Something feels more complicated than it needs to be. A process works differently in reality than on paper. Two things are treated separately even though they clearly affect each other. Or the obvious route simply does not feel like the only one.

That is usually where I start.

Over time, I noticed that the subjects may change, but the way I approach them stays surprisingly similar.

I ask before assuming. I look beyond the obvious. I connect what usually sits apart. I make complexity easier to see. I build enough to learn. And I leave room for the idea to change.

Ask before assuming.

The first problem we see is not always the real one.

A small change in the question can change the whole direction. A process issue may turn out to be an information problem. A career question may become more useful when we stop asking what job comes next and start asking what can be built from what is already there.

Connect what usually lives apart.

This is probably the most consistent part of how I think.

People connect to processes. Skills connect to opportunities. Information shapes decisions. Technology changes how work gets done.

The interesting part is often somewhere between the categories.

Make complexity visible.

Once I understand the connections, I usually want to make them visible.

That might become a map, a workflow, a model, a diagram or simply a clearer way of explaining what is happening.

The purpose is simple: make it easier to understand, decide and move.

Build enough to learn.

I prefer useful before complete.

A small prototype, early tool or first version often teaches more than a perfect idea sitting in a document.

Once something is used, the next step becomes clearer.

Principles, not steps.

I do not use these ideas as a fixed sequence.

I may return to the question while building, discover a new connection while testing, or realize that the structure itself needs to change.

That is why I think of them as principles rather than instructions.

The subject can change. The thinking travels.

And quite often, that is where another way appears.

Careers. Operations. Technology. Platforms. Future of Living. Creative projects.

But I rarely experience them as completely separate.
What usually catches my attention is the pattern underneath.

Where things connect. Where a process breaks. Where information gets lost. Where a decision becomes harder than it needs to be. Where two areas are treated separately even though they clearly affect each other.

That is often the part I want to understand first.

Sometimes the pattern is operational. Sometimes it is about people. Sometimes it is about structure, visibility, timing or how information moves.

The subject changes, but the question is often similar:

What is really happening here, and what are we missing by looking at it in the usual way?

That is probably why my work moves across different fields so naturally.

I am less interested in keeping things inside neat categories than in noticing what connects them and once I see the connection, I usually want to make it clearer, test it, and see what else becomes possible.

That is the common thread behind much of what I build.

Most people introduce themselves through experience.

Where they worked. What they studied. The roles they held and the projects they delivered.

Those things matter, and you’ll find them elsewhere on this site.

What may be more useful before we meet is knowing how I tend to see things.

I’m naturally curious about what sits behind the obvious answer. When a process works a certain way, I want to know why. When everyone seems to be following the same route, I usually wonder what other routes exist. When two subjects are kept in separate boxes, I’m interested in what happens where they meet.

That curiosity has taken me through finance, international operations, people and HR, process improvement, technology, career questions and creative projects. The topics look very different from the outside. To me, they often lead back to the same thing: understanding how the pieces connect and whether there might be a clearer, simpler or more useful way to arrange them.

I like complexity, as long as I can take it apart.

I like ideas, especially when they can become something real.

And I’m much more interested in a good question than in pretending I already know the answer.

That is probably why my work rarely stays neatly inside one category. A question about careers can become a tool. A business problem can reveal a wider system. A piece of research can turn into a project. Sometimes an idea even becomes music.

Different subjects. Different formats. The same curiosity underneath.

So if we ever work together, you can probably expect questions, connections and the occasional:

What if we looked at this differently?

That is usually where the interesting part begins.

A note

This page is meant to evolve with me.

Some parts will change, some projects will disappear and new questions will take their place.

That feels more useful to me than freezing everything into a perfect professional introduction.

Adrienn Simon

Continue to My Journey →

I’ve worked across different fields, roles and questions. Some were closer to operations, some to people, some to systems, process improvement, technology or the future of work.

For a long time, those parts looked separate.

Looking back, I don’t think they were.

Each step gave me a different angle on the same thing: how people, work, information and decisions connect. Why some systems help people move forward, while others make things more complicated than they need to be.

That is probably why I never became attached to just one label.

I was less interested in staying inside a single category, and more interested in understanding what sits underneath it.

Over time, that became a way of thinking.

Not just a professional background, but a perspective.

