everything ABOUT SOL
The driving force behind Organization Learning (SOL) is the SOL Development Team. Put together in February 2019 by chairman Patrick Bijman, and since then have been working hard to promote the learning culture in organizations and society. We introduce them to you:
The sOL Development Team, welcome!
With six passionate professionals, we work hard on our mission: to support people, teams, organizations and society to deal with difficult issues in a learning way. Learning is the foundation of our work, and that is also the challenge in our collaboration.
We are so diverse and come from such different worlds that we always test whether our reality is also the reality of the other. We now fully enjoy our differences and embrace the conflicts that arise as a result. To be able to learn from the other in such a way, we grant that to all our customers.
Patrick Bijman
Chairman / learning culture
Patrick is the 'padre' of the SOL Development Team.
Patrick has a clear vision on the development of organizations. The basis of this lies in a growth of "empowerment". Humans are made to learn!
In addition, Patrick is associated with DreamStorm. A company that specializes in developing entrepreneurship and innovation curricula.
The central motto of DreamStorm is "If you want to realize your dream: WAKE UP!". As a result, participants make conscious choices, they can take a good look at themselves and they develop themselves faster and better.
Frans Beskers
Board Member / Learning Leadership
As an experienced veteran and a true Rotterdammer, Frans is a man who can handle any team and any leader. It is a people person at its best and sees the gold in every person.
In the Development Team he is the connector and the mood maker. He always reminds us how important it is that we stay close as a team.
Frans likes hassle and conflict in teams. It shows people's involvement and in the hassle is all the information you need to make something beautiful out of it.
Frans is our Chief of Leadership and can turn any team into a top team.
Eline Faber
storyteller / learning teams
As a Change Supervisor and strategic advisor, Eline has spent decades working with municipalities and other government organizations working on social change processes. She works as chairperson, process supervisor and team coach. With a background in communication, marketing and HR, she is the storyteller of the team.
Eline works a lot with groups and teams that want to get from A to B, but don't know exactly how to go about it. She has the unique ability to 'listen to the system'. She quickly knows what it takes to take a team one step further in development. That makes her our Chef Teams.
Gus Geisen
thinker / learning organization
Lifelong learning, that could well be Guus' life motto. He is the thinker within our team and you can never have inspiring conversations with him. With his new insights, he always encourages us to look beyond our noses. He has been working with Peter Senge and on the theory of the learning system for so long that he will always approach a challenge from the entire system (no matter how big).
He is a specialist in systems thinking, author and strategic advisor in the field of learning in education. He is rightfully our Head of Organization. Incidentally, he will always want to share that honor with others. After all, in organizations you work together with others on results.
Nicolette Green
feeler / learning person
She earned her spurs with the police, where she rose to become an HR advisor. But her career was not over. She followed her heart, gathered all her courage and quit her job. She went on an entrepreneurial adventure and she has never regretted it for 1 minute.
Nicolette is a personal team coach and specialist Strong Points (Strenght Finder). Above all, she flawlessly senses what is needed in a group. If we as a team get stuck on something, she can pinpoint the sore spot. She is therefore the feeler of our team and our top chef Human.
Rembrandt Zegers
Researcher / learning society
Rembrandt has many years of experience in supervising organizational development and social innovation, both nationally and internationally. He is a social scientist and does a lot in the field of sustainability.
The greatest challenge in society is our relationship with nature. You cannot see nature and man as two separate entities; they are parts of one inclusive system. But we as a society have to learn that very quickly.
Rembrandt helps SOL to include the social learning dimension in the whole. He puts us in the necessary delay time and again, so that we keep wondering why we do what we do. And that means that we can constantly reinvent ourselves and continue to focus on a learning culture in organizations and society.
That's why he's our Chief of Society.
That's how it started...
In February 2020, just before the Corona crisis, chairman Patrick Bijman brought together a group of entrepreneurs to work together on a new mission: agile organizations, with happy employees and a learning culture. The adventure started with a two-day event in Wezep and Eline Faber made a video about it:
Why a learning culture?
Nowadays you hear a lot of people talking about creating a learning organization. The danger of this is that the focus of 'learning' is mainly on giving workshops, training courses and courses for employees (formal learning).
While the biggest challenge lies in the area of learning from and with each other in daily practice (informal learning). That is why we at SOL work on creating meaningful learning and working environments (creating the space).
The foundation for this lies in developing a culture of learning, where we focus on the entire system: people, team, leader, organization and culture.
Advantage 1:
Happy employees
Advantage 2:
Agile organization
An organization with a learning culture is a more flexible organization. It is better able to deal with change, because learning takes place in practice, and there is time and space to interpret developments from outside and to act accordingly. This makes an organization agile and more innovative. Working on challenges together, in a learning setting, by definition results in a more innovative output.
Advantage 3:
Self organizing team
Self-management or self-organization has acquired a negative reputation, mainly because of incorrect implementation. In a learning culture, however, self-organization is an automatic consequence, not an end in itself. Because employees are allowed to learn in their work, and a joint responsibility is felt, employees will automatically want to be given that responsibility. This requires a lot from leadership.
about sol
Organizational Learning Foundation is part of the worldwide movement Society for Organizational Learning.
In the 1990s, the Society for Organizational Learning was founded by MIT, including Peter Senge. The Netherlands was one of the first SOL countries, see Dutch history for this. In 2021, we changed our name in the Netherlands to the Organization for Learning Foundation, but we are still part of the international network.
Peter Senge remains our inspiration, and the theory of the learning system is certainly still relevant today, but in this change of eras we see a need for a more learning society, a learning bureaucracy and a learning government.
That's a big challenge, but not an unrealistic one. We believe that we can achieve this together, by focusing on the entire system and on the different parts.
That is why we have developed a broad package of services for the individual employee, the leader, the team, the organization, the system, the culture and society.
SOL is a foundation; we want to help professionals to learn as a person, team, organization and society.
We learn a lot from, with and through each other. Both nationally and internationally. This is a learning process that you would also like to invite yourself to. Join our SOL Community and regularly receive the latest insights or join SOL PRO; you then have access to all articles, online training courses and (online) meet-ups of the Organization Learning Foundation. So that we can learn from, with and through each other.
Join the SOL Community and receive immediately free the e-book "The power of a Learning Culture" in your mailbox!
The Organization Learning Foundation (SOL) is located in Haarlem. We are registered with the Chamber of Commerce under number 41211494.
Our bank account: NL55 TRIO 0254 8476 33. You can reach us via: patrick.solnetherlands@gmail.nl
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