👋 About JR

👋 Hi! I’m Jan-Rienk, and I’m obsessed with improvement.

(I confessed as if this was an AA meeting)

Yes that’s a Dutch double name (Frisian actually). You pronounce it Yan-Reenk, with a rolling R, but you can call me JR if that makes it easier. 🙂

Background

I grew up in Friesland, a province in the north of the Netherlands with a lot of lakes. I lived at sailing school Pean, which was owned by my parents.

As I became more involved this is where I learned how a company could look like. A flat organisation focused on delivering value. Our goal was clear. We had freedom and took responsibility to learn, teach and improve.

Failing and differences in opinion were considered learning opportunities, and I wasn’t even aware that micro-management was a thing.

I soon discovered that the “real world” out there was quite different.

Call me a dreamer, but I think we can do better.

Improvement career

Graduating Mechanical Engineering I did a Lean Assesment for a mixed model line.

I followed a workshop Value Sream Mapping and discovered for the production process I observed a quarter of the manual operations could be eliminated by switching to single piece flow. This meant the only thing needed to make drastic improvements is changing the order of doing things.

I was hooked!

I started seeing improvement opportunities everywhere. So I set becoming an improvement professional as the north star for my career.

Since then I have had several roles, moving more and more toward full-time improvement focus. This lead me to start Improving Every day, and to my current role at IPG Mediabrands where I improve business processes, with primary focus on rolling out and improving how we work with Asana.

Looking back, I realised that for each role I had successfully implemented new software. I have implemented Inventor, TopSolid ‘Wood, Trello (twice), Asana. Apart from Trello this was all software I hadn’t used before I started working there. I always seem to be the one who is quickly able to get to know new software and getting it to fulfill its purpose.

Asana

I started actively using Asana late 2022. I was looking for an alternative to Trello, as I couldn’t see how to fully implement Getting Things Done with it, and I wasn’t allowed to use Trello for work for compliance reasons.

At first I didn’t ‘get’ it. Then someone explained the concepts of mutli-homing, custom fields and rules, and I was hooked.

Within a couple of weeks I was the resident expert, and was asked to play a central role in the rollout for IPG Mediabrands Netherlands. (400+ employees).

I’ve become a fan of the software. It’s not often you use software that actually makes you smile using it.

Another thing that struck me was that Asana (as opposed to some other software companies) strikes a real good balance between listening to feedback, and sailing their own course.

This is why I’ve pivoted my career to helping people get better results using Asana.

Neurofunkyness

I discovered that my brain works differently than most people. Namely that I am an autistic ADHD-er, and that this has consequences for how I work.

Learning about my neurodivergence has been instrumental in developing better ways in how to deal with it. And being a process improvement geek, I had already started borrowing process improvement ideas to improve my personal life. It made sense I would apply these ideas to dealing with my brain being differently wired.

I go into more detail in the 🎙️introductory episode of my podcast and the 🎯 Coaching section of this website.

Also, I think the way my mind works helps me be a better improvement professional. I see connections others miss, and I’m able to visualise the entire system.

Personal

I live in Groningen, together with my lovely wife Aleksandra and our cat Boris.

I enjoy airsoft, making music (🎸 & 🎹 ), making things at my local maker space, and chess.