Didactics
Our Didactic-Educative Approach
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, GON has its roots in education, extending back long before the company was officially founded. We began teaching in high school and have an innate talent for didactics, building on the Dutch tradition of clear communication and the use of effective, illustrative (“verbeeldend”) language. As a result we have over 20 years of experience in teaching and have gained extensive experience in setting up effective educational content and providing impactful and potent didactics.
While many will admit that education is a cornerstone of society, few truly appreciate how far-reaching its impact is. Having said this, it is evident that we are entering a period in which job security can no longer be taken for granted, driven by significant factors such as AI and geopolitical shifts. While this realization is important for everyone, it is particularly relevant for Europe, which is increasingly lagging behind regions like the US and China in many areas. In an environment where job security is under pressure and uncertain—and where many polls indicate that people see the risk of losing their jobs as a major concern—the first question to ask is: What skills and competencies will ensure employability?
Addressing these challenges—as has been shown throughout history—inevitably begins at the level of education. Figures like Erasmus have demonstrated that educational reform has a profound societal impact, shaping skills, critical thinking, and values that enable individuals and communities to adapt to change and serve as an enduring example for us. And by education, we do not mean just any form of instruction: As lifelong learners, we are highly critical of most programs currently offered in the market, which we consider ineffective, as also outlined in our article “The Educated Powerlessness Paradox.” We, on the other hand, have developed programs that are impactful and genuinely potent in nature—proportional to the magnitude of the social challenges we face today, including those related to job security.
In our programs we teach the same philosophies, approaches, and concepts that we apply in our advisory services—principles we have developed through years of work on highly complex and demanding projects within large corporations. In contrast to many programs, which we believe are rooted in individualist reductionism, we focus on potent and robust modes, methods, and frameworks of thinking, as exemplified in our core courses on model thinking and sound decision-making. The curriculum is grounded in innovative concepts, meta-learning, and the cultivation of self-directed learning abilities, all designed to equip individuals with broadly applicable, future-resilient skills.
A more extensive outline of our approach, philosophy and training offerings as of Q4 2025 can be found on this page.
Corporate Training
As we have outlined above, continuous development of a company and its people is both a necessity and a responsibility in today’s world, which is characterized by rapid change. However, as we have emphasized multiple times, conventional training alone often does not suffice and frequently fails to make a meaningful impact—a point we can personally attest to, having participated in many corporate trainings ourselves. Many of these programs are rooted in individualist reductionism, meaning they assume all challenges can be solved at the individual level simply by adopting the right attitudes or shaping personal characteristics.
From a Model Thinking perspective, these assumptions are naïve, as individuals operate within complex systems and contexts with interconnected and shifting boundaries. Correctly analyzing a situation might reveal that, in some cases, there is simply very little that an individual alone can change. As a result, focusing solely on attitudes often fails to produce meaningful change while also encouraging inauthentic behaviour. The true value of development, therefore, is not merely in changing oneself, but in enhancing one’s capabilities where possible, learning to quickly make sense of the strategic contexts in which we operate, and making optimal decisions—whether to act effectively within a given system or to choose to transition to another.
A question we frequently receive is whether our training targets hard or soft skills. Looking at the traditional hard vs. soft skills dichotomy, we neither think of nor present our courses in that way. While this distinction can be useful in some contexts, it is ultimately an oversimplification. A more accurate description would be that we focus on higher-order skills in perception, understanding, and decision-making—competencies that are vital for navigating any complex challenge.
School Programs
While initially our programs were intended for post-graduates and corporations, we have adapted them for children, as they are most affected by the uncertainty surrounding what constitutes future-ready education. In a world marked by unpredictability and rapid transformation, schools and teachers must have a vision—not only to respond to change, but to anticipate it and translate it into new, relevant knowledge and competencies.
Simultaneously, school represents a significant investment. It occupies a large portion of children’s lives—both in terms of time and influence—and, as a result, the educational curriculum shapes students’ attitudes, behaviors, and future employability. Education is not just a personal journey of growth and learning; it is also a costly, strategic long-term investment. Schools and parents share the social responsibility of preparing well-rounded, capable graduates, and this entails a broader social responsibility. Today, that certainty has eroded, and a diploma often fails to live up to its long-assumed promise of success and security. This reality makes it increasingly necessary to collaborate with people or organizations who have a strong intuition for emerging developments and the evolving requirements of education and work.
Apart from its societal impact, our school curriculum is also highly engaging and stimulating in unexpected ways. Take, for example, our course on Mathematics in Art, which demonstrates mathematics in a concrete and tangible manner, emphasizing figures, patterns, and visualization rather than abstract formulas. The course fosters a much more intuitive understanding of mathematics and a deeper appreciation for its relevance, while simultaneously providing a model for how to approach art and drawing. Its influence has been so significant that, although it was originally designed as an application of the Model Thinking philosophy, we now also use it in reverse—as an introduction to the principles of Model Thinking itself.
We are very keen on demonstrating our approaches and philosophy to schools, so we encourage schools to reach out and get in touch with us.
