Q7Leader

Founder

Q7 leader is an HR Tech consultancy company specialized in boosting company performance through collaborative leadership augmented with  people analytics and insights. It owns the exclusive distribution rights on "thehrframework.com", a platform designed for the optimization of Return on Human Capital Investment (ROHCI) through the simplification, the integration and the standardization of six key HRM practices every line manager should master: (1) Organisation Design, (2) Competence, (3) Performance, (4)Talent, (5) Reward management and (6) Resource Planning. 

This solution includes a series of on-line apps which greatly simplify the measuring and monitoring of companies' HR indicators, analytics and insights. 

It is is designed to support companies during 6 stages of their lifecycle: start-up, due-diligence/ acquisition, merger, restructuring ...and moving away from overengineered HR. 

It now runs in over 20 countries on 5 continents. It is compatible with most major provider of HRIS and Reward & Benefits providers.

Pulse Foundation, Beyond Program supporting scale-ups

Coach in HR strategy and management

Solvay Brussels school of Economics & Management

Maître de Conférence lecturing in 
- Master in Management at Solvay School of Economics and Management
- 2d year Master in Human Resources Management
 Includes: mastering HR for non HR, Leadership, Designing organisations, Performance, Competence and Talent management in Learning Organisations. Reward & Benefits strategies.
Publication: "the 6 fundamentals for CEO & CFO to get their HR basics right"

Maître de conférence  Solvay Brussels school of Economics & Management

Promethean Plc

$300 Millions Revenue; up to 1000 employees.
Led the Group HR functional area through Promethean's transformation (including IPO) into becoming a global player with key focus on designing and developing transformational interactive hardware and sofware solutions that support education, business and governments in teaching and learning best practices,new skills or launching new methods and processes within organisations.

Chief Human Capital Officer

€4 Billion revenue, up to 12,000 employees.
- End to end HR accountability for EMEA & Latin America regions.
- Worldwide HR accountability over Sales and Marketing functional areas. 
- Design and implementation of a “GloCal” HR service organisation across 30 countries (including Peoplesoft deployment). 
- Global Program leader for BT Group on matrix operating model implementation
- Variety of M&A, integrations and transformations of 20+ companies (Benelux, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, LATAM, Dubai and USA)

Vice-President HR BT international

Mobistar

Director Human Resources & Hotelling Services

Xerox Corporation

Company Secretary & HR director Belgium Luxembourg

Allen & Overy (Loeff Claeys Verbeke)

Lawyer, Avocat at the Bar of Brussels, Belgium

Procter & Gamble

Legal counsel detached by law firm to assist line managers in FMCG marketing campaigns.

Legal advisor

20 years of International HR, 17 years of Faculty at Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management, 8 years of Entrepreneurship in HRtech. 

Reggy-Charles Degen

Most leaders say people are the main asset. I say that’s simply not true.

You hear it everywhere.

“Our people are our biggest asset.”

It sounds good. It feels good. But look at what happens when a company announces a big layoff.

The stock price goes up.

Not down.

If people were the main asset, losing them should hurt the company. But the market rewards the move.

This tells me something important.

It’s not the people alone who drive value. It’s what they can do. The skills. The knowledge. The experience.

A company is not a family. It’s a system built on useful competencies.

When those competencies go out the door, the company only cares if they are hard to replace.

If you keep people who do not bring needed skills, the value does not go up. It goes down.

The lesson here:

• Companies do not reward headcount. They reward impact.
• The market does not care about slogans. It cares about results.
• Leaders need to focus on building, keeping, and growing the right competencies.

I am not saying people do not matter. I am saying that the value is in what people know and what they can do.

And, most importantly, I'm saying we can't lie to people anymore. Or when big layoffs happen (which can happen to any company), our big words won't have any meaning anymore.

Curious to hear your views on this topic.

P.S. If you want to be seen as an asset, keep learning. Keep building skills that truly matter.

Founder of Q7Leader | Author of the People Model Canvas | Human Resources Professor at Solvay Business School

No alternative text description for this image

I can profile any employee in just 10 minutes. Here's how.

After 20 years in international HR, I stopped wasting time on endless meetings and vague discussions.

