Twan's Leadership Blog

A chief of police in the Netherlands has been sentenced in court for driving drunk. No news, it seems. But…
The chief of police was walking home with his wife on New Year’s Eve from a party with friends. His wife didn’t feel well and fell on the street. He called an ambulance but panicked when medical assistance didn’t arrive soon enough. His wife had suffered from a stroke in the past and he was worried about her. He decided to walk to his nearby house, get his car, and drive her to a hospital himself. When he returned in his car, police was at the scene and he was arrested for driving drunk.
I would have done exactly the same as the chief of police. Nothing would have been more important to me than taking care of my wife.

But I still think that the chief of police was wrong. His decisions should be different from yours or mine. As a chief of police he is living in a house of glass, like a mayor, political leader, and less so, a CEO. He should have waited for the ambulance, even though that can take very long on New Year’s Eve. It is difficult but different standards apply for leaders than for you or me.

In the UN China and Russia prefer dialogue with Iran over sanctions. In a funny cartoon in The Economist of November 12th the UN tries to talk to President Ahmadinejad.
‘We have found..’
‘NOT TRUE.’
‘Evidence…’
‘RUBBISH.’
‘of a …’
‘LIES.’
UN: ‘What do you do with people who repeat the same lousy thing?’
China and Russia: ‘More dialogue.’
I am a fan of dialogue because I think it is much more fruitful than debate or discussion. The necessary condition is that you need participants who are open and willing to listen to each other. That condition is not always available. President Ahmadinejad, Korean leader Kim Yong-il or Dutch populist Geert Wilders don’t appear to be willing listeners; they seem more interested in bringing their own views across, no matter what anyone else is saying. In such circumstances even the very willing might give up dialogue.

The euro isn’t very popular nowadays, except with criminals. That is because euros come in handy €500 notes, while the most valuable dollar banknote is $100. A stash of €500 bills is much lighter, easier to conceal and easier to count than a stash of the same value in dollars. Also much more impressive to light your cigar or sniff your coke with. Of the €900 billion-worth of euro notes in circulation, a third by value comes in €500 notes, according to The Economist. Now here is a competitive advantage of Europe over the US, let alone China or Japan.

The American elite is focusing more on China and is turning away from Europe. The reason behind this, Henry Kissinger said in a recent interview in NRC Handelsblad (27 October), is that the political elite in the USA currently comes from the South and the West of the country. When Kissinger was at the helm of American foreign policy the elite came from the East coast. They naturally paid more attention to Europe which is across the Atlantic Ocean, while people from the West and South tend to look more to Asia.

Steve Jobs was a creative and commercial genius but I wonder if he will be seen as a great leader twenty years from now. I doubt if Apple can be a great company without him.
Compare Apple to a totally different company: DSM, a Dutch-based life-science and material-science company. CEO Feike Sijbesma said this week at our Annual Conference that he considers himself a passant; he is important as a CEO but not too important. DSM has had great CEOs before him and Sijbesma hopes there will be many great CEOs after him. He places himself in the service of an enduring system.
I wonder if history will prove that Apple is an enduring system without Steve Jobs. As a leader Jobs was a dictator. Too much in Apple depended on him. That has led to great products that consumers really value and that have changed entire industries. But can the system be sustained without this crucial linking pin?
In obituaries Jobs was compared to great entrepreneurs as Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Sam Walton. That is true in the sense that they are great individuals that have left great ideas to the world. But to provide for my pension I would rather buy DSM shares than Apple shares right now.

There is a call for courageous leadership in politics. We need it to solve the eurocrisis, to deal with xenophobia, to prepare our societies for the future. But the courage is not there. Every time a crisis occurs, we stumble into a solution for that moment. There is no direction, no vision for the future.
The call for political leadership is self-contradictory. There is no leadership in politics, only followership. Politicians want to be re-elected and therefore they follow what they think their voters want.
One of the characteristics of true leaders is that they have the courage to go left, even if everybody else wants to go right (or vice versa; no political preference here). That’s not what politicians do. When the herd wants to go left, they follow, screaming from the top of their lungs that it is a very good choice to go left.
I have lost trust in the ability of politics and politicians to change society for the better. But I also feel reluctant to leave this task to CEOs and corporations. What or who do you think can be the source of a better world?

