People, moments and movement
Ten years ago, we showed up at the VOV fair with a caravan. Artificial grass, coffee, cards and a lot of drive to approach learning and change differently.
Today, ten years on. 23 Beans. 327 clients. 14 languages. And still the same drive: helping organisations move in ways that benefit both people and business.
This is not a heroic anniversary story. This is a look at what truly defines us over ten years.
What we stand for
Our values are the lens through which we see everything.
- Involved. We are your companion on the road. We sink our teeth into your challenge and stand by your side, even when things get tough.
- Real. We connect human to human. Authentic, and never shying away from the real conversation.
- Solid. We continuously invest in sharpening our knowledge and our personal development.
- Inventive. We don’t cling rigidly to familiar recipes. We love innovation and creativity.
- Gabba gabba hey. It doesn’t always have to be deadly serious. A healthy dose of fun and perspective can work wonders.
Our mission remains simple and ambitious at once: we build adaptive organisations where people and business thrive. Together. We do this across four domains: leadership, teams, culture and organizational design.
Keep learning, keep teaching
If we want to challenge organisations on leadership, teams and culture, we need to go through the learning curve ourselves first. And that’s exactly what our Beans have been doing in practice.
Pieter trained as a counsellor at Focus on Emotion, precisely the kind of depth you feel in our leadership programmes. Bruno immersed himself in designing and facilitating learning environments through Kaospilot. François deepened his expertise in corporate anthropology and organizational culture, which underpins how we look at rituals, stories and the undercurrent in organisations. Roel and Kris specialized in psychological safety and coaching through The Fearless Organisation and ICF programmes. Sara combines her academic background in communication with further training in leadership and coaching, shifting effortlessly between a research mindset and hands-on practice.
Our Beans also pass that knowledge on: through BOB-days where they share their learnings with colleagues, and through teaching opportunities at colleges and universities. Beans stand in front of classrooms at Karel de Grote Hogeschool, Sint-Lucas Antwerpen, Antwerp Management School, KU Leuven, HoGent, Franklin University Lugano and the University of Amsterdam. And in youth work at Scouts & Gidsen Vlaanderen.
That combination of continuous learning and active teaching means our interventions don’t get stuck in models. They land in real conversations, sharper working methods and tools that teams can actually use the very next day.
Formats that work
We don’t believe in one size fits all. We do believe in a solid foundation of formats that we deploy and adapt smartly.
We start with ourselves. On BOB-days (Best Of Bean) we hold our own approach up to the light: testing new tools, sharpening content, challenging each other. Much of what eventually reaches clients passes through here first. Co-fridays and co-working days are moments to build together on ongoing programmes and new ideas. Beanissimo’s (our own type of offsite) keep the collective sharp and connected.
For organizations that want a taste of how we work, we offer accessible entry formats. Explore&Learn sessions are short, punchy half-days around a single theme: psychological safety, team effectiveness, leadership, at our .CO in Hoboken or in Brussels. The Leadership Bootcamp (pilot 2025) is a 1.5-day offsite where L&D and HR managers participate in a “real” bootcamp and see firsthand how we build multi-day programmes.
With clients, we work across the full spectrum from keynote to multi-day programme: inspirational sessions for large groups, webinars for international teams, deep-dive working days on team dynamics or culture, and learning journeys combining live sessions, workplace experiments, coaching and peer learning, at home and abroad.
Tools and topics that stick
Over ten years, we developed more than 50 proprietary tools: canvases, card sets, frameworks and dialogue formats. We worked across more than forty topics, from feedback culture and storytelling for leaders to psychological safety, change resilience and organizational design. And we wrote more than 30 field-guides and learning journals that help participants experiment, reflect and capture their own progress during and between sessions.
Languages, countries and clients
Ten years of Beanmachine is also ten years of working in very different contexts. 327 clients, from large corporates and public organisations to SMEs and non-profits. Materials and programmes in fourteen languages, including Mandarin, Japanese, Indonesian and Slovenian. And facilitation across twelve countries, from Belgium and the Netherlands to Cyprus, Hungary and Greece.
We are deliberately not a global giant. But we do know how to make a story, a programme and a set of tools work across different languages, cultures and realities.
Fun facts and favorite moments
Between all the programmes, there’s also this: campfires. Officially too many to count. Unofficially: enough to know that some conversations are better had around a fire than in a meeting room.
Favorite moments? Singing “Shalom Chaverim” in a round around the campfire. A day that ends the way Bean Roel once summed it up: “Insight, learning, connection, fun, a corner turned, and leaving with more energy than we arrived with.” Sharing a meal or throwing a party with participants on a multi-day programme.
And the gadgets that turn up everywhere: bags, water bottles, Opinel knives, softshells, coffee cups, cutting boards, lanterns, in classrooms, boardrooms, offsites and yes, sometimes just around a campfire.
What’s next?
After ten years, we no longer need to prove we’re “different.”
What the coming years are about: staying focused on what we do well. Continuing to build strong, recognizable formats and tools. Continuing to share what we learn, through education, events, publications and collaborations.
We celebrate ten years. Not because it’s a round number, but because it’s a good moment to establish: we have enough miles on the clock to stand firm, and enough edge left to avoid becoming complacent.
