Roots, education, expertise, and induced expectations

Born in 1955 in The Netherlands I grew up in a family as 3rd of 4 children. The area my family
lived was determined by typical small size agriculture and smaller industries of the size up to
400 employees. Typical for the 2nd generation after WW II, life was safe and everybody was
looking in a promising to be explored future. Social network was strong and most of younger
people target to become employee in service industries instead of industrial production and
handcraft people.

During my college period news at television disclosed “agent orange” as this was used in
Vietnam, my science education at the university was the first official reflection on the
development of Berkeley, Sorbonne, Berlin. Different to former lecture schedules, this
education period was dominantly determined by “moving ethic targets”. Value perceptions got
changed and the way to handle your self-responsibility differentiated people. Typical were
feelings about the level of necessary competition, setting new ethic values, size of
consumption, survival and collaboration among western and emerging countries; we had
ambitious personal targets, but had enough time to exercise reluctance, sometimes called
philosophical determination of future common targets. These and others build the stage of
personal values and drove expectations regarding to be expected life schedule.

The Netherlands at that time was still partly influenced by the expertise of a colonial nation, a
country small in geographical extents with a high condensed population. A typical Dutch
spirit driven by historical global trade with local optimized social tolerance strongly influenced
by Yiddish values forced a permanent balance between “you and your environment”.
Parallel to my master degree in physics I followed lectures to become a science teacher at
college level. In the practical phase of this education I had a strong insight view on the
organizations consisting out of “school and teachers”. Although the profession “college
teacher” was strong motivational, I perceived the institutional framework as too restrictive and
less future value driven. Therefore I decided not to become a teacher. What I`ve learned
about methods and execution was great and disclosed a large range of scenarios to support
people interactions, knowledge transfer, and social responsibility. Till now, I never got the
impression, that that decision was wrong. Education, training, guidance, leadership stay with
me over all phases in business and private life

During PhD studies and research visiting winter and summer schools, sponsored (for
evident reasons) by NATO, extend this mental balance exercise (be aware what you do) on a
next level. I got very close to communities, where best in class people became teachers. This
from the reasoning of: next generation has to maintain achieved targets and performance,
and simultaneous enhance operations and increase benefits. With my PhD I decide to stop
science and to start with a typical IT job. After 2 years I changed to SAP and made my way in
standard applications software development.

I’m married; we have 5 kids in the age of 27 to 16 years and a grandson. This shows my
personal nearest social environment.

During college time I was member of a symphonic wind orchestra, stopped practising over my
university period and first 14 business years, but my kids re-launched me in 1996. Since then
I practise in symphonic wind orchestra as well as with the SAP Big Band.

Although there were already quite early threats in biology at college time, it took its time to
become a main driver for private life. This was with my interest regarding hunting, driven by
the education and training of hunting dogs. Since 1994 I have found my way in the hunting
scene, at the beginning on lower activity level, but in between hunting is more than a hobby
and drives a lot of values especially in environmental development and protection of flora and
fauna. This is also the main driver to become active in CSR.
Both practising music and hunting together with the domain “hunting dog education,
examination, being an official referee, etc.” opens the feeling of balancing between antipodes
of dynamics, external forces, and impacts: environmental and personnel.

Oestringen, February 2008