Mickey Huibregtsen, Fmr Global Board Member, McKinsey, Fmr Chairman, Dutch Olympic Committee
Frederik W. (Mickey) Huibregtsen worked for a major part of his career with McKinsey & Company. Since 2000 he has redirected his efforts towards a wide variety of social initiatives.
Podcast
Overview
Mickey Huibregtsen is the Chairman of ‘The Public Cause’. He is the former member of the Global Managing Board of McKinsey and Company. He is a former Chairman of the Dutch Olympics Committee and the Netherlands Sports Federation. He has written several books.
Mickey has had an amazing journey since his childhood. He first tells us that he has always got good mentors in life. Starting from his early education to his university, he feels fortunate that he got good teachers. Secondly, he tells us that he went to the navy and got a chance to design a submarine, from there he started to work with a diversified mechanical engineering company called ‘Stork’. While he was at level 3 in that company, his upper two managers resigned and he was shifted there. He became the General manager of the international gas turbine division. After some time, Mickey moved to McKinsey and Co. as we wanted to learn management. Mickey is now working with about 50 companies in different fields.
Building a new team
On being asked what qualities would Mickey pick if he were to build a new team, he tells us that first he would look for wisdom, next he considers overview to be an important quality. For the third quality he wishes to have courage in the team. He tells us that he would pick empathy as the fourth quality. He would also like creativity and communication skills on his list.
Valuing a company
Mickey believes that the stock markets do know how to value a company, but Venture Capitalists are slightly better in this. He backs his answer by saying that the stock market is derivative of human opinion, hence it is almost disconnected from reality.
Traditional Business versus new age Digital Companies
Mickey believes that the traditional rules of business have changed. Fixed assets used to be very important earlier but now they make a company unable to adapt to the change in the environment. The new age companies focus more on floating assets like technology and knowledge.
Mickey also tells us that everything comes to an end. The large organisations will also come to an end unless they recreate themselves. He calls this hard but tells us some way to recreate oneself. He starts by saying putting things at arm’s length could be one component. Secondly, he suggests replacing all top management. Next he advises having many fingers outside the corporation and finally breaking up the corporation into many parts etc.
Role of government in supporting athletes
Mickey believes that the Netherlands has a structural advantage as a country due to their small size and big population. He tells us that they have an intense network of sports clubs in their country. We are also informed that the local governments are quite supportive of local sports clubs and the central governments look for top athletes and have an organized way of talent management.
“The Public Cause”
“The Public Cause” was the result of the brainstorming of 100 prominent Dutchmen from all classes of society. They discussed and created this institution. Mickey calls its operations software and hardware. Where software means how they communicate and empathise with each other as citizens and hardware means how structured they are as one country.
Profile
Frederik W. (Mickey) Huibregtsen worked for a major part of his career with McKinsey & Company. Since 2000 he has redirected his efforts towards a wide variety of social initiatives.
Born in Rotterdam, Mickey studied in Leiden and Delft, where he obtained engineering degrees cum laude in theoretical and technical mechanics. Prior to joining McKinsey & Company in 1970, he worked several years for Stork, a diversified engineering company ultimately as General Manager of their Gas Turbine Division.
With McKinsey & Company Mickey has served a large and diverse number of leading international organizations, both in the private and in the Government sector. His work covered the full range of strategic, operational and organizational issues. In addition to his work in the Benelux he has served industrial corporations and government organizations in France, Germany, Scandinavia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Amidst a diverse range of community activities, Mickey was Board member of INSEAD, the international business school, founder and president of Topshape, a personal training company, and founder and president of The Public Cause, a broad movement in the Netherlands directed at reenergizing society and revamping the governing system.
As chairman of the Public Cause he orchestrated, amongst many other activities, the writing and production of a trilogy of books directed
For a six-year period he hosted a weekly radio program with BNR Nieuwsradio interviewing leading Dutch men and women.
He was also President of the Netherlands Olympic Committee * Netherlands Sports Federation for an eight-year period. Finally, he is co-founder and chairman of First Health United Foundation, a non-profit organization directed at funding research projects targeting blood and vector borne diseases in developing countries.
Some twenty years ago he founded the “Evening of Science and Society”, an annual event in the Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights) directed at celebrating our top scientists and inspiring them to actively participate in shaping a national strategy.
He recently initiated a movement called MaatschapWij (SocieWe) – www.maatschapwij.nu – directed at rebuilding and reenergizing the main actors in society: government, citizens and organizations. In support of this movement he brought together as “founding parents” the five largest national sporting federations, the five largest societal organizations – such as the ANWB, Consumers Union and the Red Cross – and five large corporations as well as a National Dotank of young professionals to help spread the mindset of a civil society to which all contribute.
His most recent book “Management Made Simple” captures his insights emerging from his consulting career.
