By Marian Stellingwerf, Change Consultant at &samhoud
Marian Stellingwerf is driven by the ambition of making the world a better place through businesses.
Marian has a Master’s in Science, Culture, Organisation, and Management. She has a proven track record in organizational, cultural and behavioural change across a large range of sectors including financial services, retail, professional and semi-public services, telecom and transport and logistics, and a recent background in Business Sustainability Management at Cambridge.
Marian embodies authenticity, openness, positivity and responsibility, all core values needed to be a catalyst for positive change.
She is today a Change Consultant at &samhoud, a strategic consultancy based in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
She helps organisations define their purpose and make the translation into a clear strategy. Even though it’s often a top-down and a bottom-up process, this starts at the board level. By actively engaging managers and employees, it trickles down throughout the entire organisation to ensure value is created for employees, customers, society, and ultimately, all stakeholders.
A change for good
At &samhoud, the connection between sustainability and behavioural change is clear.
Despite all laws and regulations mandating organisations to embed sustainability into their way of doing business, the true impact comes from businesses that take the extra mile and go beyond compliance.
For that to happen, the behaviour of leaders and employees is the key to success: they will have to make brave choices, dare to take risks, and turn promises into action.
After all, organisations don’t change. People do.
Once a shared desire to make a change for good is achieved within the organisation, there are three key steps to embark on:
- Develop and integrate a sustainability vision and strategy – the first step is to define a strong vision and sustainability strategy. &samhoud helps in setting direction, making choices, and identifying what behaviour change is needed.
- Bring the sustainability strategy to life – at this stage, it is important to create the right conditions for change to happen. This means that the sustainability ambitions set at an earlier stage start to be actively realised. Below are the 3 must-do:
#1 Engage. Create awareness and mobilise energy throughout the entire organisation. Involve the various teams to embed sustainability ambitions into their daily work.
#2 Act. Translate ambition into action. This asks for concrete decision-making by executives and management.
#3 Stimulate. Tie incentives to performance and desired behaviours to accelerate change in the right direction. Share insights concerning the drivers of people’s behaviour to stimulate change. - Activate sustainable behaviour of clients and customers – change doesn’t stop with an organisation’s own operations. Businesses can inspire clients and customers to scale the scope of positive change. &samhoud can help develop concepts to make sustainable choices easier for customers.
Combining forces for a brighter future
Nexio Projects and &samhoud’s expertise intertwine to support organisations on the journey to find purpose and embed it in their way of doing business.
Our partnership was kicked off in 2022, built on the idea of combining &samhoud’s expertise in the area of organisational purpose & strategy, leadership and team management, and behavioural change, with the expertise of Nexio Projects, rooted in sustainability strategy, reporting, and decarbonisation.
To leverage our collaboration, we co-hosted a Sustainability Inspiration Dinner in September. The idea was to create an opportunity for sustainability directors to create personal connections and share experiences from the business world, as well as foster change through the exchange of best practices and ambitions.
Our shared goals pursued through the organisation of this event were:
- Creating a platform to connect like-minded people across sectors;
- Facilitating change through connection, inspiration, and sharing;
- Learning from one another’s challenges and discovering new ways to collaborate.
Given the enthusiasm perceived during the Sustainability Inspiration Dinner, Nexio Projects and &samhoud aim to partner up more in the future to keep this space of connection and inspiration and look forward to a brighter future together.
About &samhoud
&samhoud is on a mission to solve strategic challenges through the behaviour of people. The goal is to build a brighter future. Achieving breakthroughs by inspiring and connecting people. As &samhoud puts it, their approach is unusual but unusually effective.
With the combination of consultancy, gamification, and technology, &samhoud has been helping organisations for over 30 years to achieve business goals, develop strategies, implement their vision, and create meaningful change.