About me
You might have seen stickers with my face on it, captioned "What Would Erik Do?". But before asking this question, you might first wonder "Who the hell is Erik?". Scroll down, you will know everything about me!
Hey, hello! 👋
That's me, Erik.
Erik John Collard, to be complete.
After 15 years in the retail business in coaching and training roles, I discovered the magic world of Agile in 2019 when the company I was working in started scaling up their Agile Way Of Working.
And this is how people decide to totally reshift their career to something that would change their life forever.
Instant boom.
Love at first sight.
As an Agile consultant, I combine my passion for sharing, my love for people and my addiction to continuous improvement, and draw on my unlimited stock of energy to bring a fun, informal and often unexpected vibe into the most boring and unengaging discussions.
With a deep understanding of the Scrum framework and a strong connection with the Business reality of the corporate world, I build bridges and make sure everyone is going in the same direction, in an engaging way.
Flashback to the year 2000.
After being a relatively brilliant student (it only took me 7 years to do my 6 secondary school classes), I briefly studied computer science and graphic design before it was finally time to find a job.
Timeline :
First steps :
Sales Representative at GSM Point Services
My career started in 2004, as a temporary salesman in small telecom retail company in my area (east of Belgium).
As I was surprisingly capable in this job, my boss offered me a permanent contract as a sales representative.
In this job I learned about
Listening over speaking and the basics of business psychology.
When dedication pays off :
Shop Manager & Team Leader
Quickly, after taking the lead in the stores I was working in, I was promoted Shop Manager, then Team Leader for 3 different shops.
In this role, in addition to being an active part of the sales teams, I was also supervising the sales representatives.
In this job I learned about
measuring the right things, giving a special attention to details and more theory-based sales techniques.
Bigger company, bigger scope :
Cluster Leader at ALLO telecom
When GSM Point Services was acquired by and merged into the existing ALLO telecom retail chain in 2008, my role switched to the Cluster Leader position. Not only my accountabilities switched from 3 to 6 shops, but working in a bigger structure also came with new challenges, the main one being that this company was way more result-oriented and focused on compliance, rules and guidelines.
In this job I learned about
people management and team dynamics.
From executing to designing :
Field Coach at BASE company
In 2016, when ALLO telecom was merged into the existing BASE-shop chain, there was a brand new company culture to embrace. I was named Field Coach of a 7 BASE-shops, mixing regular BASE-shops and former ALLO telecom shops.
A change that I was both excited about and scared of, mainly due to the fact that for BASE-shop employees, being coached by a former ALLO telecom guy was the joke of the year. So instead of playing the "boss" card, I tried to understand their resistance, why there was a tendency from BASE-shop people to "despise" former ALLO telecom people.
Once these points were clearly formulated, we could start working on our collaboration by tackling the main blockers and frustrations. In this more open company culture, I could explore my creativity and design my own coaching modules to the sales teams.
In this job I learned about
dealing with resistance to change, servant leadership and the importance of psychological safety in the workplace.
Welcome to the corporate world :
Retail Customer Expert & Trainer at Telenet
The Telecom world was a rollercoaster! After Telenet acquired BASE in 2017 and the merger was agreed by the regulator, the real organizational changes could start : The Field Coaches became Retail Customer Experts.
In this role, we designed specific trainings for the retail teams about our procedures, our products, our hardware offering etc. This role quickly merged (again 😅) with the existing Telenet training team, which gave trainings to the rest of the company about various topics.
In this job I learned about
corporate communication, workplace dynamics and creating bonds between people & teams.
The REVELATION :
Scrum Master at Telenet
When Telenet started to implement their Agile way of working in 2019, they offered their employees to jump in the train by training them to become Scrum Masters.
This is where the magic happened. A whole new world opened to me, that I frenetically explored in every way possible.
My first assignment as a Scrum Master was in a marketing team that had the perfect balance of openness and fair challenge, so that I could learn in a very healthy environment. I quickly extended my scope to a second team, which was way more technical.
Read more about this journey here !
In this job I learned about
Scrum in the real world and how to make it fit to the reality of the organization.
The CONFIRMATION :
Scrum Coach at Telenet
After 3 years as a Scrum Master of various teams, it was time to take things up from a higher perspective : By operating at the level of a Tribe supervising 8 digital product teams, I was able to observe team collaboration and challenges from a systemic point of view and to support the whole Tribe in its way of working.
In this job I learned about
Quickly assessing personal priorities : such a broad scope needed a more strict priority setting system and a tighter focus on what really matters.
Doing this job in a tribe working on digital products was also the perfect context to extend the technical knowledge I'm using to this day!
The BIG LEAP :
Starting my own company
After a while, moving from teams to teams in the same company was not challenging anymore. Working for years as a change agent in the same company is tricky : At some point, you just become a part of the system
that you should objectively observe and challenge.
It was time for me to embrace the ambition that started emerging a few years ago : using the acquired experience and knowledge to start my own company and chase missions as a freelancer.
Leaving a company where i knew everyone to join one where I could nobody and nobody knew me felt like a master reset. It gave me the chance to quickly pinpoint the value I could bring in the teams I recently joined as a Scrum Master : without my reputation preceding me, I needed to quickly gain their trust so I used my toolbox of knowledge to help them improving.
Step by step.
Bit by bit.
My stakeholder management and communication skills gradually helped me become an important member of the Product Cluster I'm a part of and the passion that led me here continues to give me the energy I need to give the best of myself, day after day!
In this job I learned about
(and I still am)
finding my place and value in a brand new sector. A new client means new environments, new processes and new challenges.
And I made sure to have an impact on it all!
Oh, you made it up to here? It's great! But now...
Enough about me.
No, it's rather the opposite : enough about work, more about me 🙋♂️.
I live in Belgium, in a very charming part of it - Plombières, in the province of Liège. Happily married and a father of 2 teenagers, you can imagine that "peace" is not exactly a part of my daily routine.
That's a luck, I need energy as much as I give it, which translates to my conflicting tastes :
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I ❤️ energizing workouts as much as calm lonely runs
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I ❤️ punk hardcore music as much as I love 90's RnB
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I ❤️ eating healthy as much as I can't resist chocolate