It shaped how I look at careers, organisations, ideas and change. It also shaped the kind of work I’m drawn to now: work that helps make complexity clearer, surfaces better questions and turns scattered pieces into something more useful.

So this journey is not really a list of positions.

It is the story of how different experiences slowly formed one direction.

And that direction still keeps evolving.

Continue to Career Map →

A career navigation system. A professional platform. A way of exploring how we might live differently. Tools, assessments, programs, research, audio projects and experiments.

From the outside, they can seem like separate directions.

To me, they usually begin in the same place: with a question that feels worth following.

Sometimes the question becomes a practical tool. Sometimes a project. Sometimes a framework, a piece of research or something much more experimental.

What connects them is less the subject and more the way I approach it.

I look for the structure underneath the problem. I connect things that are usually treated separately. I try to make complexity easier to see, then build enough to learn what happens next.

Over time, I started recognizing recurring areas in that work: opportunity, business, workflow and future systems.

They help me organize what I see, but they are not the destination.

The projects can change.

The questions can change.

The format can change.

What stays surprisingly consistent is the curiosity underneath them.

See what I’m currently building → Work in Progress

A career question that is really about visibility.
A process problem that begins with information.
A technology project that changes because of human behaviour.
An opportunity that only becomes visible once two previously separate things are connected.

That is usually where I become interested.

Over time, I realized that I was doing the same thing across very different fields: stepping back, looking for the pattern underneath, and asking what changes when the pieces are rearranged.

Systems thinking gave me a language for something I was already doing instinctively.

It helps me see relationships before solutions. It makes complexity easier to work with. And, most importantly, it creates room for a different question.

That is how four recurring lenses gradually appeared in my work.

Opportunity Systems looks at how possibilities are discovered, created and reached.

Business Systems looks at what really happens between people, processes, information and decisions.

Workflow Systems follows how work actually moves, where it gets stuck and where it can become simpler.

Future Systems looks further out, at signals, experiments and ideas that may open a direction we cannot fully see yet.

They overlap constantly, and that is exactly why I use them.

A career can be a business question.
A workflow can become an opportunity question.
A new technology can reshape all four at once.

The interesting part is often in the overlap.

For me, systems are a way of seeing what is usually separated, making the hidden structure visible and asking one more question before accepting the default:

What if there is another way to put this together?

That is where most of my work begins.

Explore the four systems →

Mine never really did.

From the outside, it may have looked like a series of different roles, fields and interests.
But looking back, I can see a pattern running through all of them.

I kept returning to the same kinds of questions.
How do people work together?
Why do some systems create clarity while others create friction?
What makes one path feel closed, and another suddenly open?

Over time, those questions began to connect.

What I once saw as separate experiences now feels like one evolving map.
International work, operations, HR, process thinking, career questions, emerging technology, creative experiments.
Different contexts, but the same underlying curiosity.

That is what this page is about.

Not a full career history.
Not a list of milestones.
A map of the ideas and observations that gradually shaped the way I think.

Some of them changed how I see work.
Some changed how I understand organizations.
Some changed how I build.

And that is probably the most important part.

A career is rarely just a sequence of roles.
It becomes a structure made of patterns, decisions, tensions, experiments and turning points.

This map is simply a way of making some of that visible.

If Before We Meet was the introduction, this is the next layer.
It shows how different directions slowly became one connected way of thinking.

And from here, the natural next question is simple:

What do you build once the pattern becomes clear?

Continue to What I Build →

I am usually more interested in what happens if we look at the problem from a different angle.

Sometimes that means stepping away from the obvious answer. Sometimes it means separating things that have been bundled together for years. Sometimes it means connecting two ideas that normally live in different places.

That is usually where something starts to shift.

Over time, I noticed that my best work tends to follow a loose rhythm.

I first try to understand what is really happening, without rushing to fix it. Then I simplify the picture enough to see the pattern. From there, I build or test something small and useful.

And then I watch what happens.

Because reality is usually much more interesting than the plan.

A first version may reveal that the real problem sits somewhere else. A simple experiment can open a new direction. Something that looked complex may turn out to need one small change.

That is why I use the Systems Design Cycle less as a method and more as a way to keep ideas moving.

Observe → Structure → Design → Improve → Explore

The words are simple on purpose.
The point is not to follow them perfectly.
The point is to keep enough structure to move forward, while leaving enough space for a better idea to appear.

