Exploring the Black Box

The employer is the last actor with room to move, and Belgium is tying its hands

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:34:03 +0000

As Belgians, we "enjoy" the highest tax wedge in the rich world. The OECD measures that wedge, the share of total labour cost that goes to income tax and social contributions. For an average single worker in Belgium it was 52.5 percent in 2025, the highest of the 38 OECD members. The OECD average was 35.1 percent (OECD, Taxing Wages 2026, Belgium).

Industrialisation already ran this experiment, and we are misreading the result

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 14:56:01 +0000

Companies are removing people this year to capture a productivity gain that, on their own account, has not arrived.

Read that twice. Both halves are documented.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ran about 490,000 earnings call transcripts from 5,198 publicly traded US firms to see how executives talk about productivity. Roughly 95 percent of the productivity sentences that mention AI point at future gains. Not gains booked. Gains expected. Over the same window, utilization-adjusted total factor productivity grew 0.07 percent in the four quarters to the first quarter of 2026.

Your Dysfunctional Organisation Is Working Exactly as Designed

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:18:07 +0000

There is a sentence in systems literature that removes your right to complain about your own organisation. David Peter Stroh states it plainly in Systems Thinking for Social Change: systems are perfectly designed to achieve the results they are currently achieving. No matter how dysfunctional a system appears to be, it is producing benefits for the people who participate in it.

The Silvering

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:11:39 +0000

1

Arthur Wren had stopped looking at himself in mirrors around the time other people stopped looking at him. He placed that somewhere in his early sixties, well before Maggie got sick. So he could not blame it on the grief. It was an arrangement that suited everyone. He shaved by feel, combed his hair with his fingers, and let the man in the mirror get on with whatever the man in the mirror did all day.

OKRs work brilliantly on complicated systems and fail on complex ones

Sat, 23 May 2026 07:00:56 +0000

Most organisations adopting OKRs today are using a tool built for engineering teams to solve problems that are not engineering problems. The framework works. It often works very well. It does not work everywhere.

I spent the first part of my career as an internal auditor, and one of the questions auditors learn to ask is whether a control is actually controlling. Apply the same question to OKRs and the answer becomes uncomfortable. In the organisations where OKRs travel furthest, on engineering teams, on sales pipelines, on logistics operations, the framework controls something real. In the organisations where leaders are reaching for OKRs because their environment feels out of control, the framework controls almost nothing. It manufactures an appearance of strategic discipline while the actual system the organisation is meant to influence keeps moving in directions the OKR document did not anticipate.

The hyperactive hive mind is an organisational design failure

Fri, 15 May 2026 18:02:16 +0000

A few years ago I wrote here that better leadership, on its own, will not save us. I was deep into Cal Newport's A World Without Email at the time, and the book had me convinced of one thing: most of what we treat as a leadership problem in a knowledge worker organisation is actually a workflow problem dressed up in a leadership costume. I have come back to that idea again and again since, and three books in particular keep pushing it further. Newport's A World Without Email gives the structural diagnosis. Seth Godin's The Practice gives the practitioner's condition. Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks gives the philosophical stake. Read together, they make a case I think most leadership teams are not yet ready to hear. The hyperactive hive mind that runs through our inboxes and our chat tools is not a discipline problem. It is an organisational design failure. And only leadership can fix it.

The boxes nobody opens

Sun, 03 May 2026 12:56:11 +0000

In 2024 we spent over three weeks clearing out my father's house.

My father was, at the end of his life, a hoarder. Every cupboard was full. Every drawer was full. The cellar was so full that we didn’t even start emptying it, leaving it all to a junk dealer. Most of what we unpacked had not been touched in years, in some cases in over a decade. There were boxes inside other boxes, art with no remaining value and an extraordinary number of plastic bags filled with smaller plastic bags. Some of the things we unwrapped had clearly been valuable once, the kind of items that would have been bought with care and stored with intent. By the time we found them, that care and that intent had no living context. There was nobody left who remembered why they had been kept.

Who controls the AI initiative?

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 10:58:52 +0000

Most government AI programmes are designed to fail. Not by intent, but by instinct.

When a public organisation decides to build an AI initiative, it does what public organisations always do with new things they do not fully understand: it builds controls around them. Governance committees. Approval gates. Reporting requirements. Risk registers. One layer of oversight for each layer of anxiety.

About this site

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 04:30:24 +0000

Exploring the Black Box is an independent publication launched in February 2026 by Ben Broeckx. If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. Your subscription makes this site possible, and allows Exploring the Black Box to continue to exist. Thank you!

My manual - a 2025 update

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 17:08:20 +0000

This is a fork of the excellent document written bij Michael Lopp, aka Rands in Repose, which you can find here. It is titled “How to … Rands”, and the credit for the idea and a lot of the content is entirely his.

A cursive digital workflow… no longer waiting for Godot

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 08:31:10 +0000

I love cursive writing. I always have. I was born into a generation that still had cursive writing drilled into them in school, and it is a great way to express your ideas, thoughts, and feelings at human speed. There is also a very tangible aspect to it: I have a small collection of pens I love writing with. But I am quite allergic to wasting time and effort. Cursive writing has struggled to find a place in my workflow in a way that makes sense from an efficiency point of view. Because there are real limitations to a paper workflow, which can only be partially managed. Think about ease of search, or back-up, for example. And what about sharing?

