I started my career as a chef. After high-school I was searching for something exciting and the high-end food world seemed to have it all - creativity, science, art, a fast-paced atmosphere and plenty of room for misfits. I moved countries, did a bachelor in hospitality management and culinary arts, and after a few years, worked my way up the ranks of Michelin star restaurants. Through a lucky break, I ended up leading innovation at the Fat Duck Group (including two world-acclaimed restaurants, a range of FMCG products, Consumer Electronics, Books, and TV shows).

I learned a lot and loved the teamwork but ultimately I found that the way our organisation was structured was less than the sum of the parts. Those at the top were too frequently overstressed and too busy to play and experiment. Meanwhile, everyone else lacked the necessary support to cultivate their ideas and innovate, essentially acting as glorified assembly line workers. There had to be a better way!

In the innovation department, we had a lot of autonomy, and we used all of it and more to explore new methodologies. We took ideas from Lean, Agile, Design Thinking, and experimented with all kinds of ways of working. It was a crash course on office politics, the challenges of changing bureaucracy and the complexities of culture. Slowly but surely, I fell in love with organisation design.

After nearly three years at the Fat Duck Group, I felt I had reached the limit of what I could do from my position. I decided to leave the food world and explore.

I went to see those I had met through the innovation network. Eventually, a few doors started to open. An Oxford Professor kindly invited me to join the Experimental Psychology Department, doing a residency in his team. And the director of the School of Advance Studies of London University offered me an Associate Fellowship at the Institute of Philosophy. These platforms allowed me to go deeper into the research around motivation, group psychology, creativity, the construction of identity and culture. New ideas started to form but I still felt I needed some form of external accreditation or zeal of approval.

I thought doing an MBA would help me rebrand from being a chef and more into org design. And through multiple conversations, I ended up meeting a Professor who taught at Oxford’s MBA. After hearing my story he encouraged me to write about it before applying.

A few weeks later I showed him my draft. He took a red pen and crossed the whole thing off. In his words “You clearly don’t know how to write, but the ideas are good”. He coached me through two more iterations, and eventually, the article got published in Harvard Business Review. It was my first major win.

This gave me some credibility, and landed me an invitation to deliver a workshop for one of the executive programmes of the University. We got mega-project managers to design and serve a meal as a metaphor for systems design in an unfamiliar situation, a textbook definition of innovation. Somehow they went ahead with the gamble and, thankfully, it worked. The students loved it and the Dean mentioned it as an example of innovation in executive education.

The workshop then got me an invitation to participate in a couple of consulting projects. We advised the transformation of a hospital in Denmark and then looked into road construction in China.

Around this time, I started to explore self-management. On paper, it seemed like an antidote to the dysfunctions I had seen before. I started doing some part-time and volunteer jobs in this kind of organisations. Then got a certification in Holacracy, and went around meeting others who led or participated in transformations into Teal, Sociocracy, and other models of self-management.

I encountered a mixed bag of results. There were always some positives, but the work was very challenging, to the point that some organisations got distracted from tending to their core business, too distracted in fact. Many failed. Self-management seemed like the promised land, but there was no bridge to get there.

Another problem was that many of the coaches and consultants advising people seemed to have this black and white narrative. According to them, those who resisted self-management did it out of fear, greed, and laziness. There was a personal development angle missing or at least being overlooked. Instead of typecasting, we needed a way to meet people, where they are, are then move forward together.

Over the next three years, I continued researching the fundamentals of systems, psychology, and teamwork. Of particular impact, I found the works of the cyberneticians on complexity management, the Ostroms on management of the commons, and self-determination theory to understand motivation and learning. I started to see a new paradigm emerging, where these different strands could come together. In our rapidly changing, uncertain, and complex world, what makes a great organisation is not a heroic leader, nor the skill of its members. What makes or breaks an organisation is the interactions between its members.

Specifically, we can narrow the list of key interactions down to six, which contribute the lion’s share of success. These are Identity, Future, Change, Coordination, Operations, and Support. I called them the Six Key Interactions.

I spent my time advising and facilitating programmes for organisational transformation, scaling-up, innovation and leadership development. Eventually running workshops for the likes of The United Nations, Daimler, Google, and Boston Consulting Group.

But everywhere I went, something was missing. Each of these organisations lacked either the funding, technological capabilities, or the willingness to reinvent itself.

It wasn’t until I encountered the world of Web3 (Cyrpto at the time), that it all came together. I finally found communities to co-create new systems and possibilities, rather than put bandaids on outdated ones.

Since, I’ve dived deep into decentralised governance systems, joined (and left) Aragon as Head of Governance, launched a couple of DAOs, and been humbled more than once by the

I look forward to meeting you!