Frans van den Boomen, logistics expert, strategist and activator, and owner of OPEN Value Chain: “Every company wants to grow. And growth begins with awareness: awakening, being shaken awake. So what you are doing with Learning Stage is truly needed. Involve the people inside and outside the organisation in the learning and growth of their company. Wake them up and make them aware of their own role in the shared story.”

Racing While Standing Still
“With stories by Shakespeare and others, you draw professionals out of the frenzy of everyday life. When you reflect such a play against a challenge in their own reality, they realise: ‘What is happening now was already happening centuries ago.’ The challenges people struggled with then are still with us today, though in a different form and in a different age. What they share is the razor-thin line between growth and exhaustion.
Throughout the centuries, people have always searched for ways to grow. The drive for expansion has often led to war and scarcity, and it still does. That kind of ‘growth’ is not sustainable, because you are, in a sense, racing while standing still. You keep rushing and raging, yet achieve nothing. That is not sustainable, neither for yourself nor for your business.”

Keeping in Motion
The solution? “Take a step back, relax. Grow together through collaboration. By slowing down, you create the space to move forward steadily. Realise that for centuries we have all been standing on the same ‘stage’, namely Mother Earth, while only the wings change, the props, the scenery, the circumstances. That awareness allows us to reflect together.
Open yourself to who you are in relation to the greater whole. After all, a situation only changes when you change yourself. Looking differently brings so much. Then there is no scarcity, but abundance. Then there is enough for everyone. You are no longer ‘racing while standing still’, but living in harmony with yourself and the world. In that way, we move away from exhaustion and back towards growth.”

Perspective
“Joseph Jaworski says: ‘The world is an open system, in which everything and everyone is interconnected, and the possibilities are infinite.’ If you close yourself off, you shut yourself away from those possibilities. That is unnatural.
By opening yourself up instead, you come to realise that everyone else is standing on the same stage. And that we therefore shape life together. When we do that, we not only experience more joy, but also achieve better results. It all depends on the way you choose to see it.”