I built the People Model Canvas.

With this process, CEOs, CPOs, and HR business partners get:

→ A common language for team decisions
→ Data-driven clarity on every employee
→ Actionable plans for growth, not just opinions

I’ve seen it work across Europe, Asia, and the US. Over 90% accuracy in role assessments, faster team alignment, and much better development planning.

What changed? Managers stopped guessing. Teams stopped drifting. Everyone knows what is expected and how to grow.

The People Model Canvas makes this possible. It moves us from subjective debates to objective action.

If you want to save hours and boost your team’s clarity, try the 10-minute session. You’ll never go back to the old way.

What alternative approaches are you using for talent management?

Unpopular opinion: The 9-box grid is the biggest obstacle to talent development.

(from someone who used it for decades)

It felt safe. It gave structure. It looked “objective.”

But here’s what I learned:

- The grid is a shortcut for bias.
- It hides real performance.
- It gives managers a reason to keep old habits.

You know the drill:

• Fill boxes.
• Defend ratings.
• Hope the system finds your next leader.

But most grids do not show you the full picture.

You get numbers, not people.
You get labels, not growth.
You get the same results, year after year.

I wanted better.

I replaced (or should I say complemented) the grid with the People Model Canvas.

Here’s why:

→ It aligns performance, values, and competencies.
→ It builds clear expectation profiles (not just job descriptions).
→ It gives data-driven insights for every person.

What changed?

- Decisions became transparent.
- Growth became possible.
- Talent management became fair.

If you keep using the 9-box grid, expect mediocre results.

If you want real talent development, scrap the grid.

Elevate your process.
Make it multidimensional.
Make it (really) human.

What alternative approaches are you using for talent management?

Maybe the toughest HR question I received this year:

« How do I fairly include an autistic colleague in our framework? »

We were in a workshop, doing a simple team scan.

At some point, someone raised their hand and said, almost apologetically:

“This colleague is autistic. Our framework gives them a negative label. But it does not feel fair... What do we do?”

In the People Model Canvas, we have a Vision & Values matrix, with profiles like “role model”, “nice person”, or “prima donna”.

The “Prima donna” is what we call someone who models business excellence but may not model corporate values and culture.

On paper, that is probably where this colleague would land.
If you only look at visible behaviour, you simply apply that rule.

But autism is not a “bad attitude”.

It is a recognised condition, with its own way of communicating, processing information and reacting to stress.

So the real question is not only “which box do we tick”, it is:

↳ How do we keep our system honest and transparent for everyone while recognising that some behaviours are linked to a medical condition?

This is where the real value of a model like the People Model Canvas appears.

If you spend your time reinventing your HR basics every time a difficult case shows up, you never reach this level of discussion. All the energy is lost in defining roles, expectations, behaviours, labels.

When those basics are already clear and shared, HR and managers can use their time where no model can fully help: on the exceptional, very human cases like autism at work.

Then you can make an explicit choice that fits your culture on a case-by-case basis.

Now I am very curious about your take:

How would you handle this type of case? Finding a fair way to help this person develop while not overprotecting.

And if some people already have experience in managing this type of situation, I would love to hear more about it!

1 in 3 employees will need to be retrained by 2030.

According to a 2025 McKinsey report, AI could automate up to 30% of our work in the next few years.

For HR, this changes everything.

Most HR teams still try to track hundreds of technical skills per role.

By the time the list is complete, it is already out of date.

Technical skills appear, grow, and disappear faster every year, pushed by AI and digital change.

I do not believe HR can win that race.

In my work with companies, I focus on one simple shift.

Stop tracking specific skills.
↳ Start tracking general competencies.

When I say general competencies, I mean skills that travel across almost every role in your company:

• Adaptability
• Team work
• Teaching and knowledge sharing
• Analysis and critical thinking
• Project management

These are not linked to one tool or one job.

They follow people when they move from finance to product, from operations to HR, from one company to another.

They are also the skills you need when AI changes 30% of the work.

You can learn a new platform if you already have strong learning and teaching skills.

You can move to a new process if you are strong in project management and team work.

HR should build one clear, shared language for these general competencies.