About choosing what to read

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 09:43:19 +0000

Laurence Tratt wrote this interesting article on his blog two days ago. "Choosing what to read" as an article is more than worth your time reading it. It talks about making the best reading and opinion influencing choices in a world where we get overwhelmed with articles about pretty much everything every single day. Two ideas in particular struck me:

Contentment

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 18:50:25 +0000

Sometimes there are no words required.

Why better leadership will not save us (yet)

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 07:15:00 +0000

I'm getting deep into "A world without email", the new book by Cal Newport. Excellent read and in terms of insight eye-opening. If you want science supported insights into what works and does not in the workplace, this should be among the books you read next.

Let's talk about learning

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 21:55:05 +0000

There's a lot going on around you ... what will you do about it?

All around you, every single moment, "stuff" exists and "stuff" happens. I refer to it as "stuff" because it is undefined. And it is undefined because you haven't looked at it, because you have not connected with it.

Why personal knowledge management matters for business development

Sun, 18 Apr 2021 14:32:12 +0000

Preface

This post is inspired by an exchange with Nick Milo, who runs Linking Your Thinking. If you want to learn more about personal knowledge management (PKM) and more about PKM's within Obsidian, pay him a visit on his YouTube channel. Worth the time you'll invest.

Writing internal audit working papers and reports with Obsidian

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 16:34:52 +0000

Look at that computer

I came from a time when internal auditors still worked with their hands ... writing cursive internal audit working papers, on paper, binding them all together with binding clips and being subject to a thorough or sometimes not so thorough manager working paper review.

What haunts you into no longer moving forward?

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 12:30:00 +0000

I am convinced there is something in an area of your life currently blocking you from moving forward in an intended direction. You may be aware of it or you may not, but I am almost certain it is there.

Studying in the age of COVID-19 - a guide for high school kids

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 12:07:25 +0000

I am the proud father of two teenagers. And I see them suffering through the challenges of studying in the year(s) of COVID-19. In Flanders, we have defaulted to 50% in class and 50% at home learning. And it is during the at home learning that both my son and my daughter suffer. I know these challenges can be overcome and it will be important to overcome them. Like any parent I want my children to have all the possibilities when it comes to higher education.

Operating in the Genius Zone

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 15:00:00 +0000

I'm an avid podcast listener. One of these podcasts is Focused, hosted by David Sparks and Mike Schmitz. In the most recent episode they invited Ernie Svenson, a former lawyer turned entrepreneur. The entire episode was full of wisdom and I enjoyed listening to it. In one of the exchanges talking about why he left the legal profession, Svenson mentioned that one of the reasons he left was because he wanted to stay in his Genius Zone. As a lawyer he operated outside it, and that hurt. He had the courage to create the environment to get closer to his Genius Zone. He defines the Genius Zone as the zone where your productivity is the highest because you are doing the things you are best at. He exhalted about how turning entrepreneur and business owner allowed him to operate in his Genius Zone more than he was able before, when he worked for a large corporate. And he has a point.

Theme your year

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 15:00:00 +0000

There are posts on this blog I’ve written in 20 minutes or even less. They are based on a straightforward idea that has formed in my mind. I merely have to copy those thoughts into coherent sentences to be able to publish. Those posts are few, but they exist. There are elaborate posts that are based on mind maps, which take more time to think through. They require external links and are rewritten and edited multiple times before I click the publish button on IA Writer, my current blogging markdown editor of choice. Almost all of the posts on this blog were written that way. And then, at the other end of the 20 minute posts are the posts that live in my mind for a long time before I even start writing them. They take days to write. They are the essential posts, the posts of which every single word needs to be written in the correct manner. These posts are important because they are written while standing on the shoulders of giants.

You cannot carry more than one bucket at a time

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 15:00:00 +0000

Here's a pattern I've seen different people using, and I've used it myself: establishing multiple buckets for each of one's areas of responsibility and prioritising tasks within each of these buckets.

At the face of it, it does make sense: we have responsibilities at home, at work, towards ourselves, our health for example ... lots of things to do across our many areas of responsibility. Establishing buckets, or backlogs as I call them, for each of these areas makes intuitive sense. But what is happening is that by putting tasks in these different buckets, you avoid making choices. You avoid prioritising if you approach your life as the management of a set of buckets. Let's explore this further.

True growth comes from conflict in your mind

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 15:00:00 +0000

I was surprised, and not positively, when I realised that the level of awareness of the world our children have, is lower than the level we had at a similar age. This in spite of the many more sources of information available to them. To learn about the world, we had to watch the news, read the newspaper or read books. Nowadays, there are many more sources of information available to young people.