In some schools of Los Angeles children between 5 and 18 years old get one hour of Chinese language each day. Each day! They are supposed to be fluent in Chinese when they enter university. Everyone’s eyes are on China, a recent article in NRC Handelsblad said.
But LA seems to be an exception. Europe is much further in opening up to China than most parts of the US, a recent article in The Economist said. Many American politicians are afraid of China. That fear is absent in Europe.

“The writing is on the wall. A Greek default is inevitable.” Those were the words of John Gray, Professor-Emeritus at London School of Economics when he spoke at ELP earlier this week. European politicians have “unreal fantasies” in their approach of the problem, Gray said. There are two driving forces in this situation: on the one hand global markets that drive interest rates for Greece up, on the other hand popular resistance which makes it impossible for countries like Germany and the Netherlands to keep supporting Greece and for Greece itself to really transform its economy. The only questions are if the default will be orderly or disorderly and when exactly it will happen.

Innovation needs the active support of leaders. The most important conditions for innovation are space for free spirits and the willingness to collaborate. Free spirits are necessary to think outside the box, to get away from ‘we have tried this before’. Free spirits have the courage and curiosity to question. They don’t accept the status quo. Willingness to collaborate is another condition. Thinking together is by definition more fruitful than thinking alone. As A.G. Lafley, the very successful CEO of Procter & Gamble, said: “Many of the failures of innovation are social failures”.
For many large companies neither of these conditions is easy to fulfill. Free spirits are always in danger of being ousted. Systems don’t like elements that are different from the majority; they consider them as dangerous viruses and always try to expel them. The other pitfall of large companies is red tape and bureaucracy. Renewal is killed before it even gets the opportunity to get approval from top management.
Leaders have to protect the free spirits in their organizations. At Heineken they used to call their free spirits ‘ponytails’. Managers at the beer multinational are usually neatly groomed. Karel Vuursteen, one of the former CEOs, once told me that he considered it his duty to protect the ponytails. Every system needs its own ponytails to enable innovation and renewal.
Leaders should see to it that fresh ideas are not killed in the everyday habits of the system. They sometimes have to probe beyond their direct reports, have to be open for unconventional wisdom and have to protect their ponytails.

“The only hope of Europe is to become a niche of excellence.” That was the conclusion of Dominique Moïsi, French author and intellectual, about the future of Europe. Moïsi recently delivered the first European Leadership Lecture for the members of the European Leadership Platform.

A huge problem for Europe is that Germany no longer leads the way, Moïsi said. “Germany is no longer dreaming about Europe.” The reason behind it is that the new generations no longer feel guilty about the war. Germany behaves like smaller countries and places national interests first. “Without a strong pro-European Germany, without a strong Franco-German couple, Europe cannot work.”

A huge but uncertain impact on Europe will come from the Arab revolution. Moïsi compared what is happening in Arab countries to the French revolution of 1789. “It will take time. You cannot judge a revolution in months. We have five years of chaos in front of us.” Moïsi thinks that radical islam won’t govern the Arab world. “The islamists were caught by surprise. They weren’t part of it.”
About the leadership in Europe Moïsi said that we “have been choosing our leaders for the wrong reason in the wrong manner. We have a deficit of incarnation.” We need a person who can be the face of Europe, like Obama gave a new face to America. Moïsi thinks there should be one person who is President of the European Commission and simultaneously President of the European Union. Now those jobs are divided between Van Rompuy and Barrosso. This person should be elected by universal suffrage. At this moment in time this is impossible because of populism in Europe. “Pro-European forces are shrinking.”

As a sideline Moïsi mentioned that he is rarely invited these days to speak about Europe but usually about globalisation. Europe is not a sexy topic anymore.
Moïsi concluded by mentioning the ‘Nordic Lights’ as an example for Europe with four characteristics: a modest and honest state; less inequality; equality between men and women and a decent treatment of immigrants. “This is what we need to compete in the world.”