The Business Night just turned to an end and I have returned home still buzzing from all the inspiring information that was presented to me tonight. My head is filled with stories about sustainability, entrepreneurship and ambition. I am writing this article while enjoying a delicious Tony’s Chocolonely bar, which we received to create and promote the awareness about sustainability and a better world.
In this article I will briefly tell you about the stories of five inspiring leaders who are all pursuing a better world in their own unique way.
The evening was kick started by chairman of the event (Nathan de Groot). He told us that we should use the conference as a wakeup call, and become aware of our responsibility towards the planet. On top of that, he emphasized on the fact that the bright students of today, need to become the responsible leaders of tomorrow. After encouraging the crowd, he gave the floor to John Heller.
John Heller – CEO Louwman Group.
Louwman Group is known for its beautiful dealership next to the A2 (Utrecht), where Ferraris, Lamborghinis and McLarens are exposed. The fresh CEO told his story about how he thinks that Louwman makes a difference in the car industry. The fact that Louwman is a family owned company makes it stand out, as the organization is not managed to improve the share price or with a short term mindset.
Mr. Heller argued that many corporations fake to be sustainable just to answer the demands of the shareholders. Louwman tries to do more than just some nice things for society, for instance, by making cars available for people with physical disabilities.
According to Mr. Heller:
“leadership is inspiring people, creating movement and collaboration. Leadership is establishing the room for new ideas and creating energy that will bring the company to the next level.”
Jacques van den Broek – CEO Randstad
Randstad is a family owned company as well, however, Mr. van den Broek admitted that it got a bit out of hand. The company had a revenue of approximately €20 billion and roughly 620.000 candidates working on a daily basis in 2016.
However, Mr. van den Broek told us that when he speaks with the founder, the current size is not enough as Randstad should become even bigger. The company pursues a growth strategy instead of profit and there is a clear reason for this approach, as Mr. Van den Broek mentioned that the profits will come automatically with the revenues. The goal of Randstad is to have as many people at work as possible, while striving perfection, because they have to work for both the clients and their company (Randstad).
Besides growing Randstad also wants to be a good and sustainable employer. It is the only company in their industry that is included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Because of its size, Randstad has a large impact on the labour market especially in the Netherlands, but also in many other countries.
Tip of the CEO: Lead by example, through reflection, do not talk about what went wrong but use the past to make improvements. For example, if a manager wants to expand his/her customer base, the CEO asks him: who he wants to attract and how do you want to attract them? Than Mr. Van den Broek helps the manager by achieving that goal.
Ynzo van Zanten – Chief Evangelist at Tony’s Chocolonely
“Chocolate is the magical solution for everything, you can eat it when you are sad and have a bad week, or you can eat it when you are happy and want to celebrate something”. It is however important that if you buy it, you are aware of your responsibility. Because despite the fact that you pay a reasonable price for a bar of chocolate (e.g. €2,50), only €0,12 of the total price ends up at the farmer.
The chocolate market is huge, but the number of chocolate producers is rather small, this position grants them high bargaining power towards the farmers (especially in Africa). This results in the fact that a cacao farmer in Africa receives approximately €1.300 per year to take care of his family and his farm
This great inequality created discontent by Teun van den Keuken, who tried very hard to make the chocolate producers more aware of their ‘crimes’. I do not have the space to tell you the inspiring story about Tony’s Chocolonely, therefore, I strongly recommend you to read the story on the following website: http://www.tonyschocolonely.com/en/about-us/how-it-all-began/
The essence of the story was clear, there is still great inequality in the world. We are all responsible for our actions and the way we support or exploit the poor. To emphasize this inequality Tony’s bars are unequally divided, to address this problem once again. Tony’s Chocolonely proved that even if you are a small player, you can make a change in the market. Due to the chocolate being largely embraced by many people in The Netherlands, the company has even become the market leader in the Netherlands. Thereby, it pressures the large chocolate produces to change their way of doing business, and become more responsible for all the people in the supply chain.
Tony’s Chocolonely tries to be different by doing three things,
- building a long term relationship with farmers in Africa (already 6.000);
- establishing trust between the parties;
- prevent misuse of the system in Africa.
The goal of the Tony Chocolonely is to expand and make the world more sustainable and grant the cacao farmers a brighter future. They started this conquest but the large companies have to change as well in order to reach this goal.
Léon Wijnands – Global Head of Sustainability ING
Mr. Wijnands told two stories during his speech. In his first story, he told about ING’s way of being sustainable. He explained that ING tries very hard to be sustainable in this world, and that their shareholders have high (and diverse) expectations about ING’s responsibilities. ING performs three activities aimed at sustainability (they are ranked from small to large impact):
- Philanthropy
- Footprint of direct operations
- Landing and investing
Many people pay the most attention to the first point, while the last point (landing) receives the fewest attention. This is very contradictory, because the part that has the largest impact is least appreciated. Such a situation for a bank is hard to handle, because stakeholders do not see the value of ING’s actions. For example, 10% more emphasis on sustainability in the landing is worth three times as much as the total worth of the philanthropy activities.