The ultimate to do app

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 18:15:00 +0000

A personal productivity tool that integrates seamlessly with your way of working but gets out of the way when you need to get into the zone remains the Philosopher's Stone of personal management. We aspire to that optimisation by adopting tools which aim to help us manage our multiple to do's across our responsibilities. The intention of these tools is good, but do they work? Will using a to do tool help you become more productive? Will a to-do tool integrate into your work process, be ready to identify relevant to do's but get out of the way to allow you to reach the ultimate zone of productivity ... or will it distract you?

What are you?

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 16:19:23 +0000

You, like every one around you, have that one distinguishing characteristic. Something that defines you. Likely the first thing that people that know you will mention when they describe you to someone who has never met you. It is the anchor your friends have in their minds when thinking about you. It is what resonates when they think of you.

Yes, but ...

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 08:00:00 +0000

I dread those words. "Yes, but ..." indicates one of our suppliers, team members or colleagues both agreeing with a conclusion but denying responsibility for it. "Yes, but ..." is by its nature a defensive stance. It indicates entrenched interests, a hidden agenda. It does not bode well for the rest of that sentence, nor for the continuation of the trust I put in that relationship. "Yes, but ..." indicates a deep denial of ownership of the issue we are discussing. "Yes, but ..." is casting away responsibility.

Due diligent behaviour in COVID times

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 08:00:00 +0000

The pandemic the world has been confronted with the past year has almost no upsides. Too many people have died and more will die before we get on top of this. But there are lessons to be learned from the experiences during the pandemic. These lessons provide valuable insights into how to do work better in the future. I want to focus today on how we "do" work, in the past, now and in the future.

Belgium missed the eCommerce train once, and we are missing it again

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:00:00 +0000

The late '00's and the early '10's of this century saw an eCommerce boom, first across the US, then across Europe and Asia. In our little corner of Western Europe, we saw the entrepreneurial Dutch start up eCommerce initiatives such as Coolblue and bol.com, which have turned into resounding successes. We saw the arrival of Amazon in France, in Germany and more recently in the Netherlands ... everywhere but in Belgium.

The necessity and guilt of doing deep work

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Today I was unsure what to write about. Which is interesting by itself. After all, there are many subjects that interest me and are of interest to me, there are many ideas sitting in lists in my Roam Graph (and yes, that is a shameless plug for Roam Research, do check it out if you do any writing.)

A leader's role in leading a team

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 07:30:00 +0000

One of the key tenets of leadership is that you, as a leader, are responsible to first make sure that your team is capable of delivering. Now, that is a simple sentence, but implementing is is anything but. Let's look at that sentence again:

Injecting drive in our educational system

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 06:18:51 +0000

Previous posts focused on what is wrong with our current educational system. I am not breaking any new ground here, please read anything that the late Ken Robinson published in the past 20 years and you will find a much more detailed and developed set of ideas for the future of education.

Education based on intrinsic motivation

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 08:30:00 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about my frustration with the current state of our education. You can go ahead and read that post here, but in essence it comes down to the observation that our adherence to industrial-type education is failing to prepare us for the future.

Flagging a creative effort - an awareness raising game on COVID

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 06:27:48 +0000

I'm awed when someone I know or worked with does something which in my eyes is amazingly creative. When a former colleague of mine at the cabinet of the then vice-prime minister, now prime-minister announced in our What's App group she and her sister had developed a COVID-19 turn-based board game which is aimed at raising awareness on COVID-19 readiness as well as on how challenging it is for a country to adequately prepare for it, I immediately purchased two copies.

Our failure to educate

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 06:47:26 +0000

I'm frustrated. I have opinions about lots of things, but I am frustrated about the current state of education in Belgium, and likely in other countries as well.

What's my beef? Our post-industrial world still educates for an industrial environment. We are still trying to produce as similar cogs as possible that then need to fit into holes that are becoming less and less standardised. And that's just about the children that need to fit in a function or a role.

Attention spamming

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 16:56:32 +0000

I don't know if you've ever been here, but I sure have, and something inside me tells me you likely have too if you have ever participated in endless online video meetings. Whether it is via Zoom, or Teams, I feel my attention dropping in meetings because of technology. And that is a problem.

Overvaluing authenticity

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 23:00:24 +0000

I enjoy the Design Matters podcast by Debbie Millman. I don’t listen to it enough, or all the time, but when I do, the conversations are often eye-opening. As was the latest conversation Mrs. Millman had with Seth Godin.

In it, Seth Godin explained why in his opinion, authenticity is overvalued. What he said made a lot of sense, so I would invite you to listen. What I took away from it is the following …

Mastery is about doing less

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 22:08:37 +0000

I've been using Readwise to go through the highlights in the books and articles I read. It takes away the administrative burden of creating reference notes and because I'm able to sync the notes with my Roam Research graph, I can start writing almost immediately. And it confronts me on a regular basis with ideas that resonated with me. One of these is from a book called "Running Lean", written by Ash Maurya:

What does good communication sound like?

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 23:48:59 +0000

Often referred to as a Zen koan, the question "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?", actually isn't a Zen koan at all. It has a scientific answer, and the answer is no. The falling will produce a vibration in the air, but it only becomes sound if there is someone with auditory senses to translate that vibration into a sound.