Map them.
Develop them.
Use them in recruitment, performance, and internal mobility.

Tools like the People Model Canvas help managers and HR speak the same language when they do this.

I stopped using the 9-box grid.

Here’s what changed when we moved to 7 dimensions:

The 9-box grid is simple.
Two axes: performance and potential.

That works if you want to talk about who steps into the CEO chair next. But for real talent management across the business? It falls flat.

You do not run Finance on two numbers.

Why would you run people decisions that way?

When I looked at what our teams needed, two dimensions were not enough. They gave us opinions, not real data. They gave us snapshots, not systems.

That’s why I built the People Model Canvas.

Seven dimensions instead of two. Because people are not numbers on a grid. They are:

1. General Expectation Profile (role clarity)
2. Operating Mode (how they work each day)
3. Competence
4. Performance
5. Potential
6. Vision & Values
7. Career & Reward

Each one tells you something different.
Together, they give you a full picture.

But here’s the real shift: We connect these dimensions with a common language. No more contradictions between “competence” and “performance.” No more guessing what “potential” means in one team versus another.

Now, managers and HR use the same words, the same framework. The process is fairer, the data is stronger, and leaders trust the results.

We moved from opinions to evidence. From fragmented HR to one system everyone can use.

That’s the difference seven dimensions make.

I recorded a deep dive video on why the 9-box grid is not enough and how the People Model Canvas changes the game.

Want the full video?

1. Like this post
2. Comment “9-BOX” below
3. Connect with me (so I can send it) ← important

Tres interessante session menée par notre collègue de Q7leader France sur l’équité et l’égalité salariale hommes-femmes - la nouvelle directive européenne

HRTech Entrepreneur & Coach | Podcast Host Beautiful People I GM France Q7Leader I UN Women France Board Member

Est-ce que votre organisation est prête pour la directive européenne sur la transparence salariale ? Juin 2026 va arriver plus vite qu'on ne le pense. Rejoignez-nous le 20 novembre pour en discuter !

Valerie Coddens, Emmanuelle Goulas and 6 other connections attending

De l’écart salarial à l’équité : la révolution de la transparence

Who wants to start the new year with stress? Not me 😄

Don’t wait for 2026 to learn about pay transparency ↓

Our CEO, Thomas, is still hosting 2 live sessions before the Christmas break to teach you all about the EU directive.

He'll share our simple 5-step methodology to be compliant (without stress).

In 45 minutes, you'll get a clear action plan for 2026.

Then you can go enjoy your loved ones for a well-deserved break, with this topic out of your mind 😉🎄

See you there?

Book your spot now: https://lnkd.in/esnk-UFD

Many HR leaders are waiting for the law to be clarified. And that's precisely what will put them behind in 2026. Why? Because in reality, we already know the essentials of what will be required ↓

The European directive is very clear about what will be mandated:

• reliable compensation data
• defined and comparable roles
• the ability to justify every salary decision
• gaps calculated uniformly, bonuses included
• accessible and explicit compensation criteria

This is not a surprise.
And it won't be simplified in national law.
Member states can only specify details, not lighten requirements.

So yes, there are still details to be confirmed at the national level.
But the foundations are already written in black and white.

And it's precisely these foundations that require months of work.

Aligning role levels.
Structuring the data.
Documenting evaluation criteria.
Ensuring hiring practices are consistent.
Being able to prove fairness, not just claim it.

This isn't something you handle "when the law drops."

It's an organizational undertaking that requires time, clarity, and methodology.

To help you assess where you stand, we've created a quick 3-minute test. Answer 15 simple questions to identify your risks and preparation priorities.

👉 Take the test now: https://lnkd.in/eJcckw5t

Si vous avez des questions par rapport à la directive européenne sur la transparence des salaires et ce que ça va changer en Belgique, ceci est pour vous ! 🇧🇪

📆 Mercredi 3 décembre à 12h

Thomas Goubau & Sarah Cluydts discuteront de :

- ce que la directive implique pour les sociétés belges
- comment vous préparer au mieux, sans stress
- les fausses croyances (et il y en a beaucoup)

On se voit là-bas ? 😉

Always great to hear enthusiastic feedback for customers. Thanks Thomas D'Hoe 🎯

🔥 Passionate Operations & People Ops Innovator at Premium Plus | Elevating CX & EX to New Heights with Zendesk 🚀

I believe in strong teams.

