Guest Blog – Occo Lijding – A Bit Past, Present and Future

A bit past, present and future

Two weeks ago, Jan-Leen reflected in his blog on his 20 years at Harvey Nash. Today I can reflect on 5 days at Harvey Nash as his successor. My name is Occo Lijding and I am honored to share my first impressions as a Managing Director for Harvey Nash in the Netherlands.

A great place to work

Jan-Leen made the comparison in his blog, which I highly recommend reading if you didn’t already, with a symphony orchestra. I can only underline those words. Already after spending just a few days with the team, I can only conclude that they have grown to be a professional, highly skilled and well managed group. I do want to add that the orchestra is not only putting a high performance on stage, it is done with a smile on the face, Harvey Nash is a great place to work.

I had the pleasure to spend my week talking to my new colleagues to get to know them, their roles and our business, both local as well as global. It was a pleasure to be welcomed with such open arms and a great week of learning.

Looking forward

It’s fantastic to see all the great achievements that Harvey Nash already accomplished and that the business is doing very well in the Netherlands. But I do realize that we also need to make sure that we continue our success or get even better. We need to keep a clear view on customer needs to see and create new business opportunities to deliver the very best service as we can. There will be new challenges for sure, either related to the pandemic (hopefully) in the final stages or because of trends and developments in the market. Within a changing market, from my point of view there will be some important subjects which we have to deal with in the near future:

- The lack of talent in the market;

- Customers become more demanding;

- Changes in law and regulations;

- Competitors are consolidating.

During the past week I recognized that Harvey Nash has a lot of answers for these chances in the market. The best one is being a track record of handling change well by deep diving into new situations and spending time with colleagues, customers and candidates in a (virtual) room to talk them through. Simply by having a business model where the strength of many specialist are combined in the service offering of Harvey Nash is a way of dealing with a changing market.

I can only anticipate the learnings I will have in the following weeks, months and years to come. I’m confident we will be able to keep on tackling these items and continue to provide high standard service to our customers.

Together we will make our future

I chose for Harvey Nash because of the reputation as trusted and professional supplier with a large delivery capability and I already get this confirmed from what I see and experience within the organization. I really am looking forward to use all my knowledge and experience in cooperation with all colleagues to face a great and successful future together with and at Harvey Nash.

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