Career

Twenty-five years ago, I sailed as a trainer-mate on the ‘Prinses Margriet’. As part of the Netherlands based Royal Education Fund for Shipping, the ship has given thousands of aspirant-sailors their first taste of salt water during voyages in Northwest Europe. In my job as trainer I had the opportunity, together with a crew of 28, to teach them the basics of the seagoing job.

In 1993 the ship had to make way for the simulator. The first where students from all over the country were send, to have an idea what sailing a vessel would be like but then in an artificial environment. That changed the focus from smelling the sea and feeling the ships’ rolling and pitching to learning to navigate with the latest technologies. My career switched in the direction of the Dutch Shipping Inspectorate, followed with 10 years of Dutch Safety Board and then towards a senior management role at a well-known international offshore marine contractor. At the offshore contractor I was accountable for strategy and developments in quality, safety, health & environment. A broad perspective which gave the opportunity to work with over 2500 professionals throughout the company, worldwide at vessels, yards, and offices. In that period, with the team, we worked on projects, behavior-based safety, sustainability, safety management and quality performance and we were able to establish our own inhouse state-of-the-art simulator to prepare for projects. A strong asset within the company to support engineering and execution in new ways of working, with the vessels running as digital twins to the real ones.

Sustain and train

Within the ever-changing society, a sustainable performance and the ongoing developments in technology, my main focus was and still is at the Human Element and the interaction with software, hardware, environment and, last but not least, with other people, in teams and organizations. Two years ago, I got the opportunity to start my own company Mizzen Global. Mizzen is from the Italian word mezzana ‘mizzensail’ on a ship. The word is related to mezzano, which can be translated to someone who acts as a link between parties. Linking pin between parties as trainer, lecturer and ‘guiding’ coach. To guide people to the opportunities they have and give organizations perspectives on learning from incidents. To share knowledge, to bring parties together with the basics rooted in Resilience, the Human Element. Last year I established a partnership with Ronald Spruit. Ronald has a background in quality and brings a different, open minded view on organizational systems. We work together with other companies, experts and specialists in safety, sustainability, quality management, human factors, personal assessment and incident investigation, to support the learning organization.

Resilience, what it is

Resilience is not a new concept; it was introduced in behavioral therapy for children in the 70’s of last century. It then drippled into business environments in the USA. Nowadays it is combined as a new level of safety (performance) and seen as part of business continuity management, to develop towards a resilient organization. It is applicable to the individual, the team, and the organization. On each level it is aimed at the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and being adaptive to change.

We support individual and team performance and decision making at all levels in the organization. The advantage of the combination of Facet5 and the Resilience-game is that the team or department can see and learn from their individual differences. Understanding why people behave like they do is the first step into the direction of optimizing performance. After learning about the diversity of the team, the serious game will be the next step to learn to interact and make decisions as a team. In normal times and at periods when there is time pressure and (high) uncertainty. We have official certification as Resilience-game trainer, Facet5 practitioner and Lead auditor and have deep understanding on how organizations work, in the public and private sector.

Your part

In this article a short overview has been given on our background and current positions. We work as manager, team leader, coach, lecturer and act as speaker or chairman at online webinars and seminars throughout the world. We support companies, organizations, projects, teams and individuals in their developments. Whatever goal you are striving for, the experts of Mizzen Global can help you to structure, to link the why (the purpose) with the how (the tools) and the what (the execution). We focus on resilience to improve human performance and wellbeing by connecting the Human Element to the influences of software, hardware, environment and liveware. We connect work as imagined with work as done. Contact us to be part of the journey to excellence with support of the resilient approach. Get in touch to discuss what we can do for you.