keep the readers engaged. It’s a book about transforming while performing that is powered by inspiration, visualization, and co-creation. 

What is the difference between performing and transforming?

It’s a real balancing act for individuals, teams, and businesses to make a distinction between the two.

1. Performing is delivering on your commitments. It’s the performance of today, what you produce, sell and deliver in a given period, like the fiscal year. It’s where you are trying to optimize productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. We call this operational excellence.   
2. Transforming, on the other hand, is where you build your future in the long run. It is the true power of an organization. It’s what you do now to perform in your future. Employees, customers, partners, and investors will stay with you if they believe you can bring them into the future and deliver value that will improve their lives. That’s what we call innovation excellence.  

Innovation excellence is not just digital or technology, it’s how you build your business model, how you relate to your customers, how you organize yourself, how you treat people, how you change the structure in your organization, how you build the ecosystem, and having an open mind. Technology is just one of the elements that can help you as a company.  

The challenge is how to balance performing while transforming. Many companies that have been around for a while tend to spend so much time performing that they are killing creativity and innovation.  

You know, start-ups probably have too much transforming and not enough performing. At some point, they will need to close deals and sell their products and services.  

It’s such a challenge finding that performing-transforming capability in an organization. Having the power of operational excellence and innovation excellence drives people and businesses to become the best versions of themselves. 

Having held top management roles at Microsoft for over 20 years, what are the key capabilities leaders should possess to ensure successful transformation in their organizations?

The power question here is how you can turn transformation into a strategic capability? 

Leaders must be willing to challenge every aspect of their organization. This includes their North Star, business model, operating model, people, culture, and also themselves. The legacy still serves present performance, but you’ll need to sacrifice parts of it to help the transformation come to life. Leadership models and approaches of the 20th century are no longer fit for purpose in the 21st century. Today, more than ever, a leadership team must have the right mix of performing and transforming capabilities. That is a condition to succeed in any major transformation. 

Leaders need to surround themselves with people who are more visionary, innovative, and able to inspire the troops and navigate them on the ship. But they also must be supported by strong performers who are the operational masters behind the buttons able to execute that vision.  

Here are some important questions leaders should ask themselves:

1. Do I have the right skills for transforming and performing in my leadership team? 
2. How can I build a capabilities-focused leadership model?  
3. Do I have diverse leadership talent and styles in my team?  
4. How do I operate day-to-day performance while transforming for the long term?  
5. Do I have a culture of trust powered by collective leadership and a strong CEO?  
6. Do I manage the tension that transforming and performing creates? 

Many organizations struggle with the tension between transforming and performing. On the one hand, there is a need to value learnings from experimentation and failures while valuing outstanding performance. Meanwhile, you have to manage well-being while hardcore showing results. We are convinced great leaders can openly and transparently acknowledge that tension to people.

What are the characteristics of organizations that have successful transformation initiatives?

When you look at the top 20 business transformations of the past decade published by Harvard Business Review you can observe some clear patterns. Companies like Netflix, Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), Microsoft, and Philips made that list. 

These companies had the following in common:  

1. Ready to reinvent themselves with a new future North Star: Not afraid to let go of the legacy and leverage the core capability to reposition its core while entering new growth areas. 
2. The right leadership capabilities to transform: Striking the right balance in operational and innovation excellence. Able to operate at a fast speed in reviewing strategies or relocating resources. 
3. Turned transformation into a strategic capability: The ability to stay young, hit refresh, future-proof or re-imagine their North Star (purpose, ambitions, value, culture), strategy, and leadership ready for the fast-paced world. 
4. Saw digital as the oxygen of the company: These companies seized the digital opportunity. Made data-driven decisions and leveraged digital for new platforms and superior business models. 
5. Put customers at the heart of the company: They always keep the customer in mind. Instead of thinking about customers, they think like customers. 
6. Value people as the soul of the company: They saw culture as the backbone of the organization with people being part of the transformation. If you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers. People are loyal to a culture, not a strategy.   

You talk about the need to re-balance existing or add new investments in products, services, processes, markets, platforms, and business models to iterate, innovate or disrupt. What do you mean by this?

A business transformation is a strategic capability when it offers… 

• the ability to stay young, hit refresh, future proof or re-imagine your North Star (purpose, ambitions, value, culture), strategy, and leadership ready for the fast-paced world,  
• by re-balancing existing or adding new investments (iterate, innovate, disrupt) in products, services, processes, markets, platforms, and business models  
• to drive future profitable growth and sustainable value in the customer, employee, and ecosystem, while taking care of the planet. 