The future of the iPad could be its new "Scribble" interface

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 07:47:19 +0000

A paper like device

I have long dreamt of a device which would be like paper, but more. A kind of paper plus device. the device would have all the advantages of paper: the tactile input, the requirement to slow down when your hand cannot follow your own speed of thinking, anchoring what you are thinking about in your memory.

How to reach me

Thu, 21 May 2020 19:38:30 +0000

Thank you so much for willing to reach out to me. I really appreciate it. This quick guide will help us to find each other in a conversation, not a mere connection. I'm looking forward to it.

Deep work

The COVID-19 crisis and the ensuing lock-down has taught me quite a few things. One of the main insights is that I lost a lot of time with different types of attention-grabbing connection tools, tools most of you know as social media tools, such as email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, What's App, and the like.

The broader role of companies in our society

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 06:56:11 +0000

In the absence of responsible politics and politicians, companies are coming more and more explicitly forward in their willingness to take up part of the role where the politicians show themselves to be absentee landlords. You can read pretty much any politics related article on this blog to understand how I feel about that lack of responsibility from the side of our politicians.

My current iPad use cases and preferred applications

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve been blogging about my preferred use of my 2017 11 inch iPad Pro in the past. I really like to work as light as possible and with a minimum of tools. I want to be able to set up and go in less dan 2 minutes.

By force or by persuasion?

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 14:54:42 +0000

The same mistake as my neighbour

Two days ago I was talking to one of my neighbours about learning to ride a horse. Both of us have been riding for a number of years, but neither of us started doing it as a child, contrary to our kids, who grew up riding horses. And during the talk I realised that both of us had made exactly the same mistake when we started out, a mistake our children never made. It is also a mistake which I see happening to many people who start out managing a team ... and it entirely avoidable and avoiding it will make your life much better.

Revisiting my Trello set-up

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 21:14:06 +0000

In January 2018 I wrote about my Trello set-up. Based on a question on Twitter by Daniel C Berman, who inquired as to the state of my Trello use, I felt I had to update this post.

But rather than just updating the post, it actually made sense to describe my entire productivity system. Because the system has become both more simple and more complex while still retaining the essential elements that I described over a year ago. So here we go.

Is the race to the bottom the only race in town?

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 08:34:56 +0000

A good feeling on Fridays

My Fridays are usually dedicated to processing all the to do’s gathered during a week of meetings and 121’s as well as to deep work, work for which I need my full concentration. And I often do this from the comfort of my home office, avoiding traffic, starting very early and working until all the work is done. Rince and repeat almost every Friday. As a practice, it allows me to close the week with a good feel for what needs to be done the next week and with a good feeling for what I’ve accomplished during that specific week.

Take your time to develop your thoughts in someone else’s words

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 06:23:43 +0000

Even if you speak the same language

Here is a lesson I only learned a little while ago … you don’t just need to be aware of the fact that people around you don’t necessarily think like you, you also need to adapt the way you express yourself to really connect with them and make a message stick. Even if you speak the same language, you may not understand the same things.

What we have lost

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 06:05:37 +0000

Visiting Bokrijk

Last Tuesday I relaxed at the Bokrijk Open Air Museum which remains one of my favourite places to spent a day or even just an afternoon with your kids. We had two nephews visiting who had not been to Bokrijk before. That was a great opportunity to load everyone in the car and drive to the middle of the beautiful province of Limburg, here in Belgium.

Understanding basic governance for internal auditors

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 11:00:00 +0000

An internal auditor has an essential role to play in the governance of an organisation. Which is why it remains difficult to grasp for me why so few internal auditors have a basic understanding of governance principles.

We have developed a high level introduction to governance for internal auditors, in Dutch, which provides a basic understanding of the main concepts. You can find the slides here.

Sharing courses - Internal audit reporting

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

The quality of internal audit reporting is often significantly below par. The number of times I’ve been confronted with reports that were too long, too convoluted, trying to prove to the reader the auditor had done a lot of work … are impossible to count. While the internal auditor ideally writes something that is digestible for an audit comité member and comprehensive for the auditee and his or her management.

Andrew Millar on serial dissenters in a company

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 09:28:49 +0000

A quick note on a great article I read this morning. I’m late to this show - it was in my reading queue I’m procrastinating on - but when I read it, it rang a bell. Actually, it rang pretty much a whole bell-tower with a carillon in it.

The relevance of a thesis for a master class in post-graduate education

Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

It’s quite interesting to see that more and more master classes in post graduate education chose not to “impose” a thesis subject on their students. We’ve moved away from it in the context of the Master class Internal Audit at the Antwerp Management School as well. But in retrospect, I’m absolutely convinced we shouldn’t have. But my reasons are probably not the more obvious ones.

Directive versus coercive policies

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

A policy and its translation into legislation aims to establish a framework which provides a way for a government to influence - and often to direct - the behaviour of its people. This is a core function of government. If you want to read more about that, read "Seeing like a State" by James C. Scott.

