About
Professional experience
Business Markers (atypical advice- and implementation company): Partner - focus on actionable strategy, commercial excellence, people & culture, leadership, and ESG
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CIM (JIC for media audience measurement): President
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Sympl (HR-tech/Saas): Non-executive board member - strategic and commercial sounding board for the founders
Birdhouse (accelerator): Start-up advisor - pro bono counseling and mentoring
Remedus (home care and care tech/Saas): CEO – business transformation
Clear Channel (media & advertising - urban development):
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CEO-roles in Belgium and Switzerland – business transformation
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ExCo-member - commercial excellence lead in Europe, LatAm and Asia with focus on sales force effectiveness, yield maximisation and digital transformation (product, process and channel)
DPG Media/RTBF (media): commercial lead
Unilever (FMCG): marketing and sales
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Main competences
What is Business Development
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It’s easy. Just click “Edit Text” or double click me to add your own content and make changes to the font. Feel free to drag and drop me anywhere you like on your page. I’m a great place for you to tell a story and let your users know a little more about you.
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This is a great space to write a long text about your company and your services. You can use this space to go into a little more detail about your company. Talk about your team and what services you provide. Tell your visitors the story of how you came up with the idea for your business and what makes you different from your competitors. Make your company stand out and show your visitors who you are.
01
Business transformation at pace
I am good and fast at assessing risks and opportunities of a company, making use of my strong analytical skills, translating those into a focused action plan, and making sure execution leads to lasting results. I am conscious though to respect your or your company's timing and pace.
Examples:
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I managed to initiate and succeed a lasting turnaround of Clear Channel Switzerland in only 7 months (re-focus and re-shape the business, including review of the product portfolio, launching of a digital offering, hiring a new CEO, and building a new management team).
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At Remedus I transitioned a s.q. home care business into two independent growth entities: one focused on home care operations, the other focused on Saas-development in health care.​
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I scored >99% vs an international peer group of 7.000 senior managers and executives on verbal, numerical and diagrammatic formats – Swift Analysis Aptitude – 10/2019
02
Organisational design and talent development
I work hard on creating clarity and purpose for all teams and individuals, with an organisational design reflecting the business needs. Within that organisation I like to empower, guide and manage talented individuals to become high performing, engaged teams (including managing succession).
Examples:
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When transforming both Clear Channel Belgium and Clear Channel Switzerland, I reviewed my leadership structure, making sure we had a small, strong Executive Committee with the necessary complimentary profiles to define our strategy, and a solid management team to ensure swift execution.
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At DPG Media, I reviewed our organisational structure in order to make sure our sales teams got the right support from our planning and pricing department so they could maximise revenues selling our commercial TV-space at the right price at the right moment to the right customer.
03
Customer centric curiosity
I have worked in different industries (FMCG, Media/Advertising, Urban development, Home Care, HR, Saas,…), and I have always seen it as a privilege to discover the dreams and the fears of customers or business partners in any industry, and use this to initiate or improve a collaboration. I am convinced accepting the unknown leads to diversity in thinking and new enriching paths.
Examples:
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As Commercial Director at DPG Media, my active listening skills were crucial in adapting our TV-programme scheme to reach a more targeted audience.
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As CEO of Clear Channel Belgium, I reviewed our go-to-market strategy, broadening our competitive scope from the small outdoor-market to the ‘all media’-market in order to better meet our customer needs.
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As CEO of Remedus Home Care, by reviewing our product and pricing proposition in order to better match the expectations of our customers, our main competitor decided to withdraw from the Belgian market.
04
Motivational communication with a strong sense of purpose
I am good at simplifying so-called complicated challenges, and ‘selling’ solutions or projects towards all layers of the organisation (from convincing board level down to enthusing blue collar staff).
Examples:
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I convinced the Clear Channel board to invest in programmatic, developed a roadmap with clear priority settings across markets, and managed to excite the industry being a first mover.
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At Unilever, I managed to reverse the company strategy in frozen food (Iglo) from focus on ingredients to focus on prepared meals with the objective to counter Private Labels.
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As CEO of Remedus, I managed to create energy and excitement for our performance, even during the COVID-lockdown, using monthly newsletters and quarterly –virtual- townhall meetings, discussing the results, looking back at our tops and flops, and looking forward to our priorities for the period to come.
05
Solution and results oriented
One former colleague at Clear Channel International called me ‘an expansive thinker’, because I always came up with creative solutions when faced with challenges. A former boss at DPG Media called me ‘a voluntarist’, because I always delivered results in whatever context. And a former team member at Clear Channel Belgium called me ‘un vrai homme d’affaires avec une âme d’artiste’, because he saw the process towards those solutions and results as a kind of art...
Examples:
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At Clear Channel Belgium we won back a few big contracts in Antwerp from our main competitor using a totally new approach which surprised not only our board and the city of Antwerp but thus also our competitor.
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At Clear Channel Switzerland, when I was the interim CEO, we delivered a 7% revenue growth and a 5% profit growth after several years of profit decrease.
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When I am coaching, my focus should be on the process and not on the solution. In order to train that approach, I graduated from an intensive ICF-coaching training at HRDA.
ACT11 and my Values
My key values -both professionally and personally- are to connect and to have impact. That's where my energy flows. And I do believe the combination of both lead to growth.
It is important to ACT, or to work towards action; too many businesses or people are stuck in making plans or overthinking without focusing on the implementation, denying themselves to grow.
11 is a number which comes back in all birthdates of my little family, and they are my biggest source of happiness.
ACT11 is an actin in nature responsible for reproduction. I do believe everything has been done already somewhere by someone, and I see it is an art to reproduce it in an intelligent way within a new context; to use all my senses, looking at everything and everyone with an open mind and with different perspectives, and help other people do the same, in order to use this as a major source of inspiration for every challenge.
Energy & inspiration
Father of Olivia and Charlotte, and bonus-father of Laura.
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Enjoying the company of family and friends, especially with a good glass of wine and good food, home-made by my personal Ottolenghi-fan, Veerle.
Hockeyplayer at HC Merode Grimbergen, Club Umpire, and stand-in coach for my daughters’ teams.
Appreciating a diversity of cultures and insights by travelling and reading. Special interest in sociology and politics.
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Author of the book 'Leadership Unravelled', helping leaders build bridges in our polarising world
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