↳ I believe in clear models for people and work.
↳ I believe in sharing what works, not just what’s easy.

A few weeks ago, Premium Plus - Zendesk's EMEA Partner of the Year hosted the Q7Leader and their People Model Canvas Community.

Our office was full of HR leaders. The energy was real.

We opened up our playbook.

↳ We showed how we use Zendesk to serve employees.
↳ We shared how AI and self-service change the game.
↳ We explained how automation cuts out failure and low-value work.

The best part: seeing the new Q7Leader feature in action.

The updated conversations template is simple, but powerful.

It helps teams talk better. It helps leaders see what matters.

At Premium Plus, we don’t just talk about competencies. We build them.

We use the People Model Canvas to shape our teams and our future.

It’s not just a tool. It’s a way to make work better for everyone.

Here’s what we have learned:

- The right model brings clarity to chaos.
- AI and automation are not about replacing people. They are about removing friction.
- When you focus on high-value work, teams grow faster.
- The best HR leaders share, adapt, and build together.

The future of employee service is here.

It’s built on strong models, smart tools, and people who care.

That’s how you create real impact.

I'm building a middle management layer.

It's hard. It's risky.

But it's the only way to scale.

☑ Most scale-ups fail here
☑ They skip the bridge between leaders and teams
☑ They forget: managers drive team engagement

Gallup found that 70% of the difference in team engagement comes down to the manager.

That means the manager is the lever. If the manager is strong, the team is strong. If the manager fails, the team falls apart.

A people manager only wins if their team wins.

So, what do we expect from our people managers?

→ Set clear expectations
→ Give feedback, early and often
→ Support the team and clear roadblocks
→ Recognize and celebrate team members

These are not one-off tasks. They are habits. They are the job.

But habits need support. Here’s what we’re doing to make sure our people managers succeed:

• We wrote down exactly what we expect from every people manager. No guessing. No confusion.
• We built a monthly people manager community, with help from Open Org. Managers learn from each other. They share what works and what doesn’t.
• We’re writing a people manager handbook. It’s a playbook for the hard stuff: tough talks, feedback, recognition, and more.
• We’re building a people manager scan. Managers get feedback from their teams, not just from above. This keeps them honest and helps them grow.

This is how we avoid the middle management trap.

This is how we build a real bridge between leadership and the team.

This is how we turn managers into ambassadors.

It’s hard, but it’s the only way to win at scale.

Chief Executive Officer

welovefounders

Operating Partner

Kara.ai

Investor

LetsBuild

We help the construction stakeholders ( mainly contractors ) going from traditional to digital at record speed, while being cost efficient.

Case studies (among 100+ others):
VolkerFitzpatrik (...)
Provievienda (0-15% cost savings - 10 Months)
HusCompagniet (0 to 10% cost saving)
Jerram Falkus (0-20% delay reduction)
Silverlife (sub-contractor) (0 - 100% transparancy for client)
Juul & Nielsen (0 - 4% optimisation gain company level)

6 offices, 7 years in business, 95% customer satisfaction, projects in 35 countries.

Asses your company's digital maturity on our assesment quizz here: https://www.letsbuild.com/cdml

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)

APROPLAN is transforming the practice and management of building and construction projects. We are restoring order to the construction sites by getting rid of communication barriers and replacing them with a culture of trust through transparency and information sharing.

APROPLAN is leading the way in introducing user-friendly digital and lean processes in the construction industry. These new systems are reducing errors and mental workload helping teams increase productivity and profitability. By doing so, we are allowing the realisation of even more complex and ambitious construction projects. 

APROPLAN aims to be the most cost-effective and user-friendly construction project management system in the market today.

A.T. Kearney

Associate

Contract Manager

Product Manager

Bid Manager

Account Executieve

In 2010, Steve Jobs announced the first iPad, but it was only in 2011 that the camera was added to the iPad.  

