Dr Sari van Poelje on Chaos to Creation Confessions: Conceptualization: There are many roads to Rome, what model or concept could I create?

Debs Jenkins (00:01):
Introduce you. Okay. Today we’re speaking to Dr Sari van Poelje, who is one of the world’s leading experts on creating agile and innovative leadership teams. Sari is a business consultant, executive coach and trainer, and she helps businesses innovate themselves faster than they can innovate their projects. Sari, works around the globe with multiple companies. Sari, over to you. Tell us about what you’re working on at the moment.
Dr Sari van Poelje (00:25):
Wow. After an introduction like that. So I’m I’m working on a couple of books actually at the same time. And I’ve launched a new training program called Entrepreneurship in Turbulent Times to help my colleagues set up their business or reset up their business after Corona. The books I’m working on, one of them I’m actually working with you is called Agile Business Innovation Design. And the other book it’s actually being published at the end of the year, it’s called Transactional Analysis and Organizational Development: Learning on the edge. So that’s going to come out to Routledge is going to publish it probably at the end of the year.
Debs Jenkins (01:16):
Fascinating. I want to go back already straightway on to go back. So you say you’re working on a couple of books at the same time and the training program. How do you manage multiple creative projects at the same time? How do you, how do you do that?
Dr Sari van Poelje (01:36):
Well it’s a combination of creativity and structure, I guess for me I’m pretty disciplined. I’ve always been pretty disciplined. So I started my business at 22. I’ve always worked as a trainer and a coach and a consultant. So I’ve been doing that for 35 years in different countries. And my discipline has always been to really structure things and on the creative side to really keep on developing. So doing multiple projects at the same time, his daily life or consultants, we usually have a couple of four or five projects on the go writing. Two books at a time was not my plan. So that is a new one on me. Yeah, the reason I did it was because I was stuck in one book and, and I decided to start a new book to get my juices flowing again. And then I finished that book before I finished the other book. So that’s, that was not in the plan actually.
Debs Jenkins (02:43):
Yeah, come, I got back on this, this idea of structure and discipline. So I think by the creative process like that, there’s chaos, there’s stuff going on in your head there’s ideas, there’s inputs, then you set some constraints and then that’s what helps you make a creation. So for me, but what you’re talking about that with structure and discipline is what I consider constraints. So when you say structured, you, how detailed do you go? Is it very detailed structure or is it big picture structure, what detail?
Dr Sari van Poelje (03:14):
I kind of go in and out. So I, I dive too. What I usually do is it let’s take a book as an example, or even starting a training program. So first off I diverged. So there’s something that catches my eye or in the world. There’s a trend going on. I’m usually not so interested in trends, but I’m interested in what are people doing with that? Usually more usually I get triggered by questions from my clients. So a client comes, I, I coach a lot of executives and executive teams. They come along, they ask me a question. I go, I don’t really know how to answer that. You know, I D or there must be a different way to answer that than just my standard answer. And then I go do research. So it starts with the question. My creative process always starts with a question or a dilemma in the executive coaching age could be anything.
Dr Sari van Poelje (04:19):
I remember I had all these executives come and they’d come with big problems. Like I have to change my organization. I don’t know how to do it. Or, and every fourth session, they’d start talking about their marriage and I’m going good. And so I thought, Oh God, I have to help them deal with this because if I can help them deal with the relationship at home, I can help them deal with the relationship at work, you know, kind of back holistic thinking. And so then I went to train with John Gottman to, to become a relational therapist. You know, it, it always starts with question or with a team. I do a lot of team coaching, so they start to, they ask me for things like okay, I have to build a, I have to scale up, well, I know a lot about it’s giving up, but now I had a team that said we have to keep the innovation going and scale down at the same time, because we’re actually being sold. And that I think, okay, so that’s, that’s an interesting question. How do you do that?
Debs Jenkins (05:31):
So that to me is like, you’re observing the signals.
Dr Sari van Poelje (05:35):
Yes, yes. It always goes for me, observation. Yeah. It always goes observation, interpretation, conceptualization, and then I started process. So so, so observation is, is I see what people do. And then there’s a question that there’s no creative process without a question you want to answer. I talked about the external question to, it could also be an internal question. Like I came back to Holland two years ago after I’m an expat kid. I moved 38 times. So I know a lot about mobility and change. What I had to learn later was stability and root rooting yourself. And so my question was, how do you do that in an accelerated way? So, you know, that’s an internal question. It starts with question after the question, it becomes, I read, I usually read, or I look on YouTube or for Ted talks is, is really important to me in that. Or I ask my colleagues, what do you do with this?
