dr. Marc van der Erve

About Marc van der Erve

A prolific writer, a passionate speaker, a zealous researcher and developer of a novel iPhone App for leaders, Marc van der Erve helps you create a better understanding of yourself, your colleagues and your organization. He offers a highly practical approach yet as an integral part of a fundamentally new explanation of our world. The theory at the heart of this explanation gives access to a level of meta awareness that makes new sense of the manifold of organizational problems that you observe and manage. The insights of Marc van der Erve help you improve your effectiveness as business professional, identify the right leaders and create winning teams. The predictive power of the underlying theory helps you always stay one step ahead.

In a way, the ideas of Marc van der Erve build on the findings by Jim Collins, a leading author on corporate greatness. In two bestselling books, Collins first states that organizations can be “build to last” and that they can be managed from “good to great”.

Then, in a book published in 2009, nuanced by the sobering findings of his research team, Collins explains “how the mighty may fall” and “why some organizations never give in”.

Marc van der Erve notes that this revelation reminds of the findings by one of Collins’ famed predecessors, Rosabeth Kanter. In the early 1980s, Kanter identified the change-masters of her era to see some of her larger-than-life examples sadly fail and eventually disappear.

Involving the natural and social sciences, Marc van der Erve explains why organizations can rarely be build to last but generally only be grown to achieve. Organizations have lifecycles that may differ in length yet traverse universal stages of growth, decline and, occasionally, renewal.

Anchored in chaos theory and thermodynamics, the views of Marc van der Erve differ from the above epic reflections in that they go straight to the behavioral guts of the miracle of organization. It lays bare the determinants of success and demise in a way that is perhaps less spectacular yet in reach of business professionals.

Nonetheless, he compellingly responds to the hunch of Collins that corporate success depends on “key seats filled with the right people” by identifying and providing both the theoretical and practical means (his iPhone App: Emzine Profiler) to accomplish this.

So, in a way, the ideas of Marc van der Erve go beyond the findings of Collins and Kanter. Inspired by a novel theory of organization, they render diverse worlds of growth, decline and renewal each with its own problems, solutions and leadership needs.

His seminar and iPhone App hinge on some crucial research findings.

1. All forms of organization are ecosystems that consist of “behavior-pattern species”. They develop in at least four distinctive stages of emergence to minimize certain market- and human-inequalities as fast as the local circumstances allow.

2. Through past experiences, people develop comfort zones that correspond to one specific stage of organizational emergence. Locked in by neural networks that grow in the process, people revert to their comfort zone when push comes to shove.

3. Leaders perform best when they guide an organization to a stage that corresponds to their comfort zone. Leaders are in the way of the development of their organization when it is ready to advance to a stage beyond their comfort zone.

4. Each universal stage of organizational emergence has its own problems, solutions and leadership needs. You can predict the next stage including its characteristic problems, solutions and leadership needs when the current stage is known.

Emzine = Existential Manifold Zine, the hidden area where co-evolving behavior-pattern species “write” the manifold of organizations that we observe.

Relevant books by Marc van der Erve – A New Leadership Ethos: The Ability to Predict (2008) – A New Dimension of Time: The Future of Society (2007) – Evolution Management: Winning in Tomorrow’s Market Place (1994)

Marc van der Erve was born and educated in the Netherlands and holds a BSc. in Applied Physics cum laude and a PhD in Sociology from Tilburg University. After an international career as corporate strategist in computer manufacturing, he became European partner in the management-consulting division of one of the world’s main accountancy firms and, subsequently, independent boardroom consultant. He currently resides in South Africa and Europe. An author of eight books, he recently completed the first two books of a trilogy on our inevitably changing perception of both society and leadership. Together with Silver Touch Technologies Ltd in India, he developed Emzine Profiler, an iPhone App for business professionals (launched in Q4 2009).