Winning – but in a team!
Europeans advising Europeans. Alex Schoep, a Dutchman at the top.
By Sylvia Englert
Pleon is a new European consultancy. Its vision is unusual: Implementing the intelligence of various countries and regions for a joint network economy. In the coming months, we will be accompanying this unique mission with reports and essays. From a Europe that grows together because it belongs together. Today: Alex Schoep is the European President of Pleon. A man with a quiet voice, who advises his clients, such as the City of Amsterdam, against expensive image campaigns.
Pleon Amsterdam is located in the tranquil Overschiestraat between the picturesque old parts of the city and Schiphol International, a mere 15 minutes away from both. Visitors are first astonished: Extending behind Reception is a scarlet wall and on this a huge white Pleon logo. There are no more walls inside after this. Nor individual offices. All the 70 members of staff sit in a large open room, called the “business garden” or “Kantoor”. You can see straightaway who is there and so you can clarify questions in no time at all.
Like the other executives, Alex Schoep also has his writing desk in the “Kantoor”. But he isn’t there very often. One or two days a week he spends in Germany, one or two days in England, and usually he pops by the branches in France, Italy or Spain to boot. If any one is aware of what a European workday means it’s him. “Fifty percent of my time I speak English, thirty percent German, ten Dutch and ten French,” says Schoep in his soft Dutch accent. “This is not strenuous, but if one is tired or not quite fit, it turns out to be more difficult, you know.”
He sits relaxed in the soberly kept conference room of the Pleon central Duesseldorf headquarters, sipping at his coffee and leaning on the table. He speaks quietly with a soft voice, and every now and then the corners of his mouth form a mischievous smile. In his blue-white checked shirt, he might easily be mistaken for a software programmer.
He doesn’t look worn out at all, even though the last months were hectic. Since the beginning of January, he and his colleagues have been working on establishing the new agency, discussing the branding, reorganising structures, leading negotiations, dealing with a thousand and one matters. The new websites, the new logo, names, new positions for staff. Now, a few weeks after the official start of Pleon, everyday life is reappearing. “To be honest – it’s a bit like the morning after the party,” says Schoep. “ But when you think you can take a rest, then you are mistaken. It goes on – full throttle. We are already concerned with new matters and the deadlines for next year.”
Was he able to imagine earlier on he’d rise rapidly in the communications industry? Alex Schoep has to laugh. “No, absolutely not!” As a youth he wanted to become a geochemist, doing research into minerals and oil wells. In his leisure time, he got involved in politics and wrote articles for the school newspaper he founded with friends. A few hours before he sent off his application forms to the University, he thought better of it and changed his subject to politics and social sciences. “I thought I could become a civil servant,” he recalls and adds simply: “But I couldn’t be a civil servant. I’m an entrepreneur.”
While studying, he realised that he is an entrepreneurial type. More and more people took notice of his articles about economic and social affairs which he used to write as a student for Dutch daily newspapers for a meagre line rate. Further inquiries for articles arrived, he was asked to provide the texts for brochures. When young Alex at a friend’s birthday party met Hans Van der Toorn, who had just got his degree from Art College, “Schoep & Van der Toorn Communication Consultants” started up shortly afterwards.
Alex Schoep was 23. Times were bad, joblessness high, of his fellow students hardly anyone had found a secure position. Yet with commitment and luck, Schoep and his partner guided their enterprise to the top of the branch of industry. They had 80 employees now, and a good reputation. Finally the American agency Brodeur, specialising in IT, won over the Dutch for their European network. Until – yes, until “Schoep & Van der Toorn/Brodeur Amsterdam” became part of Pleon.
Alex Schoep takes another sip of coffee. His cell phone rings. It’s a colleague from USA – probably one who is aware that Alex hates e-mails and prefers to deal with people face to face or by phone. Schoep promises to call him back after the interview and explains then contemplatively that there are two
things that he enjoys most in his work: “If you have an agency, you must be able to predict developments on the market and to continually re-align yourself, constantly developing new products and services. This I like doing, this is what I care about,” he says. “With Pleon we’re able to take a new step again, doing something hitherto unknown in Europe. This is great fun.” What is also important for him is working with the best people in this sphere. “I’m always looking for people who are better than I in something or other, or have experience that I do not yet have – from whom I can learn.” Again this smile – infectious, a little shy. “The nice thing about this is that you can do both up until you’re 80. If it no longer works with Pleon, then we’ll do it somewhere else. But for the next few years, I think that Pleon is a terrific place for both.”
But Alex Schoep does not only learn from others, he has enough to offer himself in the exchange of ideas and information. In the agency he is wellknown for grasping the essence of a situation very quickly and for seeing the potential which others need longer to appreciate. If you are racking your brains for a solution to a client’s problem or a glitch in the agency, then you go to Alex. There is no need to be hesitate asking him: His style of management is just as unpretentious as he himself; hierarchy and power mean nothing to him.