Depending on where you are with this, you’ll need to look at where to invest.  

Let’s simplify innovation and categorize it into three types of innovation, using the machine metaphor: 

1. Iterative innovation: It is oiling the current machine to make it more productive, more efficient, or effective. Your focus is to make a better version of what you have today.  
2. Innovative innovation: It is adding a new part to the existing machine. Your focus is to create something new that wasn’t there before. 
3. Disruptive innovation: It is about building a new machine. Your focus is to build something radically new that changes the rules of the game, that disrupts someone else or even yourself.  

How much effort — time, resources, money, people — do I currently put into each of the 3 buckets?

• Many companies will spend 90% (commercial) to 95% (public entities) in the iterative buckets and 5 to 10% in the innovative bucket. 
• In contrast, if you want to be transformative you will need 70, 20, and 10% in each of the respective buckets. High Tech companies even go beyond and spend around 50, 30, and 20% in each respective bucket.  

A very useful exercise is to categorize your running and planned projects and resources over those three buckets and see what consumes the most resources. You’d be surprised about the outcomes. It will mirror how well you are balancing transforming and performing. 

• If you truly want to be transformative you will need 70, 20, and 10% in each of the respective buckets.  
• A CEO that is not spending 30 to 40% of his time on the innovative part is not really serious about it.  
• The same goes for the entire leadership team. 

What are three things you hope attendees will take away from your session at MED Belgium?

I’ll speak about how to balance transforming and performing to build a soulful, highly energized, future-proof organization. I also want to help attendees see what’s happening on the outside, understand how to transform and perform as a person and as a business, and how to find the balance between innovation excellence and operational excellence. My keynote will be visually recorded on stage by Kristof, my business partner at Visual Senseformers and co-author of the new book. Looking forward to it. 

 *The answers have been edited for length and clarity. 

We speak with Donnie SC Lygonis; innovation strategist and business coach at KTH Innovation, entrepreneur, and TEDx speaker; on the inspiration behind his non-profit organization, the characteristics of strong innovation culture, the misconceptions of sustainable innovation, and more.  

What inspired you to start your non-profit organization, Entrepreneurs Without Borders (EWB)?

I’ve been working with entrepreneurship for the past 25 years — starting my own companies or helping others start their own, teaching entrepreneurship at schools, mentoring entrepreneurs, or judging entrepreneurship competitions, so I have a long and diverse experience in the field, and all of that came to fruition at one defining moment during a trip to India back in 2012.  

I was presenting how we work at the innovation office at the university, and after the talk, one person from the audience came up to me and said: “I’m an engineer here in India and we need what you are building in Sweden. We have people with incredible ideas, but we don’t know how to develop them.”  

On the flight home, I was thinking to myself, “How can I make that happen? How can I start an innovation office in India?” and then I thought “why stop there? Why not start 100 innovation offices worldwide that are connected to each other, so we can spread good ideas faster?”  

From there I then embarked on a journey to get this started, and in 2016 I gave a TEDx talk on this new idea that I then called “Entrepreneurs Without Borders” – shortened EWB, and from there on we have tried and done several different things.

How has the journey with EWB been like so far?

It has been a roller coaster ride with a number of trial projects leading up to 2020 when we were just about to start our first big accelerator program down in Kenya together with another NGO, Hand in Hand. They work with grassroots entrepreneurship and help mostly women start a livelihood company for themselves and their families. 

Together with them, we were going to run a project working with the 3,000 people they’ve helped over time, and run the most suitable ones through a 10-month program to help them grow and scale sustainable businesses, all with the goal of creating more jobs, sustainably. Getting people into jobs is key, and has a huge multiplying effect, one person can support up to five people in their social circle.  

Then of course in March 2020 the world turned upside down and all financers pulled out, so that project, together with all other activities, was put on hold.   

Over the course of the pandemic we redefined how we do things, but our why is still the same; to help entrepreneurs create a living for themselves and their families and at the same time try to reach the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Job creation and sustainability are the two main goals of EWB today. 

What do people get wrong about entrepreneurship vs social entrepreneurship?

I’d say we need to redefine the word entrepreneurship. At EWB we don’t talk about social entrepreneurship as one thing and then all other entrepreneurship as another. We mean that all entrepreneurship (and all business as such) needs to be sustainable, period.  

Sustainable entrepreneurship should be the only kind of entrepreneurship out there.  

By calling some entrepreneurs “social” you automatically create a divide between them and all the others that call themselves entrepreneurs, which also means that we burden the social entrepreneurs with fixing the world by being socially responsible and the rest don’t have to care.  