Dr Sari van Poelje (06:52):
I go to my own supervisor, you know, to bring it in. And then I go, ah, so, so this is what I see. This is the question. This could be the pattern. So what I look for is patterns. So that’s the interpretation part. So what pattern am I looking at? If I go back to that, that what comes after that, that, you know, and then I think, and then I study. So during my career, every two years, I’ve gone to a different training program just to deepen and to broaden my knowledge. And it’s not only on my field, I I’m really broadly interested. Because I think innovation is, and the creative process is usually between fields or on the edge of knowledge. That’s where you innovate. So the interpretation. So the second stage after the first stage was just question and observation. The second stage is interpretation. So what is the pattern that I’m seeing?
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Mmm, okay.
Dr Sari van Poelje (08:00):
The third stage for me is conceptualization, and then I’m going, okay. So there’s different ways, you know, many different roads to Rome, almost how, what, what kind of model could I create? What do I think? Because there’s usually some, sometimes no one has written about it, which is great because that means I be first that goes really well with my innovative status kind of sometimes people I’ve written about and I go, no, actually I think differently. And then I create a model or a new concept or a new way of looking at it. And after that comes the productification, if you want to say it kind of way part if yeah, and now I think about it, that’s really the process I go through. It starts with a question. I do some research I ask around, I think, what pattern, and then from the pattern I go to what concept or model could I build to answer this question? And then if all is, well, I go to a stage where I productize, so where I write or where I created a training program or a video or whatever it is. Yeah.
Debs Jenkins (09:29):
And then, so my final question to you on this process is how do you feed back into the process? Because once it goes out into the world as a product, or as a creation, you’re going to get feedback from people. Where does your feedback process come in as it comes in at every step? Or does it come in at the end and then lead back in?
Dr Sari van Poelje (09:48):
No, no, it’s, this is, this is the interesting thing, you know, when you’re writing some that, well, you do know when you’re writing something you kind of divergent that you converge that the difficult thing for me, because my specialization is innovation. I tend to diverged and in the conflict and then you open up, but at least I open as a person as well. But in that divergent stage, what I’ve noticed is I really need time to myself. I can’t take any feedback then I need to shut myself away. And then what I found really interesting also in our process is that I noticed that every book, every creation has its own voice and to keep that voice going it’s almost like a dialogue with the reader already in my head or a conversation with the trainee that’s already happening. What kind of questions would they ask?
Dr Sari van Poelje (10:54):
You know, how can I answer what they’re going through? Because I know it because usually I’m going through it too. So what I’ve learned over time, and maybe not enough is that in this divergent time, I really need to block my agenda and say no to everything else, because there is no space for any other voice, except for the voice of my creation at that moment. Being an entrepreneur makes that really difficult because as an entrepreneur, you’re always thinking not only about your next paycheck, but usually about the next year’s paycheck. So you’re always doing acquisition and execution at the same time. And to take time off is a costly business. Yeah, that’s what I’ve learned.
Debs Jenkins (11:49):
I think as well to not take time off perhaps is a higher
Dr Sari van Poelje (11:53):
Cost. Well, you say that and you know that because I’ve been working on this,
Debs Jenkins (12:04):
So this is the really strange thing.