Manage how you feel (Twitter Masterclass)

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

There are many ways to make yourself feel miserable. Watching the news or following the wrong people on Twitter may do the trick, pushing you into a spiral of negative feelings. But you are defined by the people you surround yourself with. That includes the people you surround yourself with via your social media accounts. So, if you surround yourself with negativity on the internet, that’s what you will become … negative. However, the internet, and Twitter, are just tools. You can use them differently.

The burden of your political convictions

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.” - The Usual Suspects

Administrative burden reduction is an initiative taken by quite a few governments, many of them in the EU, including the EU itself, which aims to reduce the costs of compliance with laws and regulations for citizens and businesses. I know a bit about the subject matter because as an external consultant I was responsible for the Belgian federal measurement bureau, part of the Agence pour la Simplification Administrative (ASA) for a couple of years.

Wise words from wise authors

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

A very short post on this dreary Sunday in Belgium, with too much grey in the sky and way too much wind …

Neil Gaiman at his South-by-Southwest keynote: “finish your projects. You will learn more from finishing something than from beginning it. After it's done you can fix it, but you can't fix something you've abandoned.”

Our attention span

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Short one today, working on a longer article on coercive versus directive policies, but this tweet is something to consider. A teacher had her class log all the social media and other notifications their devices sent them during one single period. Think about what we are exposing ourselves to.

About active listening

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

It’s often interesting and enlightening to observe your own behaviour and to fully understand why you are behaving like you are. I’ve recently been observing how I listen, and it’s been eye-opening, both in the observation as in the next steps.

Imposter syndrome

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

You may have heard about imposter syndrome ... the feeling you are going to be found out as the fraud you believe yourself to be any minute now, losing whatever you have built in the process, including your credibility ...

The limitations of paper free my thinking

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000

One of the most persistent aberrations I have in my thinking about my tools is that I keep looking for that electronic equivalent of a bullet journal. To date, I have not been able to find that solution. Let’s examine what I have been looking for …

Things you cannot do with a Kindle

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 14:54:31 +0000

In my opinion, books should never be worshipped. A good book, to be fully appreciated, needs to be thoroughly desecrated, used, worked on, annotated ... The ideas in it need to be examined from all sides, disagreed with, put out in sun and rain, looked at again with fresh eyes ...

How to write good tasks

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 13:00:00 +0000

My daily task list review often leaves me less than motivated to « do » my tasks. Not because I lack motivation, but mainly because I have not been diligent enough in correctly writing my tasks ... I suffer from lack of task clarity. Luckily, there’s a remedy for that, and even a way to supercharge your task definition. But let’s examine a couple of common errors when writing tasks first, to understand what is underlying the problem.

“iPad Only or iPad First” for work, one year in

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 08:17:38 +0000

Context

During the summer of last year I decided to go all-in on iPad only for work. I had been working with my trusted iPad Mini with an external keyboard for a while, but the screen real estate was just too small. After purchasing an iPad Pro 10.5 with Apple Smart Keyboard and the Apple Pencil I had no reason not to jump off the deep end, so I did.

Manager read-me's

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 19:53:01 +0000

Okay, so it's really awesome (it's been years since I used that word) to be in a list such as this, but there is so much value in these read-me's, you would not believe it. Dig in, you can find them here.

More manuals

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 17:00:00 +0000

Just a quick note to link to this excellent piece written by Richard McLean, director at ElsevierConnect Technology, who wrote the meta-article on articles written about how one works.

It’s really worth reading the entire article, but if I had to select one paragraph, it is this one:

Continuous learning is the future of work - Just look at Singapore

Mon, 12 Mar 2018 17:00:00 +0000

For those among you interested in the relevance of continuous learning, a position also put forward by a number of liberal politicians in Belgium, such as Alexander De Croo, you may want to read the following TED article by Barbara Oakley on the solutions Singapore has put forward and the impact they have had on the country.

Just a suggestion for weekend reading

Sat, 10 Mar 2018 10:08:07 +0000

I am not an artist. Far from it. But I can truly appreciate art of any kind when I encounter it.

Now, the art I most appreciate is often written. And the books I read are usually accidental discoveries. I hear about them either through some of the blogs I read, or because I heard someone talk about it on a podcast, or simply because I bump into them by accident, when browsing through amazon.com or even, although less and less these days, ambling through a real life bookshop. So, my discovery process is pretty much like taking a city trip to a new city, walking around without a city map and by chance encountering a gallery.

Don’t let strangers walk unannounced through your email front door

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 15:00:32 +0000

Via Shawn Blanc, whose excellent web-efforts such as The Sweet Setup are worth a look, and then some solid hours of browsing, this link to Jocelyn K. Glei’s interesting article on how to combat the reactiveness you introduce in your work yourself because of the way you manage your email inbox. Jocelyn states:

Start with Why

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 17:00:00 +0000

Simon Sinek wrote a wonderful book, called “Start with Why”, which you can read more about here. It has been a catalyst in a process of a couple of months where I had been working on defining a set of personal fundamentals. In case you are interested, you can read them here. Enjoy!

About me

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 08:33:38 +0000

In case you have not yet read this excellent book by Simon Sinek, you should. It made me think very deeply about my motivations and resulted in this page. The content will likely evolve over the coming years, ideally becoming more focused, but the essence should stay the same. Enjoy if you want to find out what drives me to do what I do.