We don’t mean that all entrepreneurs need to have a UN SDG goal to reach, but ALL entrepreneurs need to relate to the UN SDGs so they ensure that they don’t make things worse by having a negative impact on the world.  

And this goes for everyone in business today — you don’t need to have a specific goal in mind to reach, but you need to make sure you’re not breaking any of the other ones.  

So yes, all entrepreneurship and all businesses need to be sustainable, and when I say sustainable I don’t only mean environment or climate, I mean sustainability in its full sense, so running a business in an ethical way with fair wages, no corruption, equal and diverse workforce, and understanding contextually your part of society and taking the consequences of that, being socially responsible.  

I often use the quote “Always leave it better than you found it” which applies to life in general and also entrepreneurship and innovation as well. Innovation can get quite carried away. It’s cool to come up with new ideas but we also need to take responsibility for the ideas we bring to life. We need to understand that we’re all part of the same planet, and that planet is not doing very well right now and it needs all the help it can get.  

What are the characteristics of organizations with a strong innovation culture?

The most important characteristic is curiosity. Fostering an honest, transparent mindset of curiosity within the organization where people are curious about how to build better products for customers and becoming better versions of themselves. Trust is also very important. Organizations need to trust their people and vice versa. For example, employees need to be able to voice out great ideas and trust that no one else will take credit for them. There’s also freedom. Not only freedom of speech but freedom of ideas too. It’s about creating an environment where people can express different opinions and question how the organization does things without being criticized for it. Those three are fundamental to address in order to become a better and more innovative organization.  

Does innovation culture start at the top?

Yes, it starts there, it is a leadership, top-down effort. Leaders need to be honest and open about what they want to see happen, and when they start initiatives, they need to follow through on their promises.  

I’ve seen too many examples of creative workshops and Dragon’s Den events that end up only for show, with little or no follow-through, which leads to it actually being counter-productive since people get disillusioned and unwilling to try again next time.  

And it is also not only about what you say, but also how you say it, organizations make this mistake all the time — they go out and say, “We ARE a curious organization!”, and the employees call their bluff because it comes across as management mumbo jumbo. Instead, I’d like an executive to say, “Look, we know we are an old and tired organization. Let’s all work together to become a fun, playful, curious six-year-old looking for new and fun things to do.” 

What are the three things you hope attendees will take away from your session at StrategiTorget Bank & Försäkring 2023?

Firstly, I hope to convey the basics of what makes an organization creative and innovative. I will also be talking about the importance and beauty of ideas; large organizations tend to get scared of new ideas because they think they will take time and cost money. But if we don’t have a dialogue about new ideas, then how will we ever get them? Understanding and being able to separate the two processes; going to work, serving customers, and making money today doesn’t have to be opposed to asking “What are we going to do tomorrow? Where will we be in 10 years? Then of course I want to end by saying: “Now you know how things work – Go talk to your people and make it happen!”.  

*The answers have been edited for length and clarity. 

Leaders set the tone for how an organization operates; they are part of the foundation that makes up the culture and are key to building an effective team. But what is it about great leaders that separates them from the rest of the pack? Simon Sinek, renowned leadership expert, speaker, and author of three global bestsellers, The Infinite Game, Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last shares 9 key insights that make great leadership. 

“Leadership is a team sport. None of us are strong enough or smart enough to do this alone.”

1. Empathy is as important as ever 

A trait that still ranks highly in leaders is empathy. When COVID struck, many leaders – even ones who seemed ineffective before – leaned on their own humanity and started checking in on their teams in earnest.  

“We don’t need a global pandemic for us to express empathy and check in on our people,” said Simon, adding that this is simply good leadership.  

He added, “What I really hope is that the skill, that very human skill of leaning on our own humanity remains in a post-COVID world. Actually, worrying about our people as people rather than just cogs in a machine.” 

2. Leadership is a team sport 

Explaining the concept of finding and living your ‘Why’, Simon noted that your ‘Why’ is the sum total of your experiences that make you who you are. The rest of your life offers opportunities for you to make decisions that either keep you in balance with that ‘Why’ or not.  

As leaders, it’s important to be aware that if you’re feeling an imbalance in fulfilling your why, you should be honest about it to your team and lean on your friends for support. After all, leaders are the ones who set the tone. 

Relaying a story about his own experience with this challenge of feeling imbalanced in his ‘Why’ and how it affected his work, Simon said he managed to stay inspired and jump back from a rough patch by talking to his friends and being honest to his team about being off his game.  