For me, that is where the most useful work usually begins:
when the obvious route stops being the only route.

A new behaviour.
A technology used in an unexpected way.
A workaround that suddenly starts spreading.
A question people keep asking before anyone has a good answer.

Those are the things that catch my attention.

I am less interested in predicting what will happen than in noticing what might be starting to change.

That is what I mean by Future Systems.

It is the space where I look at signals, experiments and emerging ideas before they become obvious enough to fit neatly into a category.

Sometimes the interesting part is the technology.
Sometimes it is how people use it.
Sometimes the real change happens somewhere else entirely.

A tool designed for one purpose may become useful in another. A small behavioural shift can quietly change how we work. An idea that looks impractical today may become ordinary once the surrounding system catches up.

I like that uncertain stage.

The point where something is still open enough to be questioned, rearranged and tested.

For me, future thinking is less about asking:

What will happen next?

and more about asking:

What are we starting to notice now that could lead somewhere unexpected?

That is where Future Systems begins.

Not with certainty.

With curiosity.

And with enough space for a possibility to become something we have not named yet.

There may be a process. A system. A set of responsibilities.

And still, someone keeps copying information from one place to another. A decision waits for the wrong person. Knowledge lives in someone’s head. A workaround slowly becomes the normal way of working.

Those small frictions interest me.

Because I rarely think the first question should be:

What can we automate?

I would rather ask:

Why are we doing this part at all?

That is what I mean by Workflow Systems.

I look at how work actually moves between people, information, decisions and tools, especially at the places where it slows down, disappears or becomes more complicated than it needs to be.

Sometimes technology helps.
Sometimes a better handover helps.
Sometimes information simply needs to be visible earlier.
And sometimes the best improvement is removing a step everyone assumed had to stay.

For me, workflow design is less about making people move faster through an existing process.

It is about questioning the process itself.

What still serves a purpose?
What has become habit?
What could disappear?
What could happen differently?

That is usually where simplicity starts to appear.

Workflow Systems is the lens I use when I want to make work clearer, lighter and easier to move through, before adding another tool to it.

Because the smartest workflow is not always the most automated one.

Sometimes it is simply the one with less unnecessary work.

That difference has always interested me.

Because organisations rarely struggle for just one reason. A slow process may actually be an information problem. A repeated mistake may come from an unclear decision. A team issue may begin somewhere much earlier in the workflow.

The visible problem is often only the surface.

That is what I mean by Business Systems.

I look at how people, processes, information and decisions affect one another, and especially at what happens in the spaces between them.

Who knows what?
Who decides?
Where does information stop?
What has become unnecessarily complicated simply because it evolved that way?

The interesting part is usually not the individual task.

It is the relationship around it.

A small change in one place can remove friction somewhere completely different. Sometimes the answer is a better process. Sometimes it is clearer ownership, less information, a simpler handover or removing something that no longer needs to exist.

That is why I am less interested in optimizing a process in isolation than in understanding the system around it.

Business Systems is the lens I use when I want to see what is really holding the work together, and what could work differently if we rearranged the pieces.

Because sometimes the most useful improvement is not adding something new.

It is seeing the organisation differently.

A job opening.
A promotion.
A client.
A course.
The next logical step.

I tend to look at it differently.

I am usually more interested in the possibilities that are already around someone but have not yet been connected.

A skill used in one role may have value somewhere completely different. An old piece of experience may become relevant again when the market changes. A new technology can create a route that did not exist a year ago. One conversation can open a direction that was never part of the original plan.

Opportunity is rarely just something we find.

Sometimes we make it more visible.
Sometimes we create it by connecting things that previously sat apart.

That is what I mean by Opportunity Systems.

It is a way of looking beyond the obvious next move and asking a different question:

What else could become possible from what is already here?

For me, careers are one of the clearest examples.

A career does not have to be one ladder with increasingly important titles. It can be a map with several routes, side paths, experiments and exits.

This way of thinking also changes what I look for.

Less: What role should come next?
More: What could this experience lead to?

Less: Where is the opportunity?
More: What would make an opportunity visible or possible?

That shift is small, but it can change the whole map.

Opportunity Systems is the lens I use when I want to understand where movement could come from next, especially when the obvious route is not the most interesting one.

And quite often, there is more than one.