Some years ago, I started as a Lean consultant at Sykehuspartner in Norway. My job at the time was to guide the organisation to work through continuous improvement using Lean tools.
After three years, I realized that at the surface things got better, but our culture had not changed. A lot of energy got wasted in complaining and pointing at others. I realised co-workers felt disengaged. I started seeing that the real challenge was enabling them to take charge of their own situation, instead of us doing it for them.
This new focus point gradually became clear: humans instead of tools. But how would we do that? And how could I get others to act with me in the same direction? From my own experience, I knew that focussing on creating unity and trust makes an enormous difference. I informally experimented with different ways of doing this and at some point asked soul.com to assist me.
I find it so impressive that Martijn (facilitator at Soul.com) has done nothing for us. I mean, he didn’t jump in and fixed things. Instead, he has been patiently listening, helping us to formulate what our next step would be, collaborating with us and pushing us a little when needed. He had faith that we could do it ourselves. The trust I felt from Martijn and the vision we shared gave me the much-needed confidence. What we are left with is the capacity to do it ourselves.
I felt lucky to be accompanied by Soul.com, who are at the forefront of learning. We profited from their experience, trust and generosity. In Soul, we found a partner that practices what it preaches and that embodies the qualities that they try to awaken in others.