Nobody really looked in detail at the various business units, at profit and loss; there was always money around which meant that some projects that were less profitable continued.” And so, as Göran explains, “We star ted questioning the matrix with the country vis-àvis production divisions and started tilting the responsibility more towards the product divisions to be responsible for profit and loss.The countries would function as sales organisations, but under the regime of the product divisions.” Philips then recruited some new top executives from the outside, which, says Göran, was unprecedented up until then. One of them, earmarked to become the next President, was appointed in the Philips management Board for the Global Lighting Division as well as the Asia Pacific region, and became Göran’s boss. “Since Philips was an extremely complex organisation, and so large that one needed to understand people and organisational issues in order to really grasp what was happening and why. He asked me to come back to the Netherlands and help restructure and run Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Essentially, he needed someone with some grey hair and Philips experience.” The new boss told Göran: “Philips is like a plate of spaghetti, you look at it, take hold of one pasta piece and have no idea what will move on the other side, because everything is entangled. I want to turn Philips into a plate of asparagus. Each asparagus should be placed nice and straight so one can see that this represents Lighting, and here we have Consumer & Electronics etc.” In order to improve efficiency, regional headquar ters were set up around the world, and Göran was one of the senior managers who recommended Singapore as the Asia headquar ters. He was also appointed head of the Philips Corporate Regional Operations for Asia, based in Singapore. Concurrently a semiconductor plant was set up there, strongly suppor ted by EDB, the Singapore Economic Development Board. “We had many managers in their fifties who had been on the country organisation side in the matrix their whole career. They were autonomous, with great power and connections to the local government and business community. There weren’t many checks and balances concerning whether local strategy and execution were beneficial for the company – all country managers, around 70 of us, repor ted directly to the board. When I was the Thailand country head I met my “real” boss only a couple of times per year.” With the new “tilting of the matrix” in place, the local CEO’s were transformed to a sort of hotel manager, meaning that they no longer had any bottom line responsibility. But they still had to “fly the Philips flag” – making sure relations with governments, local business communities, and unions were running smoothly. Many of them could however not adapt to the new structures, which lead to several of them retiring early. “When I star ted in 1980, we numbered almost 400,000 employees worldwide and today, what is left of the ‘old’ Philips is down to about a third of that number, mainly in the medical systems division, whilst Philips Lighting was spun off and listed separately.”
World’s first autonomous indoor drone developed by Blue Jay, which navigates using technology from Philips Lighting
We started questioning the matrix with the country vis-à-vis production divisions and started tilting the responsibility more towards the product divisions to be responsible for profit and loss. The countries would function as sales organisations, but under the regime of the product divisions.
The time for change had also come for Göran, who left the multinational in 1998.
Settling down in Singapore
“I had worked for Philips for 18 years and been given some offers from competitors throughout the years. Philips wanted to relocate me again, to a very interesting top position in Holland, running Philips Worldwide Combined Projects. But our children were becoming teenagers and wanted stability, and we all wanted to stay Singapore.” At that point in time Göran and his wife decided staying in Singapore was the priority for the sake of the family. After living in nine countries they were deeply impressed with Singapore’s rule of law, transparency, professionalism and governance, all of which made the Seifert’s big supporters of the city-state. “We have lived here now for 21 years and love it. Our two children are back home in Singapore, both working here in the communication sectors.”
After a two-year stint with Williams PLC, an erstwhile world leader in security and fire systems, which was then de-merged and sold, he joined the Italcementi Group. At the time this was a listed, family-controlled cement company, one of the world’s largest five groups. “I joined in 2000 and was responsible for Asia in the Group Management Committee, still based in Singapore. We bought, built and expanded businesses in China, India and Thailand. I was really given great support to build up the business in Asia, and I must say it was an extremely rewarding fifteen years with them, although very different from Philips.” After Göran retired from Italcementi he was requested to remain on the Asia subsidiary boards that he had built up. Their competitor Heidelberg Cement bought and incorporated Italcementi in 2016, so it no longer exists as a separate company today. July 2017 • ScandAsia.Singapore 11