Text: Marjolein de Jong | Image: David Meulenbeld | 27 June 2024
Half of the week, Havelaar attends meetings at Amsterdam’s city hall, while on other days, he jumps in his car to catch the ferry to Ameland, where he optimises ferry services. “I make optimal use of my car rides by listening to city council debates.” In between, he also found time to write a book about corporate culture: both in politics and in business.
How did the idea for the book come about?
„It has had a long gestation period. From a very young age, I was interested in politics. As an eleven-year-old boy, I would listen to the election results in bed at night. When I became active in the youth factions of political parties, I noticed I was good at debating and began training others in it."
„After my philosophy studies, when I started as a trainee at PostNL, I noticed there was a lot of overlap between the politics we see in places like the House of Representatives and the politics within organisations. There too, I saw that debating was becoming less about debating and more about: how do people work together when complex decisions need to be made? What processes do you see, and how can you explain them? Often, you have to figure that out for yourself when you start working somewhere, but with this book, I hope to provide a guide."
You write a lot about administrative complexity and things that seem simple in practice but are very difficult administratively, legally, or organisationally. What challenging situations do you encounter as CDA faction leader in Amsterdam?
„What still tires me is that people get very excited when they find a small difference of opinion. They then make an assumption about what you might think and reason entirely from that assumption, and then nothing happens. Be genuinely curious about the other person and make sure you can very precisely explain what you and I disagree on."
„One of the problems we are currently facing in Amsterdam is that it’s much dirtier on the streets. This is due to the introduction of deposits on cans. In neighbourhoods without underground containers, rubbish bags are ripped open to get those cans, leaving everything on the street. How are we going to solve that?"
„I’ve suggested several times: start by asking residents in those neighbourhoods to put their waste out as close to collection time as possible. But you already notice that in this case, socially and economically left-leaning parties say: yes, but it’s terrible that there are people so poor that they have to rip open rubbish bags at night. That’s one perspective, and from my perspective, it’s terrible that the street is so dirty. But you see, especially in such a city council with only a few minutes of speaking time, it never gets deeper than that. That makes politics often unintentionally quite superficial."
For whom did you write this book?
„Primarily for all people who regularly deal with complex decision-making, but also for those encountering politics for the first time. Take the arrival of the erotic centre in Amsterdam. The city council has been working on it for a long time. But the people near where the centre is now planned are only now being confronted with it. If they want to oppose it, they have to start from scratch in understanding how the municipality works. Who is responsible for what? The book makes clear how these processes work."
But aren’t those just the rules you can look up as a citizen?
„That’s true, but many rules are unwritten. I often compare it to a playground. A playground is an amoral common ground. Of course, there are general rules about how to use play equipment, those are the rules you can look up as a citizen. But whether or not you can push someone out of a climbing frame is part of the organisational culture."
„In politics, we also have general rules, like submitting a motion or approving a budget. But whether you do that openly or behind closed doors is part of the administrative culture.A culture where many meetings take place behind closed doors and people are focused on their own interests rather than the common good, I call a bad culture in my book. A corporate culture where there is room for differences of opinion and open discussion about how to handle them is actually nice."
You also write in the book that every leader can be categorised into archetypes: so-called personality types. Do you categorise the people you work with this way?
„I always try to. You can easily categorise someone based on certain statements. I compare it to masks. Of course, there is a person behind it, but administratively people often wear a mask. I remember in the past when Sharon Dijksma, when she was still an alderman in Amsterdam, said during an evening full of angry entrepreneurs: ‘My goal is not for you to agree with me tonight, my goal is for you to clearly understand what the new rules are going to be.’ Well, I think that’s a typical leader’s remark."
„It helps me to categorise people’s questions and comments, as I can then classify them into an archetype and thus know what kind of answers I need to give or what the other person needs to say ‘yes’ to a proposal."
But you also write that you believe authenticity is a prerequisite for a good leader. If people start responding to archetypes, how authentic is what you say?
„You should never say things you don’t mean or don’t want, because you shouldn’t betray yourself or your story. But you do need to think about which arguments you give to one person and which to another. Those arguments don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but you never have time in politics to tell your whole story. Tailor your story to what suits the personality of your listener, and you’ll see your proposals go through more quickly."
Rogier Havelaar - The new administrative culture starts with you
