Leadership in turbulent times requires collaboration

Smeets hosts the meeting at DeltaQuad’s headquarters in Duivendrecht, the company he started ten years ago – ‘literally in my attic room.’ Smeets: ‘Defense’ has become our primary client.’ The company has grown rapidly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ‘We monitor Russian Telegram channels. Videos track all the drones encountered by the Russians on the battlefield and that, in some cases, get shot down. We were able to establish that there are currently seven NATO parties active on the front. We are proud to be one of them.’ Smeets says that the war in Ukraine has had a profound impact on his life: ‘My motivation has changed. I once wanted to set up a successful commercial business. But for me, the penny has dropped. This is about defending the free world. In that context, commercial interests must give way to the greater good, freedom.’
To underscore the urgency to his discussion partners at the round table, Smeets begins his ‘opening salvo’ with a video. ‘I recently came across a video about how China plans to invade Taiwan in 2030.’ The screen shows images of a fully robotized attack by the Chinese army on ‘the renegade province,’ Smeets: ‘It looks like fiction, but it is absolutely not a fictional scenario. This is the real threat which we must arm ourselves against.’

A fully robotized army overrunning a country. Is that indeed the scenario we need to take into account, Colonel?
Groeneveld: ‘I am not convinced we face a kind of D-Day-style attack, at least not on the Netherlands. What I notice is that we are largely misinterpreting the danger. We still think too much in terms of kinetic warfare, where we envision a front line with fighting soldiers. The major threat to the Netherlands is not kinetic warfare at NATO’s borders, but rather the combination of cognitive warfare, cyber activities and kinetic activities. The threat today is not at the border; the threat is simply within the Netherlands. In fact, the war began long ago, and we have been under fire for a long time. Our greatest challenge is that we must adapt to this. It requires a fundamental shift in the thinking of not only society, but also of the armed forces.’

Is society in general, and the business community in particular, sufficiently aware of these dangers?
Molenaar: ‘I notice that awareness is growing in society, and also in the business community,. The news is dominated by geopolitical conflicts and war. I usually do not have to explain what the urgency is. There is also a willingness to cooperate and contribute ideas. Nevertheless, despite this positive momentum from the business community, I would still like to see even more commitment. For example, it would be great if the companies with which we sign agreements regarding the recruitment of reservists would specifically commit to providing a certain percentage of reservists. Currently, this is often limited to a best-effort commitment; a stronger commitment would help us enormously. As the Ministry of Defense, we can also offer something in return, such as giving our partners priority in connecting with the graduate reservists whom the Ministry of Defense will increasingly train via entry tracks at schools and universities. The National Resilience Training is an example of such an entry track. This group of people, with their additional skillset, is undoubtedly of interest to the business community.’

What is needed to get our defense in order?
Molenaar: ‘In the military spectrum, we are very good at shifting gears and adapting quickly. But now that we are in the grey area between war and peace, we must above all be innovative and agile. That is precisely where the Ministry of Defense can learn from the business community. The business community has that quick, sometimes somewhat opportunistic ability to adapt.’
Groeneveld: ‘We will have to innovate faster. The Ministry of Defense really needs the business community for that. The technological ability is no longer within the armed forces; it is almost entirely in the commercial sector.’

Is the critical infrastructure, such as the high-voltage grid, ready for the future?
Suykerbuyk: ‘Thanks in part to the energy transition, we have made significant progress. The energy transition has made us more self-sufficient. We are less dependent on what is happening in the outside world. The energy grid has largely become decentralized and is fully digitized, with digital twins and control rooms that monitor the entire grid. As a result, the energy grid has become less vulnerable and more resilient. The war in Ukraine has taught us that flexibility and resilience are of the utmost importance. It is about resilience, above all else.’

And the industry? Is it ready for this new, secured future?
Smeets: ‘The industry is still too much in competition mode. I am trying to break through that with DeltaQuad. My motivation is not necessarily to achieve the greatest competitive advantage, but rather to ensure that we are prepared for a military threat. And we can only do that by working together; no single company can solve this on its own. Not even the very largest, and certainly not the old, established defense industry. We need to collaborate at every level – with the Ministry of Defense, with the research centers, and with all civilian stakeholders.’
Molenaar: ‘Companies must occasionally dare to act beyond their commercial interests. They need to say, just like DeltaQuad: we no longer prioritize commercial interest alone, but also the defense of the free world, and we have a role to play in that. In concrete terms, that means that in negotiations, you should not always aim to get the absolute maximum out of the deal. The public interest can become so significant that business or individual interests take a back seat. We understand, of course, that a company has commercial interests, but when the wheels really come off, priorities are different.’

How is the government doing?
Smeets: ‘I see that governments are shifting gears and scaling up intensely. We are working with armed forces across Europe. These are organizations that have been underfunded and understaffed for decades. And now they are suddenly being asked to prepare for a major military conflict. With regulations that, moreover, were created in peacetime. I see that they are working incredibly hard on this. My experiences with the Ministry of Defense are positive. People are ready to help us 24/7.’

