Experience is not a set of winter tires

This week, Belgium was wrapped in snow.

Like a shaken snow globe. Beautiful. Quiet.

And completely stuck.

Trains stopped. Flights cancelled.

Cars turned into frozen artifacts.

Not because we don’t understand snow.

But because we lack the infrastructure, habits and reflexes for it.

We tried to drive on snow.

Open iced car doors with hot water.

Good intentions, wrong terrain.

We distinguish between experience and expertise.

Experience is having driven the road before. Expertise is having driven it in these conditions, at this moment.

Our expertise is built for rain and wind. Not for ice.

And this plays out daily inside organizations.

Organizations change faster than their foundations

We ask people to perform while:

• the ground beneath them shifts

• the route changes

• the rules are rewritten

Offices disappear, expectations don’t.

Decision-making becomes diffuse, accountability stays sharp.

Teams rotate, collaboration is assumed.

It’s like asking people to:

• walk through snow in summer shoes

• navigate without a map

• cross a bridge still under construction

And when friction shows up, we conclude:

“They lack resilience. They just need to adapt.”

Even autopilots turn useless

Autopilots turn useless when roads are white without clear lines.

Their strength lies in pattern recognition.

Remove the pattern — and expertise collapses.

People work the same way.

Context is not the backdrop; it’s the script

In my work as an organizational and change advisor, I see this constantly:

you can train people, coach them, motivate them but if the context resists, it feels like rowing upstream.

You can’t ask rowers to speed up when the water is gone. You can’t expect leadership without a landing zone.

Sustainable change starts not with action plans, but with redesigning the environment.

Clear the snow before asking people to move

When people struggle, my first question is often: What changed in the context without us adapting how we work?

Sometimes it’s not about mindset. Not motivation. Not capability.

Sometimes it’s simply winter, and we’re still trying to drive our car.

Then leadership, and good advisory work, is not about pushing harder, but about making the path usable again.