De Meesterpreek in de Lunchbreak met Feike Sijbesma

Uh, there you stand or I sit, actually, uh, here in a pulpit, uh, which I find quite uncomfortable, and uh, I think it's really wonderful that you have come in such large numbers, uh, special, my son studies economics in Rotterdam. My story will actually be 15 minutes, very serious. I can't help it. The assignment, my story. And so, if I am allowed to give a story here, I also feel a responsibility resting on my shoulders. Responsibility. How do I deal with responsibility? I am uncertain but determined, searching but with courage.

When I joined the board of DSM in 2000 and later became chairman in 2007, I asked myself the same question: how do I deal with this responsibility? It is quite a step, and one I wanted to handle consciously. I then bought a small blank notebook, a small orange notebook, and I wrote down all sorts of things in it: questions and uncertainties, options and choices, themes, but also goals, principles, all aspects of how I would use the impact you have in such a position, how I would fulfill my responsibility. Responsible handling of my responsibilities. The word says it all, because more impact, more power, so to speak, also demands more responsibility. If those two, impact and power, do not go hand in hand with responsibility, that is, in my opinion, extremely dangerous. History unfortunately knows many examples of much impact, much power, and a poorly developed sense of responsibility. And sometimes, sometimes not a poorly developed sense of responsibility, but sometimes hidden behind the phrase 'Oh, I couldn't do otherwise.'

That is why I look in the mirror and ask myself the question: what is it really all about as chairman of DSM, or better for me, as Feike, as a human being, or for many people whose direction I might partly influence? Do you often ask yourself that same question, looking in the mirror? What do I want? What can I do? Or what should we actually want to do? Searching but with courage. Is the goal and the responsibility I have to create as much shareholder value as possible? And Ruben referred to it, how it goes here on the Zuidas. I am very far from that, by the way. Or... what is the role of a company in our society? What is the role of a company in our economy? Making money, keeping the economy running, right? That is the purpose of a company, right? Or we can say it more nicely: that gives you a reassuring feeling with your colleagues and your employees to simply make good products that customers want to buy. Yes, nothing wrong with that, and we do that too, I do that too, and I must say, successful myself as well. But... but the economy was never invented just to make money. It is a distribution model – sounds a bit complicated – a distribution model of competencies, of prosperity. Making money is not a goal, it is a means. It once started: one was better at catching buffaloes – you can still see it occasionally today – and the other was better at growing crops, and so there was a division of labor, barter. Then it became more complex, and gold became the medium of exchange, and then we put the gold in the bank, and money, which is actually worth very little, became the medium of exchange. And today we simply trust what someone has written on a computer screen, because money does not exist at all except on that computer screen, and we trust it as a means of exchange to continue that division of labor and together in our so-called economic system, once intended for all of us to live happily together. Live happily together. And if that is the purpose of the economy, and if that is also the purpose of a company, then the question is: has it succeeded? Does it work? Partly yes, and in my opinion, partly not.

If every 6 seconds somewhere in the world a child dies in the arms of its own mother because nearly 1 billion people go to bed hungry every day, then is our system, as it was once intended, successful? Has it succeeded? I am in southern Bangladesh, and suddenly I am holding a child in my arms that I just received from the mother. The mother stands with tears in her eyes and asks me to take the child with me. Why? I ask, and I ask the people of the United Nations why. She says, because you also know that if you come back in two years, she will no longer have six children. She knows that. You know that. So many things flash through my mind, I can tell you. Eventually, I put the child back in her own arms, and there are two with tears in their eyes. This cannot be. No, this really cannot be. And on the way back, I think: what a world. In the village where I was, there was not enough money left to help the village further. The world was in the financial crisis, and we as a global community had also asked the United Nations World Food Programme to cut back from 5 to 4 billion. One billion, please. And why? Well, listen, there is a financial crisis, we all have to cut back, and we in Europe ask you to cut back 1 billion. We in Europe need 1500 billion to put into our banks. That is why we cannot help you in that village in southern Bangladesh for the next few years. You wait with your hunger. That is essentially what society says. Is our system then successful? Has it succeeded? Is our economic system, our economic system, successful if we are actually making our planet uninhabitable step by step through climate change? If you can no longer live in southern Bangladesh because it is too wet, or in the Horn of Africa because it is too dry, where the effects of climate change are already visible daily, and where you can no longer grow your crops, where climate change is already affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Imagine, imagine they start to flee when it really no longer works there. Yes, imagine, imagine that we do not achieve the energy transition in time, or that we do not solve the CO2 problem in time. Yes, imagine, imagine that the next generation, my children or their own, say: that Paris Agreement, it was a very good plan, it's just a pity that... Yes, imagine. Is our system then successful? Has it succeeded?

