Our culture . . . our future by Jean Devos
Working out solutions for our business is now your job. I would like to share with you my strong convictions. I do not expect everybody to agree with my statements or to share all of my views. I do not actually exclude the possibility of me “preaching the desert”. But, please understand where I am coming from: I am a great believer in people, people leadership; in people responsibility. Leaders carry more weight than all the theories and the words in “ism”, the laws of the economy, etc. We are responsible for the situation in which we are, and it is now up to us, I mean to you, to invent the Future. A preliminary remark: It seems that we have not yet recovered from the bubble. The suppliers who signed the SMW4 contract last week do not seem either happy or satisfied. 20 years ago; two such simultaneous projects such as Smw4 and Falcon, 2 Europe-Asia cables, would have saturated and satisfied the full industry for 2 years and would have made this conference a place of exuberance instead of this depressed atmosphere! No, definitively not; our Submarine cable activity is not a business like any other business. This is a very specific business. Two reasons: Our environment and our mission! Our environment is extremely demanding, does not accept mediocrity, and does not forgive easily. Our mission: We have a mandate from the world community to provide the world with an adequate infrastructure; giving all the countries a chance to develop. As such, we hold a huge responsibility,
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