Is there sufficient long-term vision?
Smeets: ‘The focus is still a bit too much on the short term, and too few long-term budgets. As an organization, I am responsible for the income of an ever-growing group of people. The government is asking us to scale up, and I am currently doing that with one-off orders. I just have to trust that there will be follow-up in the future. A little more continuity would be nice.
The ADR, the Central Government Audit Service that monitors the flow of funds within the Ministry of Defense, also struggles with resilience budgets. I always want to set aside a budget for what is yet to come. But the ADR would like to know immediately what the intended purpose is. But that precisely is the essence of a resilience budget: we do not yet know the purpose. They find that complicated. My appeal to all partners we work with is actually about building in resilience budgets. Ensure that when you enter into a contract with the Ministry of Defense, there is room for adjustments and upgrades. What you aim to deliver is a capability. And that capability must be maintained at a minimum. So, processes need to be set up for that.’
Molenaar: ‘What is needed is trust. The Ministry of Defense is going through a massive learning curve. We have been looking inward for thirty years. Now the focus needs to be outward. And that means we have to learn to trust the partners.’
Groeneveld: ‘It is quite a complex story. There is a substantial amount of money available for defense right now. The threat landscape is changing rapidly. For example, if you spend a billion on a ship now, you will also have to spend half a billion on cybersecurity. We need to think about where we will be most vulnerable in the future. What are the fundamental things that must keep running within our society, and what is our role as the armed forces in that? And have we made it resilient enough?’
Suykerbuyk: ‘If you look at the electricity grid, we have actually been operating within an ecosystem for a very long time, both within the Netherlands and beyond. Over the past ten or twelve years, all European grids have been interconnected. We are used to working within an ecosystem. What we do must be focused on the security of supply, on the availability of that network. To achieve this, you have to collaborate with partners. You need to have access to each other’s data. You have to figure out how to keep the infrastructure running together. And the collaboration must first and foremost focus on what is needed to continue providing the absolute basic service. We have to work on a minimal viable organization. A key point for me is that failure in this regard is not an option.’

What does all this mean for future leadership?
Molenaar: ‘Leadership must be able to distinguish between main and secondary issues. Furthermore, we need leaders who possess two important competencies: the courage to trust and the ability to collaborate. If you hire someone at this juncture who lacks those two qualities, you are on the wrong track. We do not need loners or cowboys right now.’
Suykerbuyk: ‘It really calls for a completely different kind of leadership. Look at ourselves: TenneT is traditionally an engineering firm. Very blue collar. We were always busy building, building, and building. The energy transition is not limited by what we can build, but by what we can manage as a system. And that fundamentally requires a different kind of leadership. Taking your organization along in that transformation. Investing a great deal of time in that. It is about organizing decision-making. It requires agility. We cannot wait to come up with the perfect plan and execute it in its entirety. No, we have to take a first step today and figure out the next step from there. It is no longer about the individual decision; it is about organizing a system for decision-making. That is the biggest step we need to take. As a leader, you will be supported in your decisions by decision-making systems. And that is truly a cultural shift.’

At the Ministry of Defense as well?
Groeneveld: ‘At the Ministry of Defense, that is an enormous shift. We traditionally come from a hierarchical structure, with military personnel trained to make decisions on their own. That is no longer possible. The world has become far too complex for that. You have to steer much more towards the collective effect you want to achieve, without holding all the strings yourself. In the military, that is a major change, because we are still organized around structure where a single commander makes decisions centrally. And it sounds counter-intuitive, but for that reason I would not immediately look to the Ministry of Defense in terms of leadership. We have commanders who can lead any practical implementation. It is, however, now much more about whether people are capable of forming a broader coalition. More like ‘project leaders,’ actually – where you can bring together the information held by the various partners more quickly and agree in advance on who takes action and when.’
Suykerbuyk: ‘It means we have to think in terms of scenarios. And what is very important in that is the speed of decision-making. And I cannot do it on my own. So that means we really have to do it together, with strategic partners. It also has to remain manageable. I do not want three hundred IT suppliers as partners, because that is unmanageable. But they need to be partners with whom we can tackle the challenges together.’
Smeets: ‘Openness is also important. We have to be willing to share. And to work together on standardization, so that systems can easily be integrated into each other and communicate with one another. That works quite well for civilian applications, but for military applications, this is still a significant challenge. All those domains need to be able to communicate with one another. That is something we are contributing to. We are not creating our own closed ecosystem; we are opening it up. We are investing a huge amount of energy and money in that.’
Groeneveld: ‘That is indeed very important. Within NATO, we must cooperate multi-nationally. And I certainly understand that national interests lead us to procure nationally. But what matters is that, regardless of what weapon systems individual countries prefer, we can act together militarily and share data based on a certain compatibility. We must enforce that.’
Smeets: ‘We also need to look at the risks. We have a supply chain redundancy project running here where we are looking at how we can reduce our dependence on China. Or how we ensure that we have two suppliers for everything we do. You always need to be able to scale and switch. We have set up the production process so that it can easily be relocated to other sites. If we start working with Estonia, we will make sure that we can do part of the production there.’
Suykerbuyk: ‘What I like about this conversation is that we were on the same page very quickly. We actually share a common goal. And that is organizing resilience together. We all have a vision of how our organizations need to move. And we all have a vision of how we should position ourselves as leaders.’
Molenaar: ‘It might be a bit grandiose, but I truly believe in the idea of ​​brothers in arms. In a figurative sense of course. That the business community and the Ministry of Defense work together as partners to ensure a secure future for the Netherlands and Europe. For me, the key point of this discussion is ‘doing it together.’ In an open, constructive manner. But also with mutual trust.’

This interview was published in Management Scope 05 2026.