26 Sep

What Gets Seen, Gets Repeated – Firefighters vs Preventers

Infographic titled 'What gets seen, gets repeated' showing two columns: left red section 'Visible. Immediate. Reactive.' with a red alert siren, a worker on the phone, factory silhouettes, and a '22:00' breakdown; caption 'IS A HERO.' Right green section 'Invisible. Deliberate. Proactive.' with a worker at a laptop displaying a rising graph and icons labeled 'Identify risk', 'Address causes', 'Prevent failure'; caption 'WEEKS EARLIER – PREVENTION' and 'IS ALMOST INVISIBLE.' Bottom banner reads 'Shift recognition. Reward prevention. Build resilient operations.' and shows salomons.coach.
A manager who fixes a breakdown at 22:00 is a hero. The manager whose work prevented it six weeks earlier is almost invisible. Drawing on a coaching case with an Operations Director, this post shows what preventive leaders actually do, why organisations overlook them, and the routines a senior leader needs to put in place so prevention gets seen, rewarded and repeated.
Read More
11 Jun

You Don’t Have a People Problem. You Have a System.

Systems-thinking infographic: scattered people icons, curved arrows around a glowing central circle on a dark blue gradient with the phrase 'You don't have a people problem. You have a system.'
Your team won't take ownership. The same crisis keeps returning. You replaced the problem person and nothing changed. These aren't character flaws — they're the shape of the system you're standing inside. Drawing on three decades in the leadership chair, Jan Salomons on why so much competence produces so little change, and where the shift actually begins.
Read More
15 May

The full logic (and context) of yes and no

Hero banner: dark blue gradient with concentric rings and a gold 'yes' at center, title 'The full logic of yes and no' on the right.
A yes from Beijing and a yes from Amsterdam can come out of the same mouth in the same meeting and mean radically different things. A reference-grade walk through the four cross-cultural frameworks — Hofstede, GLOBE, WVS, Schwartz — and the two psychological theories underneath that explain why.
Read More