Spring 2007 - European University Institute

What is your current role?
I’m on the Executive Board of ING Group, a global
financial services company with about 1 0,000 employees
in over 50 countries and based in Amsterdam
and the world’s 1 th largest company, according to
Fortune Magazine. I’m in charge of retail and private
banking, corporate operations and IT. My work brings
me into contact with Europe and Asia, focussing on
promising markets emerging in places such as Poland,
India and China.
And before that?
Following EUI, in 1987 I began my career as a management
trainee at a Dutch bank, ABN AMRO. Four
years later, I moved to ING, where I’ve been ever since,
holding various positions, including head of ING Poland
and ING Latin America. I moved several times
in Poland, Belgium and the US. My three children
were born in different countries but now we live in
the Netherlands.
And when were you at EUI?
My period of study at EUI ran from September 198
to August 1987. But in addition to the 1 months in
Florence, I spent months back in Amsterdam writing
up my LLM thesis. And believe me, working at the
bank during the day, and writing up my thesis into
the small hours, I needed every single day of those six
months!
That’s only a year at the EUI. Did it really have
such an impact on you?
Yes, it had an enormous impact. It was a fantastic
place. Fan-tas-tic. Maybe my memories have become
too romantic over time, but I still get very enthusiastic
about it. All those people from so many different
backgrounds, with different values, and seeing reality
in a different way.
You discover the extent of your ‘national baggage’
and one of the great opportunities at EUI was to confront
and get rid of that baggage and become a better
observer of reality. By which I don’t mean reasoning
8 Spring 2007
An Inspiring
Place of Learning
LAW, 1986-87 | Eli Leenaars
“ That’s only a year at the EUI. Did it
really have such an impact on you?
Yes, it had an enormous impact. It was
a fantastic place. Fan-tas-tic. ”
away differences. It is a question of understanding differences,
learning to attribute them to certain factors
in the past or indeed the present, and then being able
to deal with them in a fresh way.
I recall a social science professor during my year at
EUI who was doing research on national prejudices.
His starting point was that if you put intelligent people
together, have them live and work together intensively,
develop friendships, then they will communicate with
each other and all national prejudices will disappear.
Not an unreasonable premise, you might think. The
work included entrance and exit interviews with many
of my fellow students, asking what they thought of,
say, Germans, English, Italians, Dutch, etc. His starting
point turned out to be completely wrong. Over
time national prejudices were strengthened, not weakened!
But the character of those prejudices changed,
acquiring a level of understanding.
After a year I had developed—and still have—very
strong friendships with fellow students from many
countries. So it is not that these ‘prejudices’ become
antagonistic. But you had the opportunity to really
dig into these issues and find out how things get done
differently by different societies. But that doesn’t mean
done less effectively.
For example, one day I was at a bus stop in Pian di Mugnone
and no bus appeared. At last a lady came up and
told me there was a bus strike. ‘Strike?’, I thought, ‘But
it hasn’t been announced.’ Coming from the Netherlands
I assumed there would be a week’s warning, but
the strike was just decided on the day and you learned
about it by chance.
Then I started thinking: in Holland, if there is a
problem, you analyse the problem, you make a plan
to solve the problem and then you execute the plan.
But sometimes it’s much quicker not to make a plan.
Skip it, because intuitively you know what to do. You
don’t need analysis or planning. Just get on with it. But
you only learn that by seeing it first-hand. I realized,
there are other ways to do things that also work, and
that in many circumstances may produce much better
results.
And have you benefited from that insight in
your business career?
Yes, a lot. Working with different nationalities and
cultures, like the Chinese or Dutch culture, is vital in
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