Managing Director of LVV - Emma Van Nijmegen

Résumé du document

The organizational change of LVV started in early 1996 when Emma van Nijmegen, the new Managing Director of LVV, was appointed as its head. She totally transformed the company which was non-profitable into a market-focused organization. The main goals that she wanted to carry out were to change the former culture, to build a new image and to communicate more openly. In 1986, Neerlandia, a shipping company, took over LVV and put at its head in 1991 the former director of its human resources. The thing is that he was never in contact with basic employees on the field to interact with them. He preferred working alone without his management team, which was by the way not a real team. As a result, wrong strategic decisions came out and pushed the company towards real bad times. Therefore, employees were not motivated at all and were under pressure, stressed out, because they did not believe in what they were doing and at the same time did not trust the top management. The result of this awful management drove the company to a consequent downfall with a huge loss of revenues. Even if he used to be the HR Director, he never got the necessary skills and capabilities to manage different kinds of people, from truck drivers to its executive committee. That is why, at the end of 1995, Neerlandia decided to fire him. The next three months knew a kind of rebellion among the top executives and they decided to manage their business the way they did in the past. Thus, it started to be judicious and strategic and wanted to hire someone who would be able to face it's difficult position and implement new strategic solutions. That is why, Emma van Nijmegen, a young Neerlandia manager, was chosen because of her talent and her past experiences during her career that made her very competent, a risk-taker, and able to listen and understand quickly.

Extraits

[...] But the organization still lacked communication and trust, and that were the two major issues that Emma met. Indeed, people inside the company were not the core of the organization. And obviously teamwork and team spirit were affected by this general mistrust among all departments of LVV. Emma came to grips with this corporate change process she experienced for the first time. She actually stressed her focus on people who are the main added value of the company according to her. [...]

[...] She was ready to integrate and being a part of the Indonesian culture, showing her curiosity for other cultures and her capacity of adaptation. After Emma graduated, she entered Neerlandia as a trainee and finally was hired but her tenacity to work abroad was part of the deal. That is why, she started to manage several Business Units of Neerlandia in Hong-Kong, Singapore and came back in Rotterdam. Her performances in various domains and her capabilities to be trusted by employees were uncommon. [...]

[...] From this time, she decided to slow her activities and relied more on feedbacks sessions and reports from regional or head-office managers. Those managers were in charge of evaluating themselves and Emma as well, so that everyone could challenge everyone, in order to improve the management quality. On another point, Emma launched processes about controversial topics that needed to be discussed at all levels of the company. Moreover, she is at the origins of the retreat sessions for employees that insist on teambuilding, happiness and positive energy. [...]

[...] She promotes harmony within the company, she is very friendly, she solves conflicts and boost morals, she is intuitive, think with her feelings and emotions. To put it in a nutshell, Emma and Charlotte get the perfect features of an effective leadership. They both have the management of attention that means that their visions commanded the attention and commitment of those who worked for them and within in order to achieve goals. They also have the management of meaning; they are skilled communicators, able to cut through complexity and to frame issues in simple language and images. [...]

[...] Indeed, we act as managers according to our own sociograms and mind models that shape our way to behave in all parts of management. Indeed, all our resources, models, value chains and drivers are the bottom lines of our leadership's building process that will definitely impact the human resources management, which aims at becoming a strategic human resources management. [...]