When looking at the public sector, people not familiar with the structures and the relationship between administrations and the political level often ask how its governance structure compares to other environments, such as the private sector. Governance in the private sector is based on the management and control of a traditional principal - agent relationship. … Continue reading The governance and oversight structures in the Belgian federal government
Speaking about internal controls
Good governance, risk management and internal controls are essential to any organisation or group of organisations that deems itself mature. It's been a pleasure to speak about their relevance at the FGS Finance top 400 meeting on May 12th. 400 top managers of the FGS had come together for a day long discussion on the … Continue reading Speaking about internal controls
Low maintenance GTD
My failure to use electronic GTD tools I’ve been going back and forth on the tools I use to implement GTD. I’ve been all over the place: I’ve started with Omnifocus. It’s an interesting tool, but it tends to get very complex very fast, even with great teachers, such as Kourosh Dini. Do check out … Continue reading Low maintenance GTD
Why I prefer Things instead of OmniFocus
A faithful Omnifocus user ... For years I was a faithful Omnifocus user. I read the collected works of many bloggers and productivity specialists who would not talk of any other tool but Omnifocus. I followed the video courses which the OmniGroup so kindly provided. I worked with contexts, and projects, and did all I … Continue reading Why I prefer Things instead of OmniFocus
Joint risk assessment and single audit, sitting in a tree …
Loss of added value Internal audit and external audit both present their findings during the same audit committee meeting. It turns out that both structures independently audited the same entity which is part of the wider organisation. A lot of their findings align. They actually turn out to be comparable to some of the issues … Continue reading Joint risk assessment and single audit, sitting in a tree …
On teaching
This stray but very powerful thought just hit me: Teaching is, to me, still the most compelling reason to learn something new, either by exploring new horizons or, more importantly, by critically reexamining those areas I thought I knew. Something that just came to me and that I wanted to share.
The “why” of storytelling
Maria Popova hits one out of the ballpark again with this "animated essay" on the importance of storytelling. Two essential quotes from a great article. In the first one, she describes in a very clear and concise manner the difference and the interrelation between information, knowledge and wisdom: At its base is a piece of … Continue reading The “why” of storytelling
TextExpander: support with a smile
I'm a heavy TextExpander user and I love the application. Taking the time of setting up the text expansion "snippets" once and using them multiple times across different machines saves me time every single day. Losing my snippets But I had an issue. For some reason, after acquiring my MacBook Pro a couple of months … Continue reading TextExpander: support with a smile
A last comment on time budgeting
Throughout the articles on time budgeting, I was looking for a good wording for what I intuitively felt was a relevant and value added approach. Then I read this article on brainpickings.org, which words it in the most excellent and eloquent manner possible. In the words of Annie Dillard in her book "The Writing Life": … Continue reading A last comment on time budgeting
How my areas of responsibility contaminated my contexts
My struggles with contexts I don't know about you, but I have suffered through long years of struggle with contexts. I adore the idea that David Allen proposed in his work "Getting things done", but it took me a very long time to get them to work appropriately for me. I scoured the internet looking … Continue reading How my areas of responsibility contaminated my contexts
Exploring The Black Box 