This camera triggered my entrepreneurial journey. 

Before that, communication on construction projects would happen via phone, email, and face-to-face meetings.

The iPad created a significant opportunity to disrupt the construction sector. Through an app, a foreman could quickly drop a pin on a drawing, take a picture showing the issue, and send a pdf report that needed no explanation. 

In 2012, I founded co-founded Aproplan. We built an app to help contractors, sub-contractors, and architects communicate better in the field.

We got early traction, quickly reaching €1m in ARR, raising funds from angel investors and reputable VC firms. We grew the business from a handful of people to 80 before merging with a Danish player to form LetsBuild, a 150 people-strong company in 5 different countries. 

I could stop the story here and say that everything was fantastic.

But that would only be one side of the story…

Like every entrepreneurial journey, it was a bumpy ride.

It was very stressful and frustrating at times. 

Early on, we had to do a management buy-out to solve a significant founders’ issue that almost killed the company.

We raised money from a reputable VC firm to grow the business.

This brought significant stress to grow faster, especially when you discover that international expansion is super challenging and so dependent on hiring the right people.

We merged with a company in the Nordics and almost doubled in size over night. And while the merger made a lot of sense on paper, merging two very different cultures made me realise it was all about people. 

Along the way, we raised and burned way too much money, hoping that money would solve all our growth problems.

Then COVID hit, and I burned out.

I had spent 8 years building a company. I was traveling 4 days a week, working weekends, and ignoring my family.

In 2021, I met Reggy and Pascal, founders of Q7Leader and discovered the People Model Canvas to me. I saw how powerful it was and all the challenges it would have helped me solve during my journey at Aproplan and LetsBuild.  

Today, I’m the CEO of Q7Leader and help B2B SaaS executives grow their business from 1m€ to 10m€ in a cash-efficient way so they don’t get diluted and keep control of their company. 

I write daily posts on LinkedIn where I share my learnings and the playbooks we use to grow Q7Leader in a cash-efficient way.

Thomas Goubau

I met 100+ HR leaders in one day.

Only 4 told me their CEO prioritized this new law ↓

Last week, I went to the first HR fair in Belgium.

We talked with HR leaders, CEOs, and C-level execs about one thing:

The EU Pay Transparency directive coming next year.

And clearly, most teams are not ready...

I saw the same pattern over and over:

- HR teams worry about compliance
- CEOs feel the pressure but lack clear answers
- Everyone talks about risk, but few have a plan

If you don’t know where you stand, you can’t fix it.

That's why we built a quiz to help you out.

1. You answer 15 simple questions.
2. You get your pay transparency score.
3. You see your risk level for the EU rules.
4. You get custom recommendations to close the gaps.

It takes 3 minutes. Free. No strings attached.

→ Take the test: https://bit.ly/3X36Xn3

Don’t get caught unprepared.
Discover where you stand now.

P.S. thanks Htag by Références for the great event

Growing a B2B SaaS in a cash-efficient way by setting the operational foundations and make sure you have the right people in the right seat • CEO at Q7Leader • Operating Partner at welovefounders •

Your sales team is not the problem.
Your leadership habits are.
I had to learn this the hard way as CRO and later as CEO in B2B SaaS.

Revenue stalls.
Conversion drops.
Pipeline looks weak.

First reflex?
Blame the team.

“They don’t push enough.”
“They waste leads.”
“They are not hungry.”

Big mistake.
I was one of them.

Here is what I saw when I stopped blaming and started looking in the mirror:

• Reps got zero clear focus. Everyone chased “everything that moves.”
• 1:1s were random chats, not real coaching.
• We spoke about targets, not about concrete actions.
• We celebrated wins but never did a real loss review.

So of course you hear:

“It’s the market.”
“Prospect went silent.”
“Budget is frozen.”

Those lines fill the space where leadership should sit.

The truth is harsh:
When you avoid accountability as a leader, your team learns to avoid it too.

Here is what I changed (and what I now ask founders in portfolio companies to do):

• Set a simple, clear game plan
→ Who is our ICP
→ What offers we push
→ How many new deals each rep owns

• Turn 1:1s into work sessions
→ Open the CRM together
→ Pick 5 deals
→ Agree on next steps and due dates
→ Write them down

• Kill the excuse language
→ No more “market is hard”
→ Ask “What do we control in this deal?”
→ Ask “What do we try next?”

