ABOUT ME
My name is Klaas Ariaans.
How do you make psychological safety work and achieve maximum results? How do you overcome a hierarchical culture that is 200 years old? How do you give mandate to everyone and still remain in control?
I have been working in the financial world for 30+ years and decided to do things completely differently in 2017. No longer an organization based on hierarchy, distance and control, but on entrepreneurship, ownership, trust and mandate for everyone. A major radical transformation within a corporate environment was the result. Within my division of 3,500 people, I reduced the number of managers by 95%, in 1 day!
Together with all employees, we have demonstrated for 6 years that you can work in a large corporate according to the principles of self-organization. The success is visible in various areas: my unit shows an impressive performance in the areas of customer focus, employee satisfaction, but also in NPS, commerce and costs.
Listen to Tom Jessen's C-level podcast (Spotify) in which Tom and I reflect in detail on the major changes that have taken place or the Denkproducties podcast in which I look back on 6 years of self-organization together with Hans Janssen and Christ Coolen.
Read the book “Momentum” , which I wrote together with Nathalie Hazenberg or read the interview “We went from 278 to 25 managers in 1 day” with Peter Runhaar from HR Praktijk magazine .
Cultural change is a key element for any transformation – if you don't have the right mindset in place, the transformation will almost certainly fail. ABN Amro represents one of the most radical and impressive examples of cultural transformation I have seen. These changes, including a major move to self-organizing teams, underpinned a large-scale digital transformation that set them up well for the challenges to come, including coping with the Covid-19 pandemic.'
– Professor Michael Wade (IMD)
