For a long time, Stijn Dirken felt most at home on a roof, hammer in hand. In 2008, Stijn founded SD Schrijnwerkerij & Interieurbouw, a carpentry and interior construction company in Herentals. Even though he soon had six skilled workers on staff, the carpenter himself continued to install wooden gables. That is, until he underwent back surgery a few years ago. “Then I was forced to sit behind a desk,” Stijn explains. “I could no longer do what I loved most, but in hindsight, I’m glad about it. It showed me where my real leverage lay. I’m certain we wouldn’t have grown as fast if I’d still been on the job site.”

SD now has three workshops and employs 70 people. The company provides high-quality woodwork and interior design solutions, ranging from facades, roofs, and timber-frame extensions to kitchens and custom cabinets. Although their focus is on the Kempen region, they also operate in the Netherlands, Spain, and the rest of Flanders.

Developing Leadership
When Stijn could no longer practice his profession, he developed himself as a leader. He took various leadership courses and spoke with entrepreneurs who were further along than he was. “I was looking for role models,” says Stijn. “Both within and outside my industry. That’s how I learned a lot.” He hired a right-hand person to take over tasks, and the company grew organically to forty employees. Later, he acquired two companies, which led to further growth of the team.

Still, Stijn knew he could continue to develop as a leader. When he took over the interior construction company Bi-Wood in 2022, he got that opportunity. At the time, the company was owned by Christophe Suerickx, owner of Groep Suerickx, a renowned firm in the construction and renovation sector. Christophe received leadership coaching from Straight-Line Leadership. “He said to me then, ‘That’s something for you, too,’” says Stijn. “I’m always open to new ways to become a stronger leader, so I was immediately committed to growing.”

Stijn immersed himself in the philosophy of Straight-Line Leadership and became a member in 2023. Stijn: “Although I had already completed various management training programs and coaching courses, Straight-Line Leadership stood head and shoulders above the rest. The focus is always on your ultimate goal and the actions you need to take to achieve that goal. You simply do what you said you would do, without excuses.”

Clear Priorities Through Leadership Membership
Before Stijn started with Straight-Line Leadership, he was working more than 100 hours a week. Yet every Friday evening, he would see a long list of unfinished tasks in his calendar. “I worked day and night and still hadn’t finished everything,” he says. “I then had to push all those to-dos over to the following week.”

That was because Stijn was handling every aspect of his business himself—from being on the shop floor to doing the bookkeeping. With the help of Straight-Line Leadership, he learned to focus on what yields the greatest impact. Instead of trying to be everywhere at once, he committed to a single outcome and, based on that, made conscious choices about where to invest his time.

“I don’t regret having handled so many different tasks in the past,” he explains. “It helps me with business operations because I have insight into our various departments. But now my calendar only includes tasks that I absolutely must do to achieve our goals. The right people in our company handle the remaining tasks. As a result, I now work fewer hours but with much greater focus. By Friday evening, there are no outstanding tasks left.”

: Slowing Down as a Leader Stijn realized that plowing ahead without direction was pointless. In fact, it was working against him. The entrepreneur was wasting energy rushing from one meeting to the next every day. “When I started with Straight-Line Leadership, a coach told me I was always going 500 kilometers per hour,” Stijn says. “He said, ‘We need to work on that first, because to accelerate, you have to slow down first.’ I thought that was nonsense, but in the end, he was right.”

Stijn began to carefully structure all his meetings with a clear purpose. Before stepping into the room, he knew exactly what he wanted to get out of the conversation. As a result, he never rushed into a meeting again. “At first, I thought it was a waste of time, because my meetings went well even without preparation. But by taking that time, meetings now go much faster and all the important points get discussed. That way, I don’t have to schedule another meeting, which would ultimately cause us to lose much more time.”

: Employer of the Year In 2024, SD won the award for Employer of the Year . According to Stijn, his new focus on targeted action and being present played a major role in this. He made it a non-negotiable commitment to always stay informed about what is going on among his employees.

“When I first started doing this, I thought: this is going to take a huge amount of time. But the opposite has turned out to be true. If there’s a problem, we address it right away. If we don’t, sooner or later something will go wrong. That leads to frustration among the employees involved and an unnecessary waste of time and money for the company.”

To prevent this, Stijn uses an approach he calls the “helicopter view.” Every week, his management team assesses how employees are doing, identifies areas where action is needed, and determines what steps to take. The company’s goals are central to this process. The helicopter view helps him determine whether he still has the right people around him to achieve those goals.

Stijn: “We ask ourselves questions like: Are employees still in the right roles? Should we invest in training? Who needs extra support? For that last question, we use a color-coded system. For example, if someone receives a ‘yellow alert,’ we know we need to take action.”

A recent example was an employee who was struggling to get his team on board. After a meeting with the management team, they decided together that he should take a targeted training course. “He was relieved, because he knew himself that things weren’t going well. By taking immediate action, his attitude changed right away. He felt that we were behind him, which gave him a boost.”

For Stijn, being a good employer is paramount, but that doesn’t mean everything is tolerated. On the contrary, he explains: “Bad apples need to be removed as quickly as possible. It sounds harsh, but if someone ruins the atmosphere, others can’t grow. A difficult employee can disrupt the entire team. I used to be afraid to let someone go out of fear of the financial impact or a long search for a replacement. But in the end, we always found a good successor quickly. It does take some extra work, but it’s more than worth it. We’re a team, and I owe it to my colleagues to create the best possible work environment.”