Three Young Improven consultants on their experiences

Two years ago, Improven launched its own traineeship: Young Improven. Meanwhile, the first batch of talents has completed the programme. Consultancy.nl spoke with Lisa Verkaik, Joeri Visser and Guido Rademakers, who are trainees who recently progressed to consultant at Improven.

Lisa Verkaik

"The past two years have really flown by," Lisa Verkaik starts enthusiastically. Since she started the Young Improven programme, she committed to several large corporates, such as Volksbank, Heineken/Sligro and Schiphol Airport.

"During the integration programme of Heineken Netherlands and Sligro Food Group, I was first introduced to the profession of programme management and PMO," she says. "Super interesting to experience up close what is involved in a strategic collaboration between two large companies. For instance, I learned that stakeholder management is crucial - knowing who to provide with what information to get certain decisions. I also experienced the importance of a tight but agile programme organisation, consultation structure and unambiguous way of reporting progress."

She is now also using the best practices she learned during her traineeship at Schiphol Group, where she is supporting the programme manager on a major IT transformation for the Finance and Procurement departments. "Actually, you see that the principles of programme management and PMO can be applied anywhere, regardless of the sector," she explains. By now, it is clear that the project management profession suits her well: "I like to structure, create overview and see results. I also like working on the 'human' side of organisational change."

Looking back on her traineeship, Verkaik is especially proud that the first Young Improven group put CSR on the map at Improven: "Two years ago there was virtually nothing in place and now a full team is engaged in various social and sustainable initiatives. For instance, I have ensured that we are now a partner of JINC, a foundation that links businesses with schools in socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. For example, we organise lightning internships and job interview training, contributing to the social and professional development of young people. I am very happy that Improven is open to this."

Like everyone's life, Verkaik's start as a 'real' consultant took an unexpected turn last month with the outbreak of the corona crisis. "It took some getting used to having no colleagues around you at all and having to discuss everything via Skype, Teams and phone. At Schiphol we were exactly in the last phase before going live, so that was exciting. It all worked out well in the end: training sessions have been converted to online sessions, all recurring appointments with the direction team and the steering committee run fine via Skype and there is quite a lot of phone calls between all project members."

Of course, she hopes everything will return to normal soon, but she fortunately does not see only disadvantages in the current situation. "The danger is that you go on much longer now that you don't have to 'go home'. And I miss the cosy coffees in between. But the advantage for a non-morning person like me is that the alarm clock goes a bit later," she says with a wink.

Joeri Visser

For Joeri Visser, too, it took some shifting, but working remotely is actually going quite well now. "I often have one or more Teams meetings in a day. I also make a lot of use of the chat function in Teams and of course the 'good old' phone. With all the tools available, we can fortunately get by just fine, but of course it remains the most fun to just get together with clients and colleagues to work on great assignments. It's no different. All the more we appreciate it when we can."

"I especially like how we have grown together over the past two years, as a team."

Visser started the Young Improven traineeship in 2018, a few months after Verkaik. "The programme is a mix of training courses, business visits and social activities," he explains. "Here, the training sessions focus not only on subject matter, but also on consulting skills and personal development. In addition to the training courses, you immediately rotate into client assignments, so you can apply the material and tools immediately."

Among other things, Visser did so as process specialist at Heineken. "There we engaged in workshops and brownpaper sessions," he says. "I also participated in an improvement programme at ABM and helped write an advisory report. I was also a process consultant at Stichting Ouder- en Kind Teams (OKT) in Amsterdam - another industry and environment. Sometimes falling down, but then getting up quickly and making something beautiful out of it!"

Based on these experiences, Visser chose to further specialise in the process consulting domain. "What particularly attracts me to this field is that you look at organisations with a broad perspective and are constantly looking for the right balance in the variables, which together make a process function well. That is a puzzle and the challenge! In my assignments over the past two years, I have already had the opportunity to do a lot in this domain. In my first assignments, I was mainly involved in describing and mapping processes. Later, I was allowed to participate in optimising and integrating business processes."

Asked about the highlights from his time as a trainee, Visser says it is impossible to single out one moment or training. "I especially like how we have grown together over the past two years, as a team," he indicates. "Speaking for myself, I have also really benefited a lot from the others. In addition, I think the freedom is super. It feels like I can do what I like. For instance, I was in the quality team and the staff association and, as PMO, I am the spider in the web of our own CSR activities. Diverse and educational!"

Guido Rademakers

At the same time as Visser, Guido Rademakers started the Young Improven programme. He too emphasises how much everyone has learned from each other over the past two years, and how that learning continues today: "Everyone has his own talent. The things I am naturally good at are the exact and technical subjects. So I easily take people on board with that and enjoy explaining things. For example, about developing dashboards, PowerBI or performing process mining. But of course there are also things I am less good at! This is where I get help from my colleagues or managers."

"Of course, we are all looking forward to the time when we can meet face-to-face again."

In this way, Rademakers has already experienced considerable growth during his traineeship, "both in dealing with increasing responsibility and in the consulting skills learned and applied," he indicates. "With me, I see the growth mainly in expectation management, stakeholder management and the ability to bridge the gap between business and IT."

Rademakers decided to further specialise within the Business IT domain. "If you ask me, the computer is humanity's most advanced and extraordinary invention ever," he explains. "Companies that optimally use computers and underlying data to minimise costs and maximise their service, for example, are the market leaders of the future. And the technology keeps evolving too. Take AI (Artificial Intelligence), the concept where computers perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence. This brings us convenience, precision, speed and accessibility."

The accessibility we owe to computers is currently perhaps more important than ever. "We may already find that our lives are significantly disrupted by all the corona measures," Rademakers argues, "but imagine if we didn't have the internet yet. Much of my work now is actually pretty much the same, but under the heading of 'remote consulting'."

Nevertheless, working together in the office is naturally more sociable. "From home, it is more difficult to keep in touch with colleagues because conversations at the coffee machine have disappeared. So it requires more initiative to send a colleague a nice app or call a client to catch up, with or without a picture. Fortunately, everyone is in the same boat and everyone responds quite positively and openly. And of course, we all look forward to the time when we can meet face-to-face again."