LEAP Ambition event: The Speakers (3) Berend Jan Hilberts
Thu 19 August 2010
, ELP, ELP
An associate partner of Executive Learning Partnership (ELP) and head of ELP’s Social Media Leadership Lab practice, Berend Jan Hilberts is a strategist at heart. He’s one of the speakers at the LEAP Connected Ambition event. A profile.
Berend Jan is an experienced strategist. He has helped companies develop strategy and new growth initiatives, both as an internal and external board adviser. He believes in leveraging the knowledge and expertise present in the client to ‘in-source' the strategic conversation. He has experienced - both as a client and as an advisor - how much more engaged and committed leadership teams are when creating the strategy themselves, and how much better the implementation results are because of the shared ownership of the strategy.
Social media and business
He is an associate partner of Executive Learning Partnership (ELP) and practice head of the Social Media Leadership Lab practice of ELP. This new practice helps clients to understand the impact of Social Media in a business context, specifically how leadership, structure, culture and strategy will need to evolve if companies want to reap the benefits. These benefits could range from higher customer advocacy to higher employee engagement.
‘Connect & Collaborate’
Berend Jan has a strong interest in anything related to complex adaptive systems, specifically in issues around self-organization, emergent patterns, and narrative techniques for sense making. He is actively examining how social media can play a positive role in helping companies make sense of their environment and its challenges in the complex and connected world that they live in today. Related to this, he is in the process of articulating ‘Connect & Collaborate’ Leadership styles and attributes that help companies successfully adapt in these conditions.
Global player
Earlier in his career, he had a longstanding ‘love affair’ with his first employer, VNU, in various line management and strategy functions. Back then he spent two stints for a total of 8 years in VNU's New York office. During this period, he was closely involved in the transition of VNU from a European publisher to a Global Marketing Information player through acquisitions of ACNielsen and other assets, and he worked across both the publishing and the market research businesses. More recently, he was instrumental in building a strategy competence centre for TMG (Telegraaf Media Group) and in developing a growth strategy matching the company's international aspirations at that time.
Leadership development
Berend Jan is married and proud dad of two boys. He holds a Master Degree in Business Economics of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. And during his career at VNU was selected for various leadership development programmes that included several executive education programmes at Ashridge Business School, UK.
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