In recent decades, it seems more and more that making money has become the goal, and thus we may have lost sight of the actual goal a bit. If pension funds – and there is no one in the world with more money than pension funds – if pension funds try to achieve 1% more return, but thereby possibly collectively invest massively in the wrong direction, and the money that ultimately drives the world, if money and thus the world goes a bit in the wrong direction, then the pensioners for whom we are trying to get that extra percentage point of return, all of us, may eventually be much more expensive because the bill will come for climate change, for too much inequality, for all the problems we do not want to solve now, hidden behind the phrase 'Oh, we couldn't do otherwise.' And if we then indeed say, 'Yes, sorry, we couldn't do otherwise,' then can we say that our system is successful? That it has succeeded? Is it not strange that here on the Zuidas, the money invested in our pensions for a period of 30 years is invested, and we hold people accountable with a performance indicator often no longer than a period of 12 to 18 months? And do we actually want shares to be traded per nanosecond by computers? That you can be a shareholder for less than one second? Yes, do we want that? Companies have gained much more impact in the last 50 to 100 years, from regional to global. Some companies have a revenue that is more than the gross national product of countries. With this increased impact, with this increased power, as I said, the sense of responsibility should also increase, also because the world is not as simple as before. Kings? There are two in the Netherlands today. Kings can no longer solve everything. Governments can no longer solve everything. If they ever did at all, but certainly today, they cannot. Often the innovative power, often the solutions to many of the world's problems lie with companies. So it is inevitable to work together, public-private. It cannot be otherwise, and it should not be otherwise. And thus I define the responsibility of companies: responsible handling of your responsibilities. Because we all want our economy, our economic model, our society to be successful, to succeed. Who doesn't want that? And no one can be successful in the long term, or dare to call themselves successful, in a world that fails. But perhaps we also need to talk about nerve, about courage. Dare you? As a child, you often hear that: 'Dare you?' Whether it's jumping over a ditch or ringing the neighbor's doorbell or eating something you've never eaten before. We associate daring with risk, with danger. 'Be careful,' it was, it is often impressed upon you, time and again. Leadership, in my opinion, is also about nerve, about daring. Leadership is, for example, having the courage to make the biggest challenges of the world your own responsibility, even your own priority, and to define your role a bit differently. As I said, the economy was not invented to make money, but intended as a system to build and share prosperity together. But yes, look, the environment also wants that. I want it too, but yes, shareholders, fellow companies, competitors, etc. Well, if you are the only one, can it actually work? If you are the only one, then maybe it doesn't set the world on fire, and maybe you go under first. Yes, right? No. And so leadership is also about daring, the courage to lead, sometimes as the first, sometimes as the only one, to take a different path, and then try to get others on board. And by the way, that is why I am here. And is it not of great importance to pause for a moment during lunch here on the Amsterdam Zuidas? But even more important is if you agree with me just a little bit, what are you going to do tomorrow as a leader, as an employee at an industrial company here on the Zuidas, as a professional service provider, as a lawyer, as an investor, or as a banker? What are you going to do tomorrow? It is the task of leaders to dare to offer constructive answers to the challenges, to give answers that go beyond the quarterly figures, or for those in politics, the last election result or the polls. I am uncertain. We all have uncertainties. But as I said, uncertain but determined. Determined to lift the anchors that sometimes give me my own certainties, because otherwise we cannot move forward. And is that sometimes scary? Yes, and thus I am also searching but with courage.

Dare to make the big global challenge number one, and dare to focus on the long term. Dare to share. Dare to lift anchors. Because I do not want to take responsibility for every child that will die of hunger this afternoon, because I do not want to live in a society that could not do otherwise. Because I do not want to just give the climate and its bill to our children. I want to handle our responsibilities responsibly. Other things: we left the Stone Age not because the stones or the coal ran out, but because there were better alternatives. Set a strategy for our company connected to the world goals, the Global Goals, established last year by the UN, in a circular and sharing economy — it's hard to say in Dutch — building with users instead of consumers. That is something different. An economy based on trust, for and by all, and thus also an economy in which women, by the way, to make that point too, take an equal and more important place, because their perspective is often, usually, an enrichment. This is leadership for a changing world. Did I write all that in 2000 or 2007 in my orange book? No, of course not. With all the developments, with all the journeys, with the meetings I was allowed to have, the experiences I was allowed to have, I slowly developed my vision and adjusted it. And then you think: what kind of world do I actually want to leave behind for my children, for the generations after them? I don't want to have to tell them later that we of course knew all that, but that we couldn't do otherwise. And that is why the orange book, that is why the mirror. My mirror, to record and look back and remind myself what it is all about, to step out of the daily routine and look at the long term. I conclude. I hope that the first time you look in the mirror today from now on, in an hour, or tonight, or tomorrow morning — the first time you look in the mirror and by chance see yourself, and check if your hair is okay — I hope that you also ask yourself the question and think back: what world do you want to shape, and what world do you want to leave behind? And that perhaps, perhaps you even write it down in your other mirror, your own orange book. Dare you? Your own responsibility. And how to deal with it? As I said: uncertain but determined, searching but with courage. Thank you.