3. Stay away from toxic positivity 

Leading into his next point, Simon explained that leaders who express their humanity and are honest about the challenges they are facing will create an environment where their team feels able to reach out when they are struggling as well.  

Toxic positivity – where a leader sees a team struggling or having a high workload but only talks about how everything is going great – can really backfire. If people are struggling but they only see positivity around them, they may think something is wrong with them. They would also feel the need to lie or hide their own challenges. Instead, Simon emphasizes the need for leaders to show their own humanity as it encourages others to do the same.  

“It creates an environment in which other people feel safe to tell us they make mistakes or tell us that they’re struggling, and then we can be there to support them, which is ultimately what we want to do as leaders,” he explained.  

4. Leaders Eat Last 

As he talks about in one of his bestselling books, Leaders Eat Last, Simon explained that good leaders are those who are willing to sacrifice their own interests or bonuses to protect their team in hard times.  

“Running a company is an ongoing experience. There are going to be highs and there are going to be lows. And I think as a society we’ve over-indexed on selfishness we’ve over-indexed on prioritizing our self-interest,” he cautioned. 

Even so, balancing your own self-interest with that of your team or business remains a paradox, according to Simon. Sometimes, you have to put your own oxygen mask on first. Sometimes, you have to help those around you first. It’s up to you as a leader to figure that out in your own context.  

5. Leadership is a choice 

On the topic of how to encourage leadership accountability, Simon stressed that anyone can be a leader regardless of their official title or position in the formal organizational hierarchy.  

“Leadership is a choice. Whether we’re the assigned leader or not, we still have the opportunity to practice all of the leadership skills that we’ve learned, one of which is making sure that our people feel seen, heard, and understood, and take that awesome responsibility to see those around us rise. That’s what leadership is,” Simon emphasized. 

Following that, Simon stressed the importance of rewarding leadership behavior instead of just titles and outcomes to encourage more leadership-like qualities and behaviors in the entire team. 

“If someone is showing initiative, stepping up and playing the leader leadership role, then we have to recognize them and reward them regardless of the outcome in the short term.”

6. Business is an infinite game 

No one wins in education or learning or even business. Citing philosopher and theologian Dr. James Carr, Simon explained that there are two types of games – finite and infinite. A finite game has fixed parameters and an agreed-upon objective where there is a necessary winner and loser. Importantly, there is a beginning, middle, and end in finite games. On the other hand, infinite games have known and unknown players who can leave or join at any time. The rules are also changeable at any time. The objective, however, is to stay in the game as long as possible to perpetuate it.  

When leaders approach business as a finite game but with an infinite mindset, there are some consistent and predictable outcomes such as the decline of trust, cooperation, and innovation.  

But if leaders accept that business as an infinite game that no one can win, that sparks a crucial change of mindset in how they operate.  

“The purpose of business is to do something and go somewhere, and money is the fuel to do it,” Simon said, explaining that the most successful companies or not ones that are purely driven by making a profit.  

7. Leaders must earn trust 

Talking about trust, Simon noted that it is important for people to be able to trust those around them as that breeds confidence that they will be supported. In a work environment, people need to feel able to admit their mistakes or that they are struggling to find the answer without fear of being humiliated or having their career impacted in a negative way.  

Simon cautioned, “Trust is a very human feeling. It’s not an order.” 

He added, “I get a kick out of leaders who say to their people ‘prove to me why I should trust you’. It’s actually the opposite. It’s actually the leader who has to prove why their people should trust them. That’s how an effective organization works. Trust is earned. And it starts with the leader.” 

8. Be careful with labelling quiet quitting 

Quiet quitting is gaining some buzz recently – the idea that people are doing the bare minimum at work. Simon noted that it’s important to make a distinction between those who are disengaged at work because they are actively making that choice, and those who are going through a hard time. In the latter case, leaders have to step in and check on their teams.  

Either way, leaders must lead with empathy in both cases.  

“We have to be very, very careful labeling these things as quiet quitting because it is kind of a pejorative,” Simon cautioned.  

“People are quiet quitting at every level, and people are just trying to find work-life balance at every level. We have to be able to discern the difference and support,” he added.  

9. Business is human 

As his final takeaway, Simon reminded leaders that business is made up of people at every step of the way. Ultimately, it is about people, not profit or products.  

He said, “Remember that 100% of customers are people; 100% of employees are people; 100% of investors are people. It’s not about the profit, it’s not about the product. When you become obsessed about those things, you’re ignoring the very fact that business is human. And the more you understand human beings, the better you do at business. And by the way, it turns out you’re human too. So, all leaders are people too.”