It is often a different kettle of fish in those companies that he advises – especially in Germany. It strikes him again and again how structured everything is Germany is, how much is analysed and how little happens intuitively. “Analysis is much better here, but solutions are invariably a bit less creative,” finds Alex Schoep. “There is a huge difference between German and Anglo-Saxon or Dutch multinationals. In Germany, there is a tendency towards the slower, the more formal. This doe not have to be worse, it is simply different.”
Used to the informal way of interacting in the Netherlands and Anglo-Saxon countries, he is amused that in Germany some people work together for years and still aren’t on a first-name basis with each other. This is something that is beyond Alex Schoep – despite the fact that he with his wife and his two children has a house in Germany in the meantime. To begin with, he will not say where it is. This has nothing to do with paparazzi hunting him, but rather with his being used to his agency colleagues from Cologne and Duesseldorf first laughing when they hear of his out-of-the-way domicile. Eifel? That is uncool! But at least he can be reached there on his cell phone. Alex only switches it off his where there is no reception. This is not the case at his home – standing on the mountain next door is a cellular base station. He knows quite a few ministers through his political involvement (for the Christian Democratic Party of the Netherlands, which roughly corresponds to the German party CDU, however, with a slight tendency more towards the left). “But lobbying is not my thing; it’s something I’ll do only of necessity,” he says. “My political commitment is a private matter for me.” His special field is to advise enterprises and organisations which have a problem with the population or with a certain issue that has to be managed. He still takes care of two or three major clients himself alongside his assignments as Pleon President Europe.
For example, the City of Amsterdam. Currently, it is building a new Metro line – directly under the old parts of the cities, under all the canals. It is a difficult project, eating up Euro 1.8 billion and being expressly aggravating to all people who live and work in the old parts of the city. Even now the budget has been exceeded, although the first trains of the new line will be running in 2012 at the earliest. Irritation was pre-programmed and promptly put in an appearance. This was the reason why the city asked Alex Schoep whether he and his agency could help put this matter back on its feet through communication.
They could. But not by the usual means. “Young people who work in the communication sector generally think they have to communicate a lot, generate a positive image and so on,” Schoep thinks aloud. “But I realise that I frequently have to tell my client: Hold your horses – what is actually going on here, what is it really about? It simply is not possible to win over the citizens for such a project. There will be noise and construction sites in the centre of Amsterdam for the next eight years. There’s not much use listing the benefits the Metro will generate, because most people do not think in the long term. In such a case, it’s my job to say: Stop, no image campaigns, in this case they don’t work! First try to open the external communication channels.”
In his experience, the difficulty in organisations which have to swallow a great deal of criticism is that they withdraw into themselves, their employees start thinking along the lines of: “We against the rest of the world”. This is why Alex Schoep sees his first job in taking the pressure off the whole organisation.
Included here is also discovering what the essential objectives are. In the case of the City of Amsterdam, the assignment proper comprised in doing away with all the impediments that might block construction of this Metro line and in ensuring that the work runs as smoothly and auspiciously as possible. What frequently happens is that the residents in a certain street fight against the construction work. “If you build up good communication with these people and solve that problem, then you have one problem less and no longer risk that these people will go to court to stop construction,” says Alex Schoep.
Such gigantic projects cost much energy, and everyone involved finds it difficult just to switch off. But on seven or eight weekends a year, Alex leaves the world of PR consultancy behind. Then he drives with his brother Max in the BMW 323 ti Compact long-distance racing – on the Nuerburgring, in Hockenheim, in the Dutch Supercar Challenge. On these days, he has no time to think of anything else other than racing, the car, the engineering. “It’s an entirely different world, and that’s good,” he says. “Much of what I do professionally doesn’t have a proper beginning nor a proper end, you know. It keeps on going, and the difficulties are not that easy to solve. A race has a start and a finish. It involves very much stress, but it is – so to speak – positive stress.”
In the half hour before the race starts while the drivers wait in their cars on the start line with their pulses racing at 150, and wait and wait before things get going, he sometimes thinks: “Oh God, this is ghastly, I’ll never do this again.” But then comes the start signal, and all doubt vanishes. It’s for the most part 50 to 60 degrees centigrade in the car, and after the race he is sopping wet inside his suit and his ears ache from the engine noise. Yet he feels happy.
At the question as to whether he would call himself ambitious Alex Schoep laughs. “I like winning – that’s true. Otherwise I wouldn’t drive in races. But that is something quite different from ambition. I prefer winning in a team – I want the team to win. And Pleon to win as well.”
Alex Schoep is the President Europe of Pleon.
Sylvia Englert is an editor at changeX and a book author.
Translation: Gordon H. Broxton-Price
This article appeared on changex.de