News · June 2026
A note from Fons on what we're working on, and why.
It has been too quiet from our side for too long, though not for want of things to say. The work itself kept taking priority over writing about it. We often ask leaders not to choose between doing the work and making the thinking visible. That, of course, is our own dilemma too.
Update
06/2026
silent but not idle
Salute
Why this, now
Polarisation, AI, and the need to reconcile.
Would you agree with the following?
Strategy defines what an organisation needs to be good at. Culture determines whether it will be. Innovation increasingly depends on the ability to reconcile different viewpoints, not by choosing one side over the other but by finding a way through together.
In a world of polarisation and accelerating AI adoption, recognising, respecting, reconciling and realising the power of connecting different viewpoints is more relevant than ever. Here is a brief update on how we are helping people move from either-or to through-through thinking. Research, client impact, and new tools.
Research
Turning tension into traction.
Why do leaders so often understand the idea of reconciliation, yet struggle to practise it under pressure? What do those who succeed actually do? And what can other leaders learn from those stories?
That is what we want to find out. We are working on a new book, "Tension to Traction", based on CEO interviews. It builds on "21 Leaders for the 21st Century", which set out reconciliation as the critical leadership competence. Targeted publication is early 2027.
Want to contribute? Connect us to a CEO you think should be interviewed, or review and critique the first chapters. Let us know.
Fons is co-authoring with Bas Kemme, a fellow Dutchman who brings deep consulting and start-up leadership experience at the intersection of strategy, innovation, culture and AI.
Client impact
How we're helping clients perform.
How is Trompenaars Hampden-Turner helping companies improve performance these days? Four examples.
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A global confectionery company.
A new growth blueprint built around the strategic and cultural dilemmas the Executive Board actually faces. We facilitated the work, including the new values that turn those dilemmas into concrete daily Board behaviour. -
A global bank's top hundred CTO leaders.
A common language for working with culture and a different way of thinking. We trained them on the 7 Dimensions of Culture and on how to move at the speed of Revolut while holding the highest safety standards. Building on this, we now support a broader leadership programme on cultural agility, AI and dilemma thinking, helping leaders translate complex transformation tensions into practical leadership behaviour. -
A group of professional services firms.
A shift from treating generational diversity as friction to using it as a source of high performance. We taught the methods that make the shift workable. -
A global maritime logistics provider.
A new post-merger culture, built during a top-hundred off-site we facilitated with AI-enabled live consulting to surface and resolve key dilemmas in real time, followed by analogue poster sessions to work each one through.
What dilemma thinking offers is the working method most organisations are missing. Intelligence, intention and values are usually present already. The shortage is in how to hold competing truths together long enough to find a through-through. Dilemma thinking helps leaders move past the pressure to polarise too easily, choose too quickly, compromise too thinly. Tension is the raw material; the work is making it fruitful.
That is the bridge we build: research, consulting and training that take dilemmas from diagnosis into daily leadership practice.
Werkzeuge
New AI-enabled tools.
How do you bring decades of research and field experience into daily use, for a broad audience? Two new AI-enabled tools, both designed to make the methods practical at team level.
Dilemma Solver©
Do you know the feeling of sitting in a meeting where the Executive Board, or any team, is circling, not yet able to see the dilemma underneath, waiting for a solution no one has reached for?
The AI-enabled Dilemma Solver records the conversation, plays back the dilemmas in clear language, and offers direction for breakthrough solutions. It helps teams hear what is already in the room, and nudges through-through as a different way of thinking. Human judgement still does the deciding.
No other AI can do this. The Dilemma Solver is trained on our proprietary databases of over 60,000 dilemmas and solutions gathered across industries, cultures and leadership contexts.
Used well, it makes through-through thinking part of daily leadership practice, beyond the occasional offsite.
In early May, Fons Trompenaars led a Train-the-Trainer in Amsterdam on the why, what and how of dilemma thinking for reconciliation, where we introduced the Dilemma Solver© to a new cohort of practitioners. More cohorts will follow.
Employability Guide©
Do you sometimes ask yourself, during reorganisations and now with AI replacing tasks and even jobs: How do we do redeployment well? How do we help people find positions that fit their true potential? Or, in a tight labour market, how do we broaden the net and improving screening at the same time? How do we move past CV-based decisions?
The Employability Guide explores how people keep developing skills, confidence and adaptability while organisations create the conditions for that development to happen.
Employability is a reconciliation. Personal responsibility on one side, organisational promise on the other; the value comes from holding both. Where most career tools help people discover possible jobs, the Employability Guide© turns career uncertainty into shared responsibility, guided action and measurable mobility. Organisations need to create the context, opportunity and encouragement for that ownership to be meaningful.
We are currently in conversation with a number of leading organisations to introduce the employability guide.
Refreshed website
The site, refreshed.
Have you found our site hard to navigate? We have too. It needs to serve us in order to serve you. We've started rebuilding it as a resource for anyone working on leadership and culture for business. What sets us apart is that our methods are both research-rooted and field-tested, developed across three decades of work on culture, values and dilemmas, refined through practical experience with organisations across many industries.
Have a look around. Tell us what you liked, what you didn't, and what is missing.
Get in touch
Did something here resonate?
Different viewpoints, competing priorities and difficult choices are part of every organisation. The question is not whether they exist, but what we do with them. If anything in this update sparked a thought, challenged an assumption, or connected with a challenge you are facing, we would be delighted to hear from you.