The second story was all about the Dakota pipeline crisis. You can read about it by clicking on the following url:
The essence of the story was that ING worked hard to prevent this event from escalating. When the project started, ING screened the company who was responsible for building the pipeline. Everything was fine and also during the production planning all stakeholders had been contacted and through discussion with all parties an optimal route was chosen.
However, the whole situation got out of hand and turned into a messy cocktail, through problems about people’s rights, environmental problems and even national regret.
Despite the fact that ING only played a small role in the whole funding process, many people turned against ING and the media further increased the tension.
Mr. Wijnands explained how ING has tried to solve the problem with the stakeholders (the Sioux) and that they were (surprisingly) the first bank approaching them directly. ING sold their loan on the market (as demanded by the Sioux) and did their very best to solve the problem, to the extent that they were able to do so.
The main takeaways of the speech were:
Communication is key and the people who are complaining are often not the people who are hurt (difference between stakeholders and stake takers). Despite the small leverage, ING’s reputation was hurt by the whole pipeline incident, and the worst thing is that it will probably get build anyway.
Maurits Groen – #1 Top 100 Sustainability (according to Trouw)
Maurits Groen is a leading figure in the field of sustainable entrepreneurship. Mr. Groen’s speech primarily focussed on his new invention the WakaWaka lamp. He invented this lamp to provide lighting to people, in areas that are not connected to the power grid (in Africa). I was not aware of the fact that even in South Africa (which is the wealthiest country in Africa), 25% of the people are not connected to the power grid. Because of the insufficient energy supply, many people have to use lamps fuelled by kerosene. According to Mr. Groen, a shocking 360.000 Africans die every year because of these accidents with such substitutes for general lighting.
Mr. Groen came up with a solution, the Wakawaka lamp. He stated: Africa receives the most sunlight of all our continents, so we should use it to provide a sustainable and safe solution. However, the distribution of this lamp didn’t start in Africa, it started close to home in the Netherlands. Apparently, this sustainable charger/lamp was also attractive in developed countries. This opportunity was embraced and the WakaWaka lamp was sold in developed countries to generate cash, which is used to further develop and distribute the lamp to the developing countries.
Subsequently, the lamp can be distributed via NGOs and directly to the people in Africa. Mr. Groen started in Rwanda, which is one of the strict but interested countries in sustainable development. This is just the start and Mr. Groen aims to expand the lamp to many more countries in Africa, to save people in a sustainable manner. Because global warming is a huge danger and it will be hard to undo it, and it will be even harder to prevent more environmental disasters from happening.
Despite the success of the product, it was hard to receive financing, because of several reasons. Sustainable start-ups are risky for banks, therefore it is very hard to get a loan. Furthermore, the WakaWaka Lamp is a slow moving product, it will last for approximately 7 years. Therefore, sustainable growth is hard to predict. A solution for this problem was crowd funding.
Key takeaways of the business night
In my opinion some strong statements were made during this evening.
First of all, all companies (with exception of ING) explicitly agreed upon the fact, that making a profit should not be the main target of a company. The profit should come as a side effect and the emphasis should be on creating value for the customer/client. If you are able to encourage people to benefit from your product or service, profits will follow simultaneously. Maurits Groen proved this by illustrating that customers in the Western countries are interested in their products, thereby creating cash flows which can be utilized to serve the main purpose. Maurits Groen was also the person who added to the conversation that the desire to create value for the customer should come from you ambition. You should be thrilled by what you are creating and this will make you a successful employee or manager. Earlier in the evening Jacques van den Broek agreed upon this by stating that they do not focus on the education of their potential employees but on their passion and ambition.
There were many similarities during this evening and the speakers agreed upon most statements. However, the different perspectives provided the basis for interesting discussions. For instance, the fact that sustainable entrepreneurs need the financial resources to expand their business. In contrary, the financial institutions are hesitant in support such initiatives because of their high risk.
Another example of disagreement was the statement of the CEO of Randstad, that the Netherlands will have more and more difficulties in finding the right people. In contrary, John Heller (Louwman Group) stated that they have no problems at all in hiring people. On the one hand, this is a good thing for us students, providing more opportunities on the job market. At the same time, it makes the hiring process more costly, thereby creating a negative impact on profits in the Netherlands.
All in all, I can assure you that I had a great evening, filled with exciting success stories from different perspectives. Combining these perspectives result in a clear need for more sustainability. Caring for this planet and its inhabitants is an responsibility of us all. We can make a difference in this world, by doing both small and large deeds. We are all bright students, future leaders and influential employees both in the field of strategic and logistics. Therefore, I ask you to participate and help this world becoming more sustainable oriented. After all, we have to live in this world, share it and improve it. Small wins do count and by sharing responsibility, tremendous losses can be prevented.
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