Arie van Bennekum: How Saying ‘Yes’ Can Take You Anywhere You Want

Richard:

Hi, Arie, thank you so much for joining us today.

Arie:

My pleasure Richard, my pleasure.

Richard:

Hey, is there anything else you would add on to that introduction?

Arie:

Oh yeah, of course, family man. I have two children, a daughter-in-law. I have a beautiful girlfriend. Two wonderful bonus children as we say these days. I have a granddaughter. I love my motorcycle, my bike. I live in the countryside in the Netherlands. Wind mills, cows, wooden shoes, they’re real. In case people think it’s joke, no, it’s not. Where I live is in the Netherlands in Europe. Of course, I live, for those who know the Netherlands a bit, 20 kilometers straight east from the beautiful city of Rotterdam. And I live very close to the tourist attraction of Kinderdijk where you have those whole row of wind mills forming a beautiful, extremely smart, water management system designed hundreds of years ago. Yeah, so that’s where I am and who I am.

Richard:

That is amazing. I love that term that you you all have in not exactly Northern Europe, but in Europe, you have this term, bonus children. I love that term.

Arie:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard:

I have two bonus children of my own. I really love that term.

Arie:

Yeah, yeah. Then you know what I’m talking about, right?

Richard:

Yeah, exactly. Let’s see. So this part podcast is about teams. I love to ask people about the best team they’ve ever been a member of in their life. And this could be any kind of team. A work team, a non-work team, a creative team, some university project team, you and your girlfriend, you and your family, you and your bonus children. Any group of two or more people aligned with common goals, that’s how we define team here. You could define team any way you want. What’s the best team of your life? What’s the best team that you are ever a part of in your life?

Arie:

This is, whoa, this is such a difficult question because you have all the different areas in your life. Because I like the way that I was a team with my parents and my brother when I was young, really. And actually, yesterday evening, with my brother because he lives downtown. Had my drink and we do that on a regular basis. Maybe I would say that I liked the way my parents were a team. I also think that when I was writing the manifesto, when we were writing the manifesto in 2001, I was working for a company in the Netherlands called SoulVizion. And we had this very steep growth curve. We would go from 24 to 700 in two and a half years autonomous growth. And it was not about all being perfect, but there was this very shared, and you have to imagine in writing the manifest, when you see things like, “Trust people to get the job done and maximizing the work not done.” My part of the contribution was in that part, based on how we worked in there, we were self organizing teams to the max. And that was amazing. You know, we did everything from innovation and business development to sales and contract management and delivery and HR and hiring, firing, and evaluation and rewarding. Everything except for sending invoices to customers. And that was amazing. Not only that all organization SoulVizion as a whole, but also the team that I worked in around the time that we wrote the manifest. So, yeah. Awesome. But there are many more beautiful.

Richard:

What was the name of the organization again?

Arie:

SoulVizion with an S, yeah. Doesn’t exist anymore.

Richard:

All right.

Arie:

Has been bought by one of the larger consultancy firms. But that was an absolutely massive experience. I worked there for 10 years.

Richard:

Okay. So subjectively, you just shared some of the experience with us about this huge, rapid scaling, from a few people to hundreds of people, trusting people to get the job done. You basically did everything it took to get the job done and make your customers happy. How do you know it was a great team? What did it feel like? Subjectively, what was it like to be part of that group of people or any particular subteam in there? What did it feel like for you? How do you know it was such a great team?

Arie:

I always, because people very all often ask me questions in this direction, right? So, what was it like? And I think one of the most important characteristics for me is I cannot recall in those days that I ever got out of bed being out of bed, being unhappy. And people would ask me, “How many hours a week do you work?” I said, “How should I know, I don’t know.” You know? And was doing at the same time, also in the evening, I was lecturing at the Rotterdam University. I was at one time lecturing at one evening at Rotterdam, one evening at Amsterdam at the university, doing my SoulVizion consulting during the day. We were supporting each other and the innovation was amazing. The new ideas, the buzz. The people that I am connected with, and that I really interact with still on the professional level every now and then because, hey, this person might help you or this person might help you, she knows this, very often are from this organization still, yeah.

Richard:

Tell me more about this idea of there was a lot of innovation, there were new ideas, there was a buzz. What was that like?