Dr Sari van Poelje (12:06):
So now for instance, I’m writing an article on supervision. Supervision is one of the parts of my job. I love most. I do a lot of it. I supervise a lot of coaches and consultants to become better professionals. And so I’m writing an article. I thought now it’s time. I’m going to write down what I want and what I think, what I want and what I think for supervision. I can write an article 20 pages in a weekend. No problem. I diver search. I do the research. I make a PowerPoint to summarize what I know on the basis of the PowerPoints. It’s structured into sections because of the slides I write. I just write boom in one go first day, I write the whole article. Second day, I revise it. It’s done 20 pages. The book, the book I write, It’s 80 pages, four weekends. I could tell that, but with
Dr Sari van Poelje (13:13):
An article I can close myself off because I know it’s a short period and I know there’s a deadline for the magazine. There’s set that thing for the book. It’s a different process because the deadline is fictional. It’s not there. It’s when I’m finished. And also the period of enclosure is so much longer that I can’t afford to do it. Working in blocks is also a very expensive way to write a book because each time it takes me about a day and a half to get back into that voice again. And by that time I have half a day to write in a weekend. So that’s the dilemma. I find it much, much, much easier to write short pieces for instance, than long pieces, simply because of this. And then you’d think why don’t you write each chapter as an article, but then you miss the consistency of the voice. So I haven’t really found a way around that writing books and making a living at the same time. You know, you, you have to see my agenda. I’m usually planned one and a half years ahead. I know, I know
Debs Jenkins (14:34):
To catch ourselves together. So, okay. You’ve brought up some really fascinating things and dive into my constraints section, which is constraints, other constraints, conceptualization constraint. I think you have constraints that are put upon you and also constraints that you put upon yourself. So some of the constraints that you put upon you, what might be that, for example, the magazine has a deadline. That’s a constraint that you can’t break and that helps you to compartmentalize the job. But some of the constraints we put upon ourselves are things like I’m not good enough, or I can’t do this, or I’ll do it later after I’ve done other things. And so how do you marry and work through the constraints that are put upon you and the constraints that you put on yourself to, to actually push yourself through the process to actually create it?
Dr Sari van Poelje (15:39):
Because the external constraints I think the trick is not to fight them. If they’re really non-negotiable, they’re nonnegotiable. So, you know, fights what you can influence and the rest you have to accept. But if you don’t accept it, don’t write the book. It’s as simple as that. No, for root, for instance, the book on TA and organizational development, Routledge is very constraining and your terms about how to say things, what they even want to determine titles and cover is. And I go, okay, what the hell? You know, they have a platform they’re gonna publish it and it’s gonna work. It’s gonna fly. So I don’t fight external constraints that are nonnegotiable. I do negotiate, but I don’t fight them once that’s done the internal concerns. That’s interesting. You see, because I don’t have a lot of that. I’m not able to do that, or I’m not good enough. I think as an entrepreneur, you have to be somewhat
Dr Sari van Poelje (16:50):
Somewhat narcissistic in the sense that you think that anything is possible. If you, if you don’t think that you can do it, it’s probably, you’re not going to be a very sustainable entrepreneur. You have to have some belief that you’re even the only one who can do it. So being an entrepreneur for 35 years and working a lot, you know, in therapeutic and supervision settings, those internal constraints, like I’m not good enough. I don’t really have them anymore. I do think I’m good enough. My constraint is time. So the balance between time and money, but more specifically. So if I don’t spend time, I don’t make money. If I don’t spend time, I don’t write my book, which could get me more money, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s the dialogue I have.
Dr Sari van Poelje (17:46):
Do I have no, that’s it. I don’t have any other internal constraint. I think writing a book is really, really important. It’s, it’s, it’s not that either, because I think, you know, you can diverging your research and even making PowerPoint, even train people in it because that’s, I’m already giving training programs. All of the subject of my book, which is not a smart thing to do, don’t do what I do because you give away your assets.
Dr Sari van Poelje (18:21):
But somehow that it’s, it’s gonna, you know, I, if I calculate it, it’s gonna take me if I sit down for two weeks, I’d probably finish it. Yeah. Yeah.
Debs Jenkins (18:34):
I completely understand that. And it’s making or finding, however you want to describe it that time.
Debs Jenkins (18:41):
And like, I completely understand the the voice that has to follow through from chapter to chapter, because otherwise it looks like 17 disconnected articles and that’s not, that’s not that’s not good for the reader. You have to, you have to honor the reader’s needs, a consistent voice and a consistent, so I completely agree with you. Okay. So I love the fact that you don’t have that internal voice. Did you ever have it, was he ever there?
Dr Sari van Poelje (19:18):
Well, I was kind of a precocious kid. I think. I mean, even when I was young, I was quite precocious. I was giving horse riding lessons when I was six. Yeah. I was, I was, I went through my family photos now and I saw this little, little tiny girl on this huge white horse in Spain. And I thought, Oh, it’s me. But of course I have my insecurities, but they’re not about being able to do things it’s more about, But belonging, I guess, as an expat kid, I have more cause you know, like doubts about belonging, where do I belong? What, and I’m what I’m wondering as we speak, you know, if that has anything to do with, with creating that voice for the book or that I have many kind of different channels in my head. I don’t think so. I, you know, I started my business when I was 22 and you can’t do that unless, You know, unless you think you can, I never doubted that. And then in actual fact, what really, really helped me is the fact that I didn’t know it was impossible. If you look artists, you know, the creative process, I think it really helps to, to not know that it’s not possible because then there are no constraints and anything is possible. It’s kind of like that, I guess,
Debs Jenkins (21:02):
Love that. Okay. Tell me, okay, then let’s change subject to a bit. What are you most proud of that you’ve done in your life or proud of recently?
