I’m Jonas Van Eykeren, the founder of Mad Hatter Management.
I assist businesses to translate their growth strategy into operational excellence. As a strategic operations manager, I turn board-level visions into tangible results on the shop floor, with a focus on structure, performance, and people-centered leadership.
With a track record of over fifteen years’ experience in international production environments, I provide professional support to board and management teams that are seeking to sustainably bolster their organisation. I take a structured, purposive approach that is based on many years’ of experience in international production environments in the pharmaceutical, chemical and food industries.
Every company faces times when it could do with some extra clout: temporary replacements, growth stages, change or restructuring projects. Contexts where I get on board bringing a fresh pair of eyes, a sharp focus and a hands-on leadership style.
Alongside operational management, I also act as a strategic sparring partner for management teams. I offer insights that help you arrive at decisions around growth, efficiency and organisational design.
Serving temporary roles in operations, site or plant management.
Analysis, implementation and embedment of improvement projects with tangible results.
Leadership, health & safety, motivation and performance on the shop floor.
KPIs, dashboards and instilling pace into the organisation.
Over the course of my career, I have headed up teams of up to 250 staff in various industries, at all times with a focus on health & safety, efficiency and people-centered leadership.
A selection of career highlights includes:
Each of these environments made it clear to me that where people, processes and leadership reinforce each other, strong results are the outcome.
– Alice’s adventures in wonderland
Strong leadership starts with strategic insight and forward thinking. I help management teams make informed choices and stay the course, including in times of change or uncertainty.
Often, my role is that of a catalyst: shaping the way forward, ramping up the pace where needed and linking up the right people to secure results.
As a strategic thinker coming from a people-led angle, I am driven, inquisitive and eager to learn. Characteristics that allow me to swiftly get up to speed in new contexts. To me, leadership is about balance: combining strategic focus with genuine involvement on the shop floor.
As a certified business coach and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, I combine structure, humaneness and smart strategic thinking to make organisations not only more efficient, but also future-proof.
The Mad Hatter Management name is derived from the iconic Mad Hatter figure in Alice in Wonderland: a figure that epitomises inquisitiveness, challenges conventions and is never afraid to think outside of the box.
Lewis Carroll’s story paints the Mad Hatter as excentric and unpredictable, but equally as brilliant in his own logic, asking questions no one else dares to raise and thinking in ways that go beyond the normal order of things. His ‘madness’ holds an important lesson: progress is not achieved by repeating the things we already know, but by being unafraid to think differently.
This mindset is at the heart of Mad Hatter Management. In a business world that is often complex and swept by rapid change, I believe in the ability to explore different angles to bring new perspectives and in doing so, to create calm amid the storm of change, a bird’s eye perspective of complexity and decidedness in times of growth.
Chaos often harbours a pattern. Structures that are stuck in a rut hold the potential of change and teams that have lost their sense of direction, have the power to regain their focus and grow.
Which is why Mad Hatter Management is all about strategic clarity with a creative twist: the ability to transform inquisitiveness into direction, and imagination into concrete results.
“Have I gone mad?” “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
Looking for temporary operational reinforcement, a strategic sounding board or a committed director on your Board?