Your path

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 19:29:07 +0000

“If your path through life is not winding, it’s likely not very interesting.”

I have no idea where I picked this one up, but the older I get, the more and more I realise how very true this statement is.

How I used to detest expense reporting and don’t any longer

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 20:04:59 +0000

I’ve spent a significant part of my life working as an auditor for Big 4 companies, first at Andersen, then at Deloitte, and finally, after a stint at IMS Health, I ended my Big 4 internal auditing career at KPMG. One of the realities of Big 4 work is expense reporting.

Grooming your to do’s

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:00:00 +0000

If you think about it, it likely sounds obvious, that need to consider your to do's before you actually start working on them … but do you really practice this most obvious of activities before you charge ahead to deal with that immense list of indefined stuff you need to deal with? Or do you consider such preparatory activities a waste of time, yet another task which you can easily eliminate? Do you actually groom your to do’s before you engage in doing them? And what is grooming?

What is a feasible commitment for a team?

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 17:00:00 +0000

During my time working as an internal auditor in development aid, one of the key challenges of the organisation I was working for was the management of a lot of projects ... about 200 concurrent ones. And one of the key discussions about those projects, which were quite often - remember, development aid - implemented in very instable, unpredictable environments, was what a feasible, manageable commitment of the team could reasonably be.

How the hospitality model saves the goose as well as its golden eggs

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 08:30:34 +0000

Contrary to some traditional pricing models where the party bringing in the traffic invoices initial traffic at a high price, decreasing as the volume mounts, hospitality pricing models have found an equilibrium in that they succeed in balancing the pressure to sell by the hotel chain - bringing in the traffic - with the pressure to maintain the infrastructure over the longer time by the owner of the infrastructure, by using a model which increases the price as traffic increases. In this, infrastructure is of course the goose, and the results are the golden eggs. As I believe this pricing model to be relevant for other industries as well, it it worth giving the broad strokes of this balance.

How innovation could succeed more often ... and why it does not

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 17:00:00 +0000

I have the privilege to be exposed to a lot of creative, innovative people. Some of them, more specifically some of the “slashes” I wrote about before on this blog, are in the process of launching their own start-ups and creating innovative solutions. And in this process, they are spending a lot of time creating presentation decks and pitching to business angels or venture capitalists, in order to get money to burn during their development. They need resources, and they work hard to get them.

Analog versus Digital

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 17:00:00 +0000

This Cramped article consists of nothing more than a quote by Walter Isaacson, the author of Steve Jobs’ autobiography. But in its succinctness, it send a very clear and strong message.

And the message makes you wonder ... I know I am in a perennial search to transfer my analog workflows - I write a lot - to a digital environment. I think I’ve experimented with pretty much all capture technologies I could in order to translate my analog process to a digital one, going from scanning (flatbed, desk scanners, to iPhone scanning apps) over handwriting recognition (Nebo, Notes Plus ...) and storing this in Dropbox, iCloud, DEVONThink ...

Technology’s lie

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 11:00:54 +0000

Apple just launched it’s iPhone X. A big bet on the future. At Apple, they are not strangers to big bets. When the first iPhone came out in 2007, Microsoft’s Steve Balmer reported laughed and said it would remain a niche product, because it had was no keyboard. At that time we were all used to the dominance of Blackberry and its small keyboard. And look at where we’re at now.

How governments can (and why they should) ensure right use of taxes

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 16:42:02 +0000

I don’t like paying taxes

I have a confession to make: I don’t really like paying taxes. And I’m certain I’m not the only one. Each month, when my pay check arrives, I notice the difference between my gross and net salary. Living in Belgium, known for its elevated taxes, should have made me aware of and used to this. It did, but it also made me very aware of the use that is being made of the money I don’t get to spend.

“Can” versus “Should”

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 06:00:00 +0000

I’m sure you’ve heard this question before, in both personal and professional contexts: “Can you do this?” And the answer, most of the time, is obvious. It is a question as to capability (“Do you have the skills to do this?”) and capacity (“Do you have the time and/or the willingness to do this?”)

Presentable - “Designing the Space you work in”

Sat, 28 Oct 2017 10:33:42 +0000

A quick note on an excellent podcast show I recently discovered: Presentable. Episode 32 covered a conversation with Sarah B. Nelson, Program Architect at IBM, about the spaces we work in and how they influence creativity.

If you are interested in this kind of thing, this was an interesting almost 50 minutes. I’m looking forward to listening to more of this type of conversations.

What is Quality of Life really all about?

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:00:00 +0000

It’s a hot topic, quality of life. One of my last posts was about the recent Quality of Life conference Sodexo held in London. You can read that blog post here.

But what is Quality of Life? I’m again referring to the website of my current employer, Sodexo:

On Rework

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 20:01:45 +0000

I’m quite impressed by the contents of the reboot of the Rework podcast. The last two podcasts focused heavily on business, ethics and the obligations of businesses to take a stand, even if it is an uncomfortable one.

