Eric is one of the four partners behind Miles Research. He likes to look one step further than necessary, and he usually has a plan for it too. Since Miles and Focus Feedback joined forces, one question has been on his mind most of all: what can we do together now that we couldn’t do alone?
What can we wake you up for in the middle of the night?
“A concert, preferably by an unknown punk band in a small venue somewhere off the beaten track. The kind of place where the floor is sticky, the sound is too loud and they have the right beers behind the bar. I’d be ready in five minutes. Not that you’d usually need to wake me, because I go to bed pretty late. Night is also when my best ideas come. So when colleagues open their inbox in the morning, there’s often something waiting that they can get started on right away. Sorry about that, by the way, dear colleagues.”
What’s the best feedback you’ve ever received?
“That I never seem to get stressed. A colleague once said: ‘If you stay calm, I know it will work out.’ I loved hearing that. It doesn’t mean everything always runs smoothly, because it doesn’t. But a complicated problem actually calms me down. You take it apart until you see what it’s really about, and then it often turns out to be less difficult than it looked. That’s exactly what we do in research too. And if I don’t know the answer right away, I sleep on it for a night. Or, well, half a night.”
What’s your motto in life? And how does it show in your work?
“It always works out. That’s not naive optimism. Most problems are simply smaller than they seem, and almost everything can be solved. Better still, I like to stay ahead of them. If you look one step ahead, you see most bumps coming before anyone trips over them. To me, that’s part of going the extra mile. I know, with a company called Miles that’s almost too easy. But I mean it: doing something nobody asked for, before anyone has to ask. Focus Feedback joining us fits right in with that. It’s exciting and sometimes a bit chaotic. But it will work out!”