Arie:

So it’s March, 1997, and I talked to a gentleman and he and two friends of his, and also colleagues by the way. And I knew him because I did quote unquote, Agile Delivery projects for him in 1995, 1996. And he knew me and he said, “You know, I started this new company and maybe you heard about the book, it’s called the “Semco Style from Ricardo Semler.” And that was the idea of self organizing teams getting the max out of people, also making people responsible, right? And taking the benefits, but when it’s not really good, also you know the effects as well. And the idea was that you have a group of people anywhere from five to what, 20, 25 or so, working on a specific product or a service or whatever. But the way you interact together within that group, at one moment in time, there will be a subgroup saying, “Now, we have this idea.” And they would start talking about this idea and if they would really want it. Within weeks, they could have the business plan, just an outline set. They would select some people from the organization, had a couple of iterations on the plan and they would split off and start a new team. So when I joined in 1997, we had three teams. And when the company was bought by a consultancy firm in 2003, I think it was, I think we had like between 25 and 30 teams. Really interesting. Yeah. So you get that innovation as, I mean, one of the things, especially these days with the pace of innovation and technology that we have in the world, you cannot rely when it comes to innovation, on proof of concept processes or that kind of the old school way. Innovation has to be part of your daily operations, I always say. You have to continuously help trigger, motivate people to look in different angles. I hate the phrase out of the box, right? To get so much going, that kind of stuff. And man, it was unstoppable. One of the biggest concerns we have, we didn’t have a lot, but the biggest concerns that we have is people not getting any burnout. Because everybody was working during the day, at the client site, in the evening at the office, working with people and that kind of thing. Yeah, it was amazing.

Richard:

So, what about this idea of, I don’t know if you’re saying, or if you’re implying or I’m just hearing it this way, that you can’t have a process for innovation. Did you just create this atmosphere and innovation happened or what was it that fomented all of this activity?

Arie:

Yeah, I think it’s not binary, but, you cannot plan innovation. You cannot say, “Oh, we have this new, brilliant product ready on May one.” Right? It’s not going to, So, in the days that we live in, where we are, 2022 with a pace of innovation on the tech side, where the technology is offering so fast, new opportunities, right? So you have technology that is not only helping you in the way you work, but it’s disrupting entire business models sometimes in months, right? And that means that you have the next one, the follow up of your brilliant product or service that you put in the market, you have to have it ready. If you’re a governmental organization, the knowledge that laws have to change because of new developments, what technology offers to maybe competition, threatening your own national market, terrorism, whatever. You have to understand, you have to respond fast, you have to have solutions ready. You have to have integrated change of development, from your organization to suppliers, to your clients or the people that are using your services if you’re government. You to have different dynamics, closer collaboration and the one thing that is your beautiful, brilliant product today, might be obsolete on July one. So you have to continuously work. If you continuously work part of your time on innovation, you will have a lot of things that will fail, will not get there, but you will always have those things that are going to help you out also already and they’re there to help you strive. And I think that’s the reason why innovation is so important these days. And that pace of innovation will only go up and will never slow down so you better be ready.

Richard:

Right, yeah. Now, let’s go back to SoulVizion. I don’t know, could we talk about one particular team there? Like is the founding team or some of other team at SoulVizion? Is there a particular team?

Arie:

Yeah, let’s just take my own team, right? So I joined in March, 1997 and we had three teams and I was asked to be in the team that was, let’s say, in the software development kind of working. And I was asked to take more or less the lead. We didn’t have any management and every team did it in its own way. You could have someone having the lead. You could have that position every three months changed. You could have two people having the lead, the way you wanted, right? And I remember that one moment in time, I split off with a colleague of mine, and we said, we are going to work explicitly on DSDM, dynamic systems development method, because in 1994, I started working with mostly rapid application development, I would say. In the late eighties, I was doing in hindsight, what you would call pairing, just trying to experiment what would really help. And then into reification development kind of way, working and I got connected to the DSDM consortium, with that guy, by the way, because he joined the team that I was leading at the time. And we got a connection with the DSDM consortium. We did the certification. I remember the moment that the DSDM started the chapter here in the Benelux, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and we got into the chapter right away. Knowledge sharing, right? That’s what it’s all about. And what is very important to me is of course, you have to focus on your revenue because your revenue has to be there. Because if you don’t have the revenue, you cannot do the other stuff that’s important for the company. Such as innovation, for example. We started growing, we started recruiting people, they joined us. Most people are still in contact with me. Every now and then, somebody from the team will ask me, “Arie, can you do a talk at the client where I am? Can you do a talk at whatever.” And very often, I go there and I do this, and we were completely in, so let’s say in what we did, we were completely, you know, free to choose what kind of a delivery we did. So, when it comes to what we call Agile transformations today, I remember sitting down with the vice president of a big bank, one of the top three banks in the Netherlands at the office of SoulVizion, with my friend Corey and talking about the transformation of that bank, this is 1998. And it was masterclass, it was talks, it was coaching. The word “Agile Coach” didn’t exist at the time, right? But that was what we did. And the people that founded the organization had one thing only, if you need our help, let us know. And if there were things not going well and of course, it wasn’t all beautiful and roses and wonderful. So things went wrong. They would give a call and know what’s going on because we can see some things are not going well and they would try to help out. And that meant that, for me, what is very important in that specific team, is that we could rely on each other. Still, I am in contact with Helt. Corey is a little bit less because he has his own area. He’s not in my area working at the time. Ali is still in my contact list and you try to reconnect sometimes with him. So you have those people around. Maybe, you know, like when you’re a child, right, you have this time in your life when a lot of things are settled in your brain and this is how you perceive life. This is your starting point. And I think in hindsight, because I joined SoulVizion when was 33. And I left when I was 43. But I think especially the first six years, they set the scene. And one of the most remarkable things for me is when you talk about self organizing teams, I’ve never been in an organization when I’ve seen it working like this. People struggle. People always start at the beginning. Oh, you’re self organizing team. And they will start talking about how do we do it with the shares? And we start talking about the people on the team. And we said, “Okay, what do we put in the market? Where do we start? What do we think that we like to put in the market? And who would be nice to work with with us on this? Or do you know someone?” And that kind of thing, you know, that was amazing. And I remember that one of the guys that I work with and later on, I returned working with him. He said, “Arie.” He passed away sadly two and a half years ago, I think two and a half years. And sadly, he said, “Arie, I think if you want to have success, you need to be able to like each other or maybe be friends.” And of course, you’re not friends with 700 people and you don’t know even all 700, but the teams that are close to you and similar to you, you know, still today, I have people from that time said, “Arie, I think I have a job for you.” And I was ask someone, “Hey, I think I have someone for you.” Because you know each other, you’re in each other’s frontal cortex, right? And I think that’s.

Richard:

I love that idea of you like each other, you’re you’re friends. You can’t be friends with everybody in the whole company, but there’s people who are near you for sure. And you also started off by saying, you said a couple things like you never got out of bed unhappy. And you never kept track of how many hours you worked per week. And it was definitely a lot, especially when you had on all the extra teaching you did. How about objectively? Are there any measurements? Anything that somebody from the outside could observe objectively? How would somebody that this was a great team or these were great teams?

Arie:

Two things I would say. I was in the DSDM community. That was a large community. And the back office, Mary Hansen was responsible at the time at the DSDM consortium and she gave me a call. And she said, “Arie, do you want to come?” I said, “Yeah, I think so.” And actually, I can point it because there is church two kilometers away and I was driving exactly there. And I said, I’m home in a couple of minutes. And I can tell you, I was married at the time still. I can tell you. And then people would say, “Oh yeah, but before they called Arie, they called me.” And one of the things that you will see in those successful companies is that it’s not about who get the call, it’s about who says yes, right? People say yes. You only get somewhere when you say yes, right? When you would’ve walked into that office, the office, Richard, you have to imagine, the city of Delft, close to the Hague. Beautiful, I think 150 year old house, a mansion and it was the old mayor’s house actually. And at the ground floor, there was a big pub. Because the founder said, “Best ideas are born in a pub, not in office rooms.” And you would walk in and there would always be that buzz. And it was not that we drank alcohol during the day, don’t get me wrong, right? But we had to say, it’s just a pub, right? Wooden floor, brass mirrors, bottles of booze, tables, sitting there, you know? Beautiful, beautiful design on the inside. And we would sit there and if you would walk in, you would say, “Man, this is a good place here. Here, I’d like to sit. Give me a cup of coffee, man. Let me sit down.” And people gave that back to as well, right? Because you invite people to your office obviously. And I think that buzz, that was really cool. Yeah, absolutely. You would notice that instantly.

Richard:

Love it. That buzz, this idea that it’s like someplace really warm and inviting and where you want to be.

Arie:

Yeah. And especially where you don’t have ideas that are rejected. You know how it works. “Oh yeah, well, that’s a great idea, but it doesn’t work for us.” No, no, no, no. Oh, you have an idea? Let’s sit down, tell me about the idea. Oh, if you talk about this kind of thing, I’m not maybe the most logical guy to talk, but just go to Richard. Maybe Richard can help you out. And if Richard doesn’t, maybe somebody else. Instead of saying, no, you help people forward.

