Auke Schotanus joins TLAB to strengthen its capabilities in AI, leadership and people-centred transformation

Auke Schotanus joins TLAB to strengthen its capabilities in AI, leadership and people-centred transformation

Transformation LAB (TLAB), IMPROVEN’s specialist team in the fields of leadership, team development and organisational development, is strengthening its ranks with the appointment of Auke Schotanus. As a Consultant to the Firm, he brings over twenty years’ experience in change management and will deepen TLAB’s expertise at the intersection of AI, leadership and people-centred transformation.

TLAB helps organisations realise their ambitions by building powerful leadership, strong teams and agile organisations. Based on the conviction that organisations only truly change when people start acting differently, the team links strategy to behaviour and behaviour to results. With Schotanus, TLAB is deepening its expertise in an area of concern for an increasing number of organisations: how can you ensure that the potential of AI actually leads to different styles of leadership, different ways of working and better results?

Schotanus has been working on change programmes for over twenty years. He began his career at Deloitte and founded Pontonniers in 2012. Through his consultancy practice, he supports leaders and organisations in industry, business services and the public sector through complex change processes. For example, he has supported various leaders and teams during transformations within the central government and international commercial organisations. At Peterson & Control Union, he helped build the EMEA Innovation Hub, including an in-house AI studio, governance frameworks and a training programme for the staff tasked with implementing the change. He is also the founder of Design Thinking Meetup Amsterdam, a community of over 2,000 creative change-makers and strategists.

AI calls for leadership

“We’ve noticed that, for our clients, the issue surrounding AI is rarely purely technical,” says Justa de Graaff, a partner at IMPROVEN | TLAB.

“Organisations often know full well what is possible. The challenge arises when AI places demands on leadership, decision-making, collaboration and behaviour. How do you make choices? How do you get people on board? And how do you ensure that experiments ultimately lead to real change and results? Auke understands both technological developments and what these demand of leaders and organisations. It is precisely this combination that strengthens our expertise.”

Learning through real-world problems

At TLAB, Schotanus will, amongst other things, contribute to programmes in which leaders and transformation professionals work on their own organisational challenges. One of the initiatives TLAB is currently developing is the TLAB Transformation Circles, in which participants from different organisations work and learn together on current transformation issues, including AI and leadership.

AI is not only a topic of discussion in this context, but also a tool that participants are experimenting with in their own practice.

“I visit companies where the pilot projects have long since been completed,” says Schotanus. “The use cases are there, everyone agrees, and yet it’s not getting off the ground. The value isn’t being realised. That’s not a technological problem. AI shows exactly where things are getting stuck within an organisation, but it won’t solve the problem for you. You need people to take it forward. I want to stand alongside those people, together with TLAB.”

With Schotanus, TLAB is continuing to build a complementary team of change management professionals and specialists. The aim is to be involved from the outset in complex transformations and to link strategy, leadership, teams, organisation and behaviour in order to ensure that change actually works..