By the way, you just may want to listen to the entire back-catalogue of this podcast, because it is so good. Key ideas align with some of the thinking going on around Quality of Life, which I need to share my thoughts on as well. Episode 2, for example, is aptly titled “Workaholics aren’t heroes”, an insight as big as any elephant in any room but which fails to breach the blood-brain barrier for many people.

Slash and the Quality of Life challenge

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 19:55:42 +0000

This week, Sodexo organised its Quality of Life conference. The conference addresses one of the key challenges for future HR functions. How do you address the new type of knowledge worker as to their Quality of Life needs.

Meeting a new slash

I had a wonderful conversation with a new slash this morning. A “slash”, or more appropriately a “/“ is a professional who has multiple income streams and is therefore not, no longer or has never been dependent on one employer. Quite often they are self-employed but are not just working on one project, but on multiple things that interest them, in several areas. This slash was a teacher/advisor/independent board member. And he is not the only one ...

Going iPad only

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:00:00 +0000

My specific “computer” needs make my case an excellent case for iPad only use. Which is exactly how I’ve been working on my ageing iPad Mini for the past couple of weeks. It works but could need a power boost, which is why I’m looking at the iPad Pro 10.5.

China’s cashless society

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 08:15:00 +0000

In one of the most interesting episodes of the Masters of Scale podcast by Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn’s co-founder - the question asked and answered is “Where will the next Silicon Valley be?” Hoffman goes on to answer that Silicon Valley can occur wherever the conditions are right (nice political answer there) but goes on to say that currently the conditions are already there in China.

What matters about taxes

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 18:00:00 +0000

As Belgians, we “enjoy” a significant level of taxation. And while I, as anyone, would like to pay as little taxes as possible, it is not the level of taxation which vexes me, but the often ineffective and inefficient way in which taxes are being used. In other words, I would mind paying taxes a lot less if I was certain they were being used well and if I would be able to influence, in part, their utilisation. Sadly, no political party currently gives me this option.

Excellent Rands’ article on rumors in organisations

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 18:00:00 +0000

If you want to read one good article today, read this one … Rands in Repose’s in-depth look at rumors in organisations, “How to build a rumour.”

Why? Well, if you write this:

Scary but true rule: As a leader, at any given point during your tenure, 30% of the team is unhappy with your performance. It’s not personal; it’s simply that you are the leader in this situation. Even with a sound strategy, perfect judgment, and flawless execution of all your projects, a significant minority is somewhere between unhappy to full of rage regarding your performance.

you know very well what you are talking about.

Trust, but verify

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 18:00:00 +0000

Ronald Reagan and the Belgian law dealing with subsidy conditions

Ronald Reagan used this old Russian proverb (“Doveryai, no proveryai”) when referring to his relationship with the Russians in the context of the nuclear disarmament in the 1980’s. In essence, the proverb refers to the understanding that any agreement needs to be accompanied by some type of verification to ensure compliance. It’s okay to trust, but one should not be too naive about it.

Clay Shirky on newspapers or really any innovative industry

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 18:00:00 +0000

Vacation time is reading time. And I’ve built up quite a queue of Instapaper articles I needed to get through. As I was moving my archive to DevonThink, in order to be able to consult it quicker, I came across this quite old article by Clay Shirky. Titled “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”, Shirky explains some of the reasons behind the demise of most newspapers and the industry as a whole as well as why they did not see it coming.

About taking notes with pen on paper

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 18:00:00 +0000

I’m probably one of the more technologically inclined people within my environment. I use an iPhone, work quite a lot with an iPad as one of my main tools, communicate on WhatsApp, use markdown as a language to write documents which I export to Microsoft Word for those who have yet to master the art of working with a real text editor.

Drinking the organisational culture cool-aid

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 12:00:00 +0000

Context

I’ve been around the block a few times in terms of organisational culture. I have three big 6 CPA firms on my resumé, I’ve worked for a US stock quoted company, I’ve worked for a fully government owned development actor, I’ve worked as an advisor to a vice-prime minister. And now I’m a ComEx member of the Belgian subsidiary of a French stock quoted company. So yes, I’ve been around.

Why the world is not falling apart

Sun, 23 Jul 2017 14:55:36 +0000

I believe I’ve linked to this article on Slate before, but even so, it’s more than worth reading. With everything going on around us, there is this tendency to think we are all the victims of circumstance and that the world is become a worse place. It isn’t.

Redirecting the blog

Sat, 22 Jul 2017 20:43:01 +0000

Exploring the Black Box has been dormant for quite a while, with the exception of some articles on the work of Kourosh Dini. There are a number of simple reasons that led to that sorry state and will lead to this blog changing somewhat in terms of content in the near future.

Zen & the Art of Work - review part 7 - "addressing thoughts"

Fri, 25 Nov 2016 14:00:00 +0000

This is the seventh part of my review of Kourosh Dini's video product which consists of 16 "sessions", video chapters, on how to get to beter work. You can find more about it here. It guides the users through the first steps in the build and the acquisition of a new or improved toolset which should help you to produce better work.

