BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

"Leadership has to do with long-term thinking. I would like to underline the necessity of that. If you talk about leadership and politics sometimes it is only about what is in the news today, what are the polls saying, what about the next elections? This era requires something completely different. You must have a long-term view. Let me give you some examples about the Netherlands today. At this moment we are engaged in a big discussion about the future of producing gas. Production is declining. That means that the revenues for the government will go down and you have to think about the structure of your economy in the longer run.

"The second example is climate change. We have to protect ourselves against the strength and the power of water, the rising sea levels, the melting of the ice caps in the Alps, and so on. So we must have a very good strategy to keep our feet dry to protect ourselves. We are all concerned about global warming. We say it must not be higher than 2⁰C and even better 1.5⁰C but if you believe this is a long-term goal, you have to act now. Then we have the issue of the aging of the population. It has consequences for the pension system, for health, for housing, etc. We have a very plural society. What about respect in a plural, very diversified society? These are key issues. They require long-term solutions.

"The good thing is that we have the instruments to improve long-term thinking. For example, we have the Central Planning Bureau in the Netherlands. They analyze longer-term issues. If a political party makes all kinds of promises, it is confronted with the Central Planning Bureau. They will ask what the long-term consequences of its policy programme are. When you have a new government, the CPB will ask what the longer-term aspects of its proposed policies are. These are good things. We have the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor Regeringsbeleid, the Scientific Council for Government Policy, and they too are doing research into future-oriented issues.

"We have the Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, and the Central Bureau of Statistics, and they too are analyzing what is happening in Dutch society. I think these things help. If you talk about leadership the key element is, do you have a long-term view, a long-term approach? And how can you make connections between long-term strategies and the steps that have to be taken now? I also like the phrase 'a serving leadership'. It is not about you as a leader, it is about serving society.

"What sort of leadership is required: structured or non-structured? Some people say you need both, but quite a lot of people say no, you just need a vision and a strong leader.

"I was chairman of the International Advisory Board in Rotterdam, and we had a discussion about how you can connect different elements. In this respect we used the wording oxymoron, meaning a combination of contradictory words. For example, a bottom-up strategy is an oxymoron. Bottom-up means to take advantage of start-ups, of new ideas, of creativity. But at the same time you must have some kind of structure. So a phrase like bottom-up strategy means to benefit from unstructured ideas but at the same time to try to have a kind of structure that enables you to make use of those ideas. So you need a combination.

"My leadership, as Prime Minister, was content-driven. I was not very well known when I became leader of my party in 2001. So in the beginning I had to do a lot of television programmes and sometimes I thought: What am I doing? But after that first phase when people got to know me, I said I want to make really good speeches about what must be changed in the Netherlands. So that was about content.

"Then I said I want talk about our competitiveness in the Netherlands, I want to speak about reforms, I want to talk about the migration issue, I want to talk about the country's international position - that was my answer to my new position as leader of the Christian Democrats: let's talk about content, what should change. When I became Prime Minister, of course I didn't have much experience. I had never been a minister before but I had a clearly developed agenda. That was the reason why we made a success of our reform policy, and despite the fact that we were criticized by so many people, by unions and economists, we managed to carry out those reforms together with our social partners.

"Another example: in 2004 I was in hospital for four weeks, it was a tough time. There was a demonstration organized by the unions in Museum Square, Amsterdam, and they were saying: oh, this government is a horror cabinet, etc. That was what people saw from the outside. But with other ministers I had confidential meetings with the unions to say we must change things and we have to work together.

"So the people thought, hey there is a kind of struggle between the unions and the government but at the same time we were having internal meetings with the employers and the employee associations to find a way out. On the basis of those contacts, we were able to reach a social agreement with our social partners. So we carried out the reforms despite the initial criticism, and that was a great result. You need each other to change the nature of things".