Today was the first of three days of Executive Exchange that each of us is signed up for as part of the program. I’m with Pascal, the CEO of the main water utility company of Antwerp, the commercial hub of Belgium. He spent the day with me on the 20th, and I was at his office and then one of his production facilities today.
To say that he is modest is an understatement (such a wonderful trait of so many Belgians I know). Most people would make a little stature go a very long way, while here he was practically sitting atop a huge empire of civil-service professionals, and not a hint of affectation or executive airs. He has hardly even mentioned to us that he’s the CEO, yet he obviously has the whole nine yards of CEO-hood: I don’t think I’ve ever seen an office as large as his, and the position predictably carries a lot of clout in a traditionally hierarchical government-affiliated company (majority owned by the city of Antwerp).
Pascal’s super-sized magisterial office, luxuriating in mahogany, leather upholstery & brass studs
I sat through a few of his meetings with department heads, then went for a walk through one of a cluster of multi-storey buildings at the HQ, followed by a field trip at one of their reservoir, purification and pumping facilities. The office tour was impressive in terms of the sheer scale and complexity of the organization he leads. The whole silent power thing and gushing, obsequious smiley responses to his MBWA chats were also pretty cool.
It was rather surprising how revealing and insightful the session turned out to be, despite all the interactions being in Flemish. I suppose when you tune out the content of the dialog, you make an effort to pick up signals that are usually drowned out by the meanings of words. I took pages of notes on communication style.
Lessons learnt: get organized, get paperless, prepare thoroughly for meetings, keep a running track of ongoing dialogs, give your interlocutors space for full expression, resisting temptation to interject in their reflective pauses…and try modesty!
Notes to Self 
Leave a comment