Man at the top
16
talking heads
WHAT'S NewS Issue 6 June 1996
For International's Hans Megens the move from
industry to banking has meant a radical change not
only in career terms. Until he joined the bank just
over a year ago, much of his free time was spent in
voluntary work in local government, in social welfare
and in the arts. 'But,' he says, 'what the move also
meant was an opportunity to discover another art
form - banking.'
Megens admits to a passion for
the arts. In his office are a
couple of pieces of applied art
he bought from local artists
when he-was on the board of
the Groningen city museum. '1
gave up museum work when I
joined the bank. But by then
we'd actually acquired quite a
lot of pieces - graphics,
paintings and so forth. When
you do this kind of voluntary
work, you get to know artists in
the region and you do what you
can to support them. On the
other hand, you don't take on a
board position for a museum
unless you're interested. I also
really love African art. I
discovered it in the early 1970s
and though I've never been to
Africa, I read about it and
discuss it whenever I get the
chance. For me, it's really
esthetically pleasing.'
Not surprisingly then, the arts
are a part of the Megens' fantily
life. His wife, Fenneken, was a
stage actress and is now
involved in a non-profit,
cooperative art gallery founded
by artists in Groningen. She also
works for the deaf by making
speaking books.' The Megens
only daughter, Antoinette, will
soon be starting in her first year
at the Arnhem Art Academy
where she will be studying
fashion design. He sees a
'creative' homebase as a real
advantage for anyone working
in business. You should have
other activities, interests, you
enjoy,' he believes. 'I think it's
useful to have other input in
your thinking, in your mindset.
It inspires you to think about
business in other ways. So, even
though I'm travelling a lot more
than before, I still try to get to a
museum or a gallery as often as
1 can to look at new work, meet
with people who are doing very
different things.'
Hans Megens believes this kind
of input is helping him adapt to
a new profession. It's incredibly
frustrating not to know
everything about banking,' he
says. 'I hate the fact that I can't
yet give an account manager the
level of support he or she needs
in coming up with creative
solutions for clients. I'm an
experienced manager and
entrepreneur, but I'm not a
banker experienced in this
particular art form, or at least
I'm not that yet. I spend a lot of
my free time acquiring the tools
and skills you need in banking.
Colleagues are a great help in
this sense. You can learn a lot
by listening to them. What I
find extremely useful is the
feedback I get from people in
the bank. And I'm encouraged
by the fact they say that I
contribute a more
entrepreneurial approach to
working with clients.'
But he also believes that
'managing' in banking is
essentially different from
managing in industry. 'Bankers
are more deal-driven,' he says.
'And banking is more abstract,
more intellectual than industry.
In industry, you're actually
involved in manufacturing a
tangible product. You can see it,
smell it, feel it. My colleagues in
the bank teil me they see a
difference in the way I approach
clients. I'm more interested in
their market, strategy,
competition, how they're
tackling research and
development. Some bankers
look at other things - balance
sheet and profit and loss
accounts. But I hope I'm
learning very quickly. What I'd
like to achieve is an integration
of both approaches - the
entrepreneurial experience with
the banking know-how.'
This process will take time.
Megens is an entrepreneur
through and through. His father
Hans Megens - banking is more abstract than industry.
owned a chain of furniture
stores in the central
Netherlands. 'There are six ^1
children in the family, so my
parents built up six stores, one
for each of us,' he says. 'They
were disappointed when I
decided not to go into the
family business. To this day, my
mother doesn't see being an
employee as being a "real"
challenge. Real work means
working for yourself.' In fact,
Megens did just that when he
was in his early twenties. 'I'd
started university where I was
quite a popular student mainly
because I was the only guy with
a car,' he laughs. 'Okay, it was
only an old Fiat 500, hut it was
still a car. At some point I had
to drop out for financial
reasons. So I started up an
antiques business. That worked
well for a while, but I wasn't
really getting anywhere.'
Getting somewhere led him to
Akzo, where he ended up in the
business development
department, and later to
Vredestein and Avebe. 'While I
was at Akzo, I finished my
studies in the evenings at the
universities of Rotterdam and
Groningen. I did economics and
it was quite tough to combine
the two. At the same time, I was
already active in local
government and a lot of other
areas, like the arts.' Megens
believes his life-long
involvement with voluntary
work is a direct result of his
boarding-school education. 'The
overriding concept at school
was that if you have talents, you
shouldn't just use them for
yourself, but also for the
community. And by being
involved in all these different
areas, I think I've corne to a
management style that is
perhaps best described as
controlled anarchy. It attempts
to combine the entrepreneurial
spririt of people, their initiative,
their know-how, their ambition,
their motivation. What a
manager has to do is coordinate
as much as necessary, but not
too much. As I see it, that is h<^|
we've built our international
business at Rabobank. And
that's how I'd like to see it
develop in the future.'