Dr Sari van Poelje (21:14):
Is this a personal question or a professional? I’ll save the personal for last but the professional? I think I’m,
Dr Sari van Poelje (21:26):
I actually don’t really look back. I look more in the here and now forward. When I tell people my story of entrepreneurship, I am really proud. I mean, it is very unusual for a young girl of 2022 to start in the international business to become successful so young in coaching and consultancy to start a school in Italy, in Spain, in Hungary and Serbia in Russia, in the Ukraine, in France in Holland in, you know, to teach coach that and consultants for sustainably for such a long time to keep on innovating myself so I can teach my clients. And because I love to learn to be truthful. I also made a lot of money doing that and I’m I, but that’s almost secondary to, I think it’s exceptional that I’ve been able to do what I love all my life. You know, that’s what I’m really proud of and that I’ve been able to help clients improve the quality of their work and their life along the way. That’s actually what I’m most proud of. You know, when I get emails from people, remember it 10 years ago. And I want to tell you that and I love that it’s, it’s such a heartwarming experience. That’s yes. So that’s what I’m proud of.
Debs Jenkins (23:09):
I’m going to ask you a completely different question now, and it’s my favorite, my favorite, I love that. You’re proud of all of that and your business and business is, are inspirational to me. But I want to know, I want to know when was the last time you did something for the first time,
Dr Sari van Poelje (23:27):
Look at your cheeky smile. [inaudible] I can tell. Okay. What I did for the first time recently is I fell in love when I was 56. So yeah, so I’m completely smitten and it’s funny, I’ve, I’ve had some relationships in my life, all kinds of relationships. And I dunno, I, at some point I think after my last separation, I thought, Hey, you know, I’m older, I’ve been through it. I’ve been there, done that gut, the t-shirt kind of thing. And if this is my life, I’m going to make it as fun as possible as a single person. And I was committed to that. You know, I, I, I, I really found inner peace. I moved back to Holland. I created my home. I bought a home only for me instead of usually buying a home for a whole Italian family. You know I created my own neighborhood, my own, I, I, three years ago, I said, I want to live love and work in the same place.
Dr Sari van Poelje (24:49):
And so I did the living bit and then I started the working bit, but I had missed the loving bit. I kind of went, but, but it’s okay. You know, I’ve, I have, I have had a lot of love in my life. I’ve been very, very lucky. And then in January of this year, just before Corona, I met someone who I actually known of for 20 years and the, it was love at first sight. We met each other, we fell in love and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s February of this year. So it’s, it’s a fantastic thing. And we were very lucky in a way, and I, I’m not being disrespectful of people who suffered during Corona, but we were so lucky to have to take decisions really quickly and to pull together during Krone time. Because we’d have been in social isolation anyway, I think, but now we were together and both of us were at home and, you know, this was a really important time to build our relationship. And I feel blessed. I actually feel very, very blessed.
Debs Jenkins (26:02):
Yeah, I can imagine. And now I can think of your next book, which is love in a pandemic. I think you should start writing that one.
Dr Sari van Poelje (26:12):
Yeah. I was actually thinking of writing a book called innovation after the curve, what, seeing the signals noticing what’s happening and, and understanding the questions everybody’s got. Absolutely. Yeah, but I don’t know. I it’s either that or it’s a book about team coach. I really want to write a book about team coaching because that’s like the, in my work at home. And how, how do you, how do you manage teams? You know, teams are more than the sum of individuals. They’re a unit. So how do you do that? I, I teach it and now I went to write the book or it could be something really personal. I think the journey I’ve been on the people I speak to who I tell, you know, what’s, what’s the last thing you did is falling in love with 56. You know, most people think, Oh, geez, I want that too. How do you do that? So it might be something really personal, but anyway I guess one of the tricks to being creative is to have a plan, a, B and C, so always have many things on the go. So that’s what I do.