• Lead by numbers and by behavior
→ Track inputs, not only revenue
→ Call out both good and bad habits
→ Give clear expectations, then follow up

When leaders change their habits, something funny happens.

Excuses fade.
Ownership grows.
Same people, very different results.

Many SaaS founders tell me they have a “sales problem”.
In 8 out of 10 cases, they have a leadership habit problem.

Do you dare to audit your own habits before you question your team?

I need to be 100% honest. I'm addicted.

I think I'm more excited to build AI agents this Christmas than to open gifts.

Yes, I have a new obsession.

AI agents and agentic workflows.

Not just theory.
In practice.

My plan for the Christmas break:

- install and learn Claude Code
- build small test agents around my real work
- break my current workflows into clear, repeatable steps
- see where an agent can replace or support me
- and of course spend quality time with friends and family (still my priority, don't worry haha)

I believe the next decade belongs to leaders who pair strong people foundations with strong AI leverage.

Right people in the right seat.
+ the right agents in the right workflows.

Curious to know: what is your obsession right now? 😉

If you're a CEO in Europe and you overlook the EU Pay Transparency directive, you're making a big mistake. I used to be just like you. I thought this was just another regulation that HR would take care of. But the reality is very different.

If your company can’t prove that pay decisions are fair, you’re exposed to

- legal risk
- reputational damage
- retroactive payroll corrections
- and a big loss of trust internally

Most CEOs still believe this is about “publishing a pay gap”. It’s not.

It’s about being able to explain and defend every single pay decision with objective, gender-neutral criteria.

That’s why I’m hosting a practical 45-minute webinar.

We’ll go through the 5 concrete steps every company needs to take to be fully prepared for 2026.

Register for the next session here: https://lnkd.in/er2CFqnz

The secret trap most CEOs fall into.

(myself included 🤦🏻‍♂️)

At 15-20 employees, your life totally changes.

→ Your days shift from business problems to "people" problems.

I've been there.

I used to spend 80-90% of my time on business issues.

Then, all of a sudden, I was drowning in "people" challenges.

And the typical mistake is thinking you can handle this by hiring some HR help.

Most founders hire a junior HR at that moment.

When what you really need is to build solid strategic HR foundations first.

- role descriptions
- expectations definition
- evaluation processes
- reward policies
- etc.

As CEO, stay involved in building that HR system.

Don't pass it all off to your HR team.

Build the right base at 20 people.
Or pay for it as you grow.

Every company has pay gaps.

The question isn't "do I have any?" but "can I explain them?"

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about the European pay transparency directive.

People still think the goal is to have zero gaps.

In reality, the goal is to have gaps that are understandable, documented, and justifiable.

And that's where it gets complex.

Because explaining a gap requires more than an Excel spreadsheet or intuition.
It requires

• clean data
• decision traceability
• clearly defined roles
• comparable job levels
• accessible compensation criteria
• and the ability to prove fairness, not just declare it

The problem isn't the law.
The problem is that you can't justify what you don't measure.

That's why we created a free and very simple test.

15 questions.
3 minutes.
1 result.

And a clear view of your risks, your potential gaps, and what to prioritize before 2026.

👉 Take the test now: https://lnkd.in/ejhixz_7

📆 Juin 2026.
C'est la deadline pour transposer la directive européenne sur la transparence salariale en loi nationale. Tout CEO doit être au courant de :

- ce que la directive implique pour les sociétés belges
- les fausses croyances (et il y en a beaucoup)
- comment se préparer au mieux, sans stress

C'est un sujet stratégique.
Et ça se prépare dès aujourd'hui.

Rejoignez moi et mon invitée Sarah Cluydts (Senior Associate au cabinet Claeys & Engels) pour clarifier ce que cette directive implique pour vous.

C'est une session unique que vous n'allez pas vouloir manquer.

→ Réservez votre place ici : https://bit.ly/4hTbbac

On se voit là-bas ? 😉

taplio

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