Zen & the Art of Work - review part 6 - "Setting thoughts aside"

Wed, 23 Nov 2016 15:30:00 +0000

This is the sixth part of a sixteen part review of Kourosh Dini's excellent "Zen & the Art of Work", which you can find out more about right here. The idea of the review is to go through each of the modules, the video chapters, and review what they are about and how they have impacted me.

Zen & the Art of Work - review part 5 - “Preparing time”

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 19:00:00 +0000

After a number of blog posts on the US elections, which I found too interesting not to observe and write about, I'm back to "touching the keyboard", as Kourosh himself referred to it. I'm back to writing my thoughts about his excellent course "Zen and the Art of Work". This is the fifth part of the review, of the fifth video chapter, titled "preparing time." But first I want to make a general observation of what Kourosh, at least in my mind, intends to teach.

Zen & the Art of Work - review part 4

Tue, 08 Nov 2016 19:00:00 +0000

Quick interlude - writing a review of a course as a project in that course

This ultimately sixteen (!) part review is now an official project which I’ll use as the basis for applying the principles of Zen & the Art of Work. This I realize, of course, on the day I’m reviewing the video chapter on the establishment of a daily practice to install habit. Quite recursive.

Zen & the Art of Work - review part 3

Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:30:00 +0000

This is the third part of an in-depth review of Kourosh Dini’s “Zen & the Art of Work”, which you can find out more about here.

Introduction

This video chapter, the third one of Kourosh Dini's epic "Zen & the Art of Work" is aptly titled "Taking a step". After having settled on what project to be with in the previous step, he now takes us through how to make progress on that specific chosen activity.

Zen & the Art of Work - Review part 2

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 09:35:08 +0000

This is part 2 of a multi part review of Kourosh Dini's new video product

What is this chapter all about?

This second video chapter, the first real chapter after the introduction, goes deep on how to make considered choices about what you will be doing next. In short, this chapter explain how to best chose what you will be doing. It helps you to focus on what matters most.

Zen & the Art of Work - Review part 1

Fri, 07 Oct 2016 10:21:42 +0000

The review

This is the first article in what will be an extensive review of Kourosh Dini's "Zen & the Art of Work". The idea is to go through the impressive product that Kourosh created and explain how it is relevant to me. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Ulysses for iOS and macOS - a solution for a really bad itch

Thu, 06 Oct 2016 15:30:00 +0000

TL;DR - the combination of WordPress and Ulysses on iOS and macOS gives me a lot less excuses not to publish blog posts, as was the case with my beautiful SquareSpace account. Let's see where this takes me.

Moving blogs

As announced a couple of days ago, I moved blogging platforms, from an excellent SquareSpace to a yet to be discovered WordPress. Now, I understand WordPress powers at least 25% of the internet, so I dare to hope that the blog won't implode on me.

Failing to plan = planning to fail

Wed, 05 Oct 2016 15:30:00 +0000

TL;DR Organisations have no brains. And even humans, with brains, can barely imagine unexpected risks. Making sure we are adequately prepared for potential risks requires a thorough exercise of risk assessment. Each project or program requires such an effort. However, we often neglect that.

Zen & The Art of Work

Tue, 04 Oct 2016 08:39:31 +0000

One of the key takeaways of Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” is that we often look for things everywhere but where they have always been … with us. I had a quite similar experience recently. Here's that story ...

Hearing from Kourosh …

Kourosh Dini contacted me a couple of weeks ago. Getting an email from Kourosh feels a bit like having the ice cream man driving by … you just know that whatever he is proposing, it’s going to be really enjoyable. And, other than the ice cream man, you will learn a lot.

Thinking your thoughts through

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 08:14:48 +0000

TL;DR - We often don't think thoughts entirely through, which leads to erroneous conclusions. We are too often intellectually lazy, and accept the first possible explanation. Awareness and simple techniques can aid us in understanding and countering these errors.

When we stop wondering

Does any of the following sound familiar?

Moving from Squarespace to Wordpress

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 16:25:44 +0000

TL;DR - I moved from Squarespace to Wordpress because it makes blogging easier.

You may have noticed that the blog looks fundamentally different from, well, yesterday, and that the url it now defaults to is www.exploringtheblackbox.org rather than the usual .net account.

About Audit Academy

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 14:56:14 +0000

What is Audit Academy?

Audit Academy is an organisation of a current and former Chief Audit Executives who want to get more bang for their educational buck.

Confronted with budgets under pressure, we wanted to make sure our educational budgets were optimal value for money. As management schools often re-invest in research, we wanted a say in what would be done with the significant tuition investments we paid every year.

About CasMo

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 14:56:14 +0000

CasMo is about curiosity

At CasMo, we are curious, so very curious about you and about your organisation. We cannot count the days woke woke up and were excited about meeting a new client or discovering yet another aspect of an existing one.

Audit Academy

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 14:56:14 +0000

Teaching everything an auditor ever needs to learn

When was the last time you heard something new about internal audit? When were you last confronted with breakthrough thinking in our field? We know … it has been a long time.

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Thu, 29 Sep 2016 14:56:14 +0000

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