Debs Jenkins (27:33):
One final question before we sort of start rounding up because you brought up a really fantastic point, which is how do you evaluate where to spend your time? So if you’ve got all these different projects on the go, what’s your evaluation process for this idea, right? This is the project right now. That’s the right project.
Dr Sari van Poelje (27:52):
Well, I’ll tell you what I do and I’ll tell you what I should do. Okay. So what I do is I go where my heart lies. So where my passion is really where my interest is because I’m trying to find an answer to a question, you know, that’s what we started with. So I puzzle and I write until I found an answer to the question that satisfies me, hopefully my clients as well. So that’s what I do. What I should do is I should think more in a more structured way about who is my audience how do I want to make my money? You know, and I should be writing the book that would generate the next project. But it’s not my way really. So I know what I should do, but it’s not my way. So yeah,
Debs Jenkins (28:56):
I think you actually do what I do, which is I call this the brain world barrier. You need an idea. That’s energetic enough to break through the brain world barrier. And if you do it always on on a calculated list of things, I’d say, this is good. This is good. I don’t know if it creates enough energy, but if it’s something that you’re passionate about, then the idea has so much energy that it has to break through that brain world barrier.
Dr Sari van Poelje (29:25):
That’s a great metaphor.
Debs Jenkins (29:27):
I think you always should be looking for energetic ideas rather than calculated or listed ideas.
Dr Sari van Poelje (29:34):
Yeah, it’s true. And that also brings me to, you should also let go of ideas that don’t have that energy, you know, it’s like pulling a dead horse, so yeah.
Debs Jenkins (29:50):
Okay. Fantastic in life. Yes. Yeah. In love. Should I Mark it myself? So if you want to know more about, I want you to be able to tell us about your training program. So, because I think that lots of people would be interested in that if it’s available publicly. Absolutely.
Dr Sari van Poelje (30:12):
So so if you want to know more about the, the IHL basically say innovation design, please go to www.team agility.com. So if you want to scale up as a startup or you are stuck as a family business, or you’re multinational that has to innovate more, go to that website. If you’re interested in the training programs, I’ve got really cool training programs that have been running for a long time and that work. So people who go to my school become kickass coaches and consultants and leaders. So you can either do a string, you know, like becoming a coach, becoming a team coach becoming a kickass consultant. But I’ve also got really spot on kind of training. So I’ve got a training program called the hero’s journey, which is much more personal development. You know, what’s your life’s journey, where are you stuck?
Dr Sari van Poelje (31:09):
And what could you do to continue? And I use the hero’s journey metaphor for that by Joseph Campbell. And it’s really cool. I explain it. I use movies, people walk their own journey. They learn how to get out of whatever rut they’re in. And I love giving that because it’s, it’s such deep personal work. I give that in, in Luxembourg a lot, but I also give it here in Holland or we could try it online if that’s necessary. The other spot on training program for people who want to short fix as it were, is my entrepreneur nurse Academy. So after Corona, I saw a lot of my colleagues, kind of their businesses fell down. They didn’t have the income and they didn’t have the capital and not the, the brand or the distribution, like the network to continue their, their business through crisis.
Dr Sari van Poelje (32:03):
So what I set up as an entrepreneur Academy I’d set it up before because the government of Aruba, which is where I was born, I was born in the Caribbean asked me to come train the entrepreneurs on Aruba because they want to switch from a tourism to an entrepreneurs economy. So I am given this training program specifically for the government and then during Crow and I thought I’m going to tweak it. And I’m going to give a short version here for anyone who wants to start a business, redefined our business redirect our business, especially during this turbulent time. So you can find all that information on www.intactacademy.com. What’s coming up as well. This is the last thing is a series of webinars on leadership post-crisis leadership, really. So we’re gonna be talking myself and a colleague are going to be talking about recovery after trauma.
Dr Sari van Poelje (33:09):
And I think this is the skill that’s missing most now for most leaders in most organizations. So that’s coming up in September. Yep. Wonderful. Okay. And I’ll put all the links to all of those in the comments below. Is there anything else that you want to tell us? Is there anything that’s just bursting to say yes, I hope we don’t go back to normal and not even to a new normal. I hope I hope all of us will take this time to reconsider what we’re doing to ourselves, to our really loved ones into our planet. And that we’re really going to redefine our collective responsibility for keeping nature and keeping this for next generations. Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful, fantastic. Thank you. Sari. That was brilliant. Speak to you soon ciao. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. Sorry. That was brilliant.