Stichting Blikverruimers (Wider Horizons Foundation) began an educational project for young professionals called the Blikverruimers Academy last year. The programme offers young talented people the opportunity to develop into a supervisor at an early stage in their career. The foundation also contributes directly to better supervision by creating greater diversity in Supervisory Board in the Netherlands. Sybren Bosch (26), one of the participants: “Diversity can have a huge effect on the way an organisation sees the world.”
What is your professional background?
“I work for four days a week as a consultant at Copper8, a consultancy agency focusing on guiding tenders on the basis of cooperation and trust, with a particular focus on the circular economy. I also spend one day a week as a junior board member on the Raad voor de Leefomgeving en Infrastructuur (Board for the Environment and Infrastructure).”
How did you get involved with the Blikverruimers Academy?
“I knew one of the founders from a number of previous projects, and when she told me about it, the vision of the Blikverruimers (‘wider horizons’) immediately appealed to me. As a junior board member at the RLI, I could see that greater diversity on the board led to a different dynamic. We now discuss issues more frequently from different perspectives, and I get the impression that there is now more attention to the really long term.
I also saw the same thing previously at UNESCO. There as well, the dynamic of the expert groups clearly changed when it was decided to add a younger person to each expert group. So I am really curious as to how things will develop here, since I am absolutely convinced that diversity - not only in term of age, but also in male/female ratio and background - can have a huge effect on the way an organisation sees the world.”
Isn’t supervision something you do after 30 or 40 years of work experience?
“Well that is the traditional way of looking at it. But one could also say that in an ever more rapidly changing world with technological progress and economic uncertainty, organisations are facing entirely new challenges. And perhaps young talent can contribute to meeting these challenges in a supervisory role. And we are not completely unprepared either. We follow a year-long project of six Saturdays, during which we consult intensively with numerous supervisory directors and other people with a lot of social experience and knowledge of business. We learn from the best how supervision actually works today in practice and what are the goals of supervision. The best thing about it actually is that most of today’s supervisory directors carry absolutely no baggage with them and most of them have become involved because they were asked to do so. Experience is important of course, but it is not the only thing that counts.”
What are the skills you need to be a good supervisory director?
“This may sound obvious, but clearly you need to have some knowledge of finance and be able to read a set of accounts. This is one thing that a supervisory director is expected to do and if there are problems, this is the area in which you are most often called to account. Then you need to understand the economy and certainly the sector or industry in which the business you are supervising is involved. What is often to some extent ignored is that you also need to have good awareness of the organisation’s impact on society. This I think is more a question of mindset than an expertise that you can learn. Anyway, all these aspects are covered during the programme.”
Have you already learned something that has changed your view of supervision?
“One speaker said: ‘If things are going well, no one hears anything about the Board of Supervision or the Supervisory Board. If on the other hand things are not good, the supervisory body comes immediately under fire.’ It may look like a background role, but if something goes seriously wrong a supervisory director must step up and give a well-founded opinion regarding what has happened. In this sense, supervision is a somewhat thankless task and therefore you really have to want to take it on.”
And what do you think about that personally?
I don’t know yet. I see it as a good project to find out whether it would really suit me. Anyway, an internship on a Board of Supervision is a fixed part of the programme, so I will certainly experience how it works in practice. But the fact that business has shown very positive reactions to this initiative shows that there are plenty of opportunities for young professionals. When I talk about it, I often hear people say ‘this is exactly what we need…”
Stichting Blikverruimers
Stichting Blikverruimers is an initiative of five young professionals: Eduard Schmidt, Rik Westland, Lara Luten, Samuël Verpalen and Talitha Muusse. Talitha is already involved in practice as a young supervisory director of CSR Netherlands. The aim of the initiative is to allow young talented people to find out whether they have what it takes to be the supervisory directors of the future. This is achieved by offering the participants practical training and putting them in touch with both young and experienced supervisory directors. Whereever possible, an internship on a Board of Supervision is also part of the curriculum.
Eleven young professionals are taking part in the first edition of the Blikverruimers Academy. The central them is ‘understanding behaviour and culture’. Traditionally, supervisory directors often distance themselves from the organisation and concern themselves mainly with the financial reporting of the organisation and the procedures for appointing new senior management. In recent years however, there have increasingly been instances of misconduct that have arisen from the elements of behaviour and culture. Greater attention to the culture of the organisation and managing this culture can thus be a valuable addition to the duties of a supervisory director, according to Stichting Blikverruimers.
