Why Holland Future Center exists

Why should your organisation still exist in ten years' time?

Not because you are making a profit today. But because people still want to work there, customers still choose you, and you keep adding something to the world around you.

The world is changing faster than most organisations.

AI is changing work and entire business models. Employees expect something different from leadership. Customers expect transparency. Social issues are moving into the boardroom.

So the question is not only: how do we stay successful? But above all: how do we stay relevant?

Relevant to whom? To the people who work for you, the customers who choose you and the society your organisation is part of. Whoever offers only a transaction, wages for work, a product for money, is replaceable. The wages can be earned elsewhere. So can the product.

The good organisations of the future are organisations for good. Not because it is the decent thing to do, but because in the end the bigger picture decides who is still around in ten years' time.

Imagine we were to design organisations all over again.

Food industry

What if a food company asked itself not only what it can sell, but also what responsibility it has for the health of the people who eat its products every day?

Government

What if a government checked not only whether procedures were followed, but whether every euro of taxpayers' money was spent wisely, and let residents take part directly in decisions about their living environment?

Employer

What if an employer were responsible not only for the work between nine and five, but took a fresh look at health, development and the community around the organisation? And employees and customers were given influence, perhaps even co-ownership?

Then a different kind of organisation emerges. Not a machine in which people fill roles, but a living ecosystem in which people create value together.

Technology makes more possible. Human connection makes it valuable.

Desire wins over fear.

In times of great change, people choose fear out of habit. That is understandable: fear keeps you alert. But fear also keeps you still. You think about the change, you talk about it, and you do not act.

The technique behind the Trip to the Future is called Future Perfect Thinking. You travel to the year in which it has already worked out and look back from there. What you see, smell and hear there is what you want to achieve. That is how the technique makes a different emotion dominant: desire.

That desire gives your team and your organisation room to truly act on change. Not just thinking about it, but acting on it. Including in the months after the team day, once the everyday rush has returned.

My story

I have carried this picture with me for years.

For twenty-seven years, at Efteling, Sanoma, ING and ABN AMRO among others, I saw time and again how much difference it makes when people are truly connected. I have had some remarkable experiences of that myself.

Since 2017, through HQ Exchange, I have been bringing together leaders from head offices, in moments people still treasure years later. Out of that grew Holland Future Center: a place where leaders who want to do things differently find each other, explore together, experiment and build organisations for good. As a cooperative, of and for the leaders who take part. Because I want to leave something beautiful behind.

What I focus on now: team days, one-to-one coaching, bringing leaders together and guiding the first innovation programmes. The Trip to the Future is the starting method in all of this. It all began with an immersive team game that has proven itself with more than a thousand people; today we use the technique of the perfect future in several forms: with your team, with leaders from other organisations around a theme, and as the kick-off of innovation projects.

From there we keep building: leadership training, and everything else the network of leaders needs.

Corné

The Law of Connection

The organisation of the future begins with leaders who dare to look differently.

The rules of the game have changed. At Holland Future Center we play the new game: leaders who explore together, experiment and build Organisations of the Future. Every Trip to the Future works from three connections, always in this order.

Connected with yourself

With your energy, your beliefs and the future you want to build.

Connected with your people

Does strategy come from above, or do people feel: this is my organisation too?

THEM

Connected with the world

With customers, society, technology and the world that is coming into being.