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Navigating and thriving through uncertainty

You cannot achieve a breakthrough, change, or transformation unless you are willing to take a risk and step into the unknown. Uncertainty is part of any form of improvement; however, people tend to avoid uncertainty as much as possible.

Luckily, there is much you can do to make uncertainty more bearable for yourself (and your teams). According to Susannah Harmon Furr and Nathan Furr (authors of the science-backed guide for navigating and thriving through uncertainty), uncertainty is a muscle that you can train.

By deliberately exposing yourself to new experiences (even small ones, like cycling a different way to work, having lunch with other people than normally, etc.), you can become more comfortable with the unfamiliar. These types of activities stimulate the muscle of adaptability, preparing you for larger uncertainties that life may throw your way.

Coping with change is all about training yourself to trust that you can cope with uncertainty and feel that whenever there is uncertainty, you’ll be able to cope with it. What small activities can you think of to support yourself and your colleagues in coping with future changes as well?

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Kim Pillen

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Kim Pillen

Consultant

Before Kim Pillen started as a trend consultant at TrendsActive, she worked for four years as a creative strategist at Dept. For brands such as Philips, bol.com, Beiersdorf, JBL, and the Consumers’ Association, she built (online) campaign, brand, and social media strategies. After four years, she decided that she wanted to better understand people and society in order to advise brands more effectively. That’s how she ended up at TrendsActive. Here, she can do what she loves most: digging into people’s needs and then working with brands to see how and where they can be relevant and meaningful.

Douwe Knijff

Researcher

Douwe is fascinated by how people work. With a background in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (Bachelor) and Psychology (Master) and an analytical mind he tries figure out how societal shifts manifest themselves through social culture and human behaviour.

Aljan De Boer

Keynote speaker

Aljan has been widely recognized as an inspiring professional speaker on the critical trends that will shape society in the decades to come. He works as the Head of Inspiration at TrendsActive, a trend consultancy from the Netherlands using social science to human-proof business decision for brands like

  • Disney
  • Vodafone
  • Hugo Boss
  • ASR
  • Rabobank

Next to his role at TrendsActive he is the Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth where he inspires and connects a global community of +400 CMOs.  

He has been on the board of the Dutch Platform of Innovative Marketing for almost a decade. Regular speaker and moderator for the Dutch Marketing Awards and 3 times winner of the best of MIE. 

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist

Kees his purpose is to help ambitious leaders and brands to human-proof their business. In 2003 he founded TrendsActive, a trend consultancy enabling brands to become more human centric.

Kees consults global brands like

  • Disney
  • The Coca-Cola Company
  • Asics
  • Discovery Channel
  • Swiss Life
  • Vodafone

and many more.

Next to being the founder of TrendsActive, he is also initiator of the first academic trend master for executives at the University of Utrecht and is initiator of various trend studies and white papers on subjects like trust, meaning, visual culture & generations.

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist