ir. Frits de Ruyter de Wildt

Already in the Dutch Golden Century the basis for leadership, entrepreneurship, innovation and many other forms of contemporary management have been invented and successfully put into practice. The lectures by Frits de Ruyter de Wildt illustrate the iconic role the Dutch Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter played in this period and show he was a thought leader in management aspects. Organizations may well recognize some of these aspects in the stories and examples De Ruyter de Wildt uses.

Frits noticed that the Golden Century reflects much of what is happening today. “Not again!” will be explained in depth. He wrote an essay titled: “The crisis in VOC perspective: We are on the verge of a New Golden Century”. This positive view on the crisis provides new insights and motivates us for the future

Frits de Ruyter de Wildt is the 12th generation descendant of Michiel de Ruyter and was taught his family's history from an early age. Today he is president of the heritage foundation that strives to enhance Admiral de Ruyter's legacy. There are similarities between Frits' career and that of his ancestor. Like him, Frits pursued a career as navy officer for 16 year. In 1999 he left the navy and held a number of management positions with corporate businesses. Later he became entrepreneur. During his career the lessons of history proved him very useful.

Frits de Ruyter de Wildt's lectures are a combination of storytelling, relating historic anecdotes to his audience and humour to put things into perspective. He places adventures of the past in a modern light and puts hypes and contemporary leadership in a different view. He shared his broad knowledge during the 400th birth year anniversary of Admiral de Ruyter in 2007 in many (biographical) lectures and mixed these with personal experience. De Ruyter de Wildt is a true storyteller.

There are many practices that we take for granted nowadays that originally come from the modest Michiel de Ruyter. For instance, present day health care was initiated by Admiral the Ruyter and his colleague Johan de Witt, many innovative fleet operations were implemented by him, he increased operational excellence by applying very creative measures and used scenario planning in the 27 sea battles he won. The honorary title “Bestevaer” (‘dear grandfather’) does not make him like modern “people managers”, but he did inspire and achieve motivation of his crew in a very modern fashion. Even so it is a fact that whalers were manned by Polish immigrants, the Amsterdam accent is actually from Antwerp and one pragmatic courageous politician combined 12 “Compagniën” into the VOC. Last but not least it can be argued that the information revolution started around 1600. Enough to think about!