Richard:
All right. So there’s an example of a concrete behavior that maybe you used on these teams. Not saying no to each other, like actually opening it up to people’s new ideas. What are some other concrete things that you did? Some other concrete behaviors that helps these teams be so amazing?

Arie:

Let me tell you that as an outcome of this group, a lot of people have got to really good positions in business. And I also mean governmental. They really got into good positions. Very wide thinking, creative brains, right? But I can also give you a down side of that because we were working day and night because it was so fun. I think we had a serious number of burnouts. And I remember one the, at that time, young ladies. You’re just getting out of university, joining us. Awesome, you can do whatever you like. And I go on with it. And she’s living now in the north of the country and I remember her saying to me at one moment in time, she said, “Arie, I want an office. I want a desk where I can put the photograph of my boyfriend and a plant and my computer so I can work.” And we didn’t have desks, our founders didn’t didn’t have a room. We didn’t have parking places. The space was for those who were there, period. And nothing else. That’s another behavior. And I remember when we changed to, when we were bought by one of the consultancy firms, during 2003, I got a team full of project managers. And instantly, we got it back into old silos. And one of the guys, and at this time, I am 39 years old. And this guy is for 55, 56, 57, I don’t know. And he calls me it’s May. And he says, you know, in the Netherlands, we have 20 to 25 days that you can take off for holidays or whatever, right? A minimum at full time is 20, we had 25. And he gave me a call and he said, “Arie.” You know, he auditioned this date in August, “Can I go on holiday?” And I was baffled. I was like, what? What? Are you asking me if you can go on holiday with your family? What’s this? What’s this? And the only thing I asked, I said. He said, “Yeah, you’re my manager now.” And he was coming from the other side of the organization. He was not part of the organization SoulVizion. but from that consultancy firm. He was just blended into my team. And I said, “Fear not, listen, man, it’s very simple. What I like is that your client knows and is okay with the fact that you go. And the fact when you’re out, is that one of your colleagues that is available will cover your behind while you’re out so the work can go on and nobody drops to a standstill.” And so that kind of thinking is I remember, sometimes you get in those situations, people are asking you, “When are you going on holiday?” And I got into situations where I was collaborating with people and people have to ask me if they can go on a holiday. I said “Well, I’m going to tell you something. I will not spend my time on judging if adult people with highly educated people can go on holiday or not. They know that they have to make sure that the client side everything is okay. They know that they have to make sure that the work goes on. I’m not going to interfere with it. I have other things to do.”

Richard:

Right.

Arie:

That’s the kind of thinking. That’s the self organizing model.

Richard:

You don’t have to give them permission. You’re not their dad. You’re a coworker who happens to be a little bit more senior.

Arie:

Yeah. And I mean, so you have highly educated people and they need to ask you for permission to go on holiday. Oh, come on, come on. And this is what I like. I think the phrase is from Steve jobs where he said, “I don’t hire highly educated people to tell them what to do. I hire them to tell me what to do.” Right? And that’s where it’s supposed to be. And I like, before SoulVizion, I was working for a consultancy firm, so this was teams of up to 50. Like with their own profit and loss across the Netherlands. I don’t know how many of those teams. And he was young, he was 30 years old when he was running, totally responsible. Like a managing director. And he told me that he came back from one of those managing directors meetings. So there’s maybe like 40 managing directors and some of them were complaining to him. Oh, so busy man. Oh, over time. And my wife is complaining and blah, blah. He said, “Arie, I don’t understand this.” I said, “We’re a consultancy firm. If I have people available on the bench, that means I have people look and do the work for me. And if I have everybody working at the client site, there is no reason to do overtime. So I just don’t get it.” And that’s the way you’re thinking that you need to have. Man, people get so in those rigid processes and it’s like, get out of there, get out of there. Now make sure that the business runs properly instead of running a to prescribe processes and stuff.

Richard:

Right, right. All right. So how about advice for listeners and viewers? How can they take some of these practices and these ways of thinking and reproduce this success with their teams?

Arie:

Yeah, so, I’m going to show you something. I want to show you something. And I know it’s a podcast, so the people will not be able to see it, right?

Richard:

Oh, we’re going to do, this will be video too. So some people will see this.

