Questions I get asked

Frederic Merlin is a keynote speaker and organizational consultant based in Ghent, Belgium, working internationally. He gives one keynote, told for the room: right now, what AI takes over at work, and what comes in its place. And he works with owners on their Core (strategy), structure and people, in that order, with an end date. Economist by training, with years as CEO and consultant.

AI takes over tasks. What comes in their place? AI takes tasks out of a job first. What fills the freed room is not the company’s choice alone. Is someone replanted, in work that asks more of their talent? Or do they stay buried in a job that empties out? One talk, told for your room. The core stays; the examples, the angle and the title follow your audience.

45 to 90 minutes, in English, Dutch or French. It is made for mixed rooms: leaders and employee representatives in the same hall. Plain words, so it carries through interpretation. The interpreters get a glossary and the outline a month ahead.

Everyone else looks at the tree; I read the soil. The soil is the Core (strategy) of a company, and the structure that carries it. Together they set the conditions people work in, and those conditions decide whether a person can grow there. So when a company says it has a people problem, the answer is almost never in the person. It is in the soil around them.

No. Right tree, right soil means the two fit each other. No soil is right for every tree, and no tree is right for every soil. I read both first. Sometimes the person moves to a place that fits. Often the soil can change a little, in the role or in the ties around it, without breaking the structure.

The Core is where a company wants to go, and the choices that steer it there. It is more than a strategy. It holds what the company is for, where it is heading, the one decision that matters most now, and how people are expected to work together on the way. We build it together, the owner and usually the leadership team, and write it down in plain words, with a few dated bets so we can check later whether it was right. It is made to be used: every choice in it has to be something the organisation can act on from Monday morning. The structure and the people follow from it.

You come in with a question: a person who isn’t working out, a team that stalls, two departments to merge, a next step nobody can name. I start from the other end. First the Core (strategy): where the company wants to go, and the choices that steer it there. Then the structure: the roles and ties that carry it. Then the people. Every engagement is tailored to the company, and each part has its own module. For the people part: The Sociographer is the instrument I work with. From people’s own answers, it reads which trees they are and whether their soil feeds them, and it maps who turns to whom in a team. Nothing starts without an end date and a hand-over.

Yes. I’m writing a book with the same title as the keynote, Planted or Buried. It is about being planted in the wrong soil, and the long way round to the soil that is yours. Its message in one line: you’re not failing, you’re planted in the wrong soil. No date yet.

Which profile should I hire? Something isn’t working and I can’t say why. We want to take this department to the next level. We want to merge two departments. They look like questions about people. Most of them are about the Core and the structure first.