Arie:

Yeah, yeah. Very good. One of the things in Agile working is that we do the retrospective, right? And a retrospective can be a little bit painful because you’ve been working for a sprint and maybe something didn’t go the way you want it. And then, if you don’t point out what really happened, you cannot improve it, right? So that might be on the table that we have to say, “Arie, you know, man, you messed up here. You really messed up.” And what people tend to do is point other people. Oh, I know it wasn’t me. It was the bridge that was open, that’s why I’m late. And it was the whatever. And I think people should understand that you are the architect of your own life and that’s about taking responsibility. And what I mean to say is, you’re not controlling what’s coming over you, forget about it, there will always be things happening. I remember the weekend that we wrote the manifesto, we didn’t expect that the manifesto would be so impactful in the world. Secondly, that same weekend, my wife decided to divorce me. And thirdly, the house was on fire when I was in Salt Lake. So if you want to talk about life changing events that you don’t control, there you go, right?

Richard:

It’s quite a weekend.

Arie:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the point is, you don’t control what’s coming to you, but you decide how you handle it. And walking away from things, denying things, blaming others, being suspicious to others, having bad intentions, it doesn’t work. See what you can do yourself and make that happen. And then you wake up every morning being happy. I mean, sorry man. That’s how I perceive life. And yes, I have my bad days too. Especially when I visit my brother. Like we talked before the recording started and we have one of those evenings that you think, okay, I should have gone home earlier, right? But I love my life because I know whatever is happening in my life, I decide on what’s going on there. And if things aren’t, because things happen to me that I don’t like, of course. But then I take them on, I only worry about the things that I have an impact on, the things I don’t have an impact on, I just accept or I leave. I go out, that’s also, then I change places, it’s also possible. But that makes your life easier, right? I focus on the things that I want to do.

Richard:

All right. And is there anything else you’d like to add? Anything you you’re thinking about recently, working on recently? Anything at all?

Arie:

Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. Actually, now we can do another podcast of 24 hours, right? But one of the things I was just before we did, we started our video conference here, I was talking to a business colleague friend from Germany, Sebastian. And he calls me, he says, “Arie, I’m doing this masterclass, agnostic agile. Would you drop in for half an hour or an hour or so to talk to the team? And, I said, “Yeah, sure. If I have the time I will.” So I just dropped in, I helped him out. There from a big, well known car manufacturer, the team that he was training and I helped him forward. I’m not charging money. I’m just this because Sebastian is my friend. And he said, “Arie, you know.” And I think instead of translating everything into money all the time, I mean, you have to have a decent living, don’t get me wrong. But what about spending your wealth, whatever your wealth is, a little bit with somebody else in the world who maybe needs it in that moment? And I had a friend who was in financial, very difficult positions all the time. I never threw clothes away. You know, I would say, “Hey man, you need anything. And if we would go to the pub, I would pay the bill for the couple of beers that we did. Helping, when my boys were growing, the clothes would be okay, that doesn’t fit you anymore. I would just checkout and I would know this family that doesn’t have a lot of money, they have children that are just below mine, right in the size. And I would give them the clothes, right? Helping people out is what we don’t do very often. And help means that you give without asking anything in return. That’s when you help. And we should do it a little bit more.

Richard:

That is great advice. Thanks so much for sharing what.

Arie:

Not money, right? Helping people, not money.

Richard:

Yeah. All right and how could listeners and viewers contact you?

Arie:

I think the easiest way is LinkedIn. I always say, when you connect to me in LinkedIn and in the direct message of LinkedIn, you ask me a question nine out of ten within a day, you have an answer. It might be short. And if it’s really too long, we will find 15 minutes to do a little video conference. And then we be good, right?

Richard:

And it’s the truth. That’s how you and I connected.

Arie:

Yeah. I mean, you, then are the living proof of what I just said. And of course, you can find me on Twitter and on Instagram, on Facebook. And I have arievanbennekum.com and I should update it, I know. But I’m always so busy doing stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Richard:

All right. We’ll make it easy for people to find you. Digitally, not like in this house where you are.

Arie:

Well, if people are ever in Hardinxveld-Giessendam, they’re very welcome to send me that message and saying, “I’m in this and this pud, do you want to come over for a beer?” And then I’ll join you for a beer.

Richard:

All right, I’m going to keep that in mind. And maybe I’ll be there someday.

Arie:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you feel free to do so.

Richard:

All right, all right. Thank you, thank you so much for joining me today for joining all of us today on the podcast. It was really great getting to know you, getting to meet you. Built up a little bit of friendship here. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Arie:

My pleasure, Richard and maybe we’ll meet in the future. There’s there’s a globe in between us, but you never know, right?

Richard:

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thanks so much. And listeners and viewers, remember to support this podcast, visit my website, kasperowski.com.