As Heineken marks its 150th year, CEO Jean-François van Boxmeer speaks about innovation, managing for the long term, and how he aims to uphold the company’s rich legacy. What challenges are unique to leading an iconic company deep into its second century? In this interview with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland, van Boxmeer, discusses leadership against a backdrop of corporate tradition and changing consumer and societal demands. Since joining Heineken in 1984, van Boxmeer has worked extensively in Africa and Europe, and has held his current roles since 2005. An edited transcript of his remarks is provided.

Here is a brief excerpt from an interview of van Boxmeer by Rik Kirkland for the McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey & Company. To read the complete article, check out other resources, learn more about the firm, obtain subscription information, and register to receive email alerts, please click here.

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Your upbringing plays a very big part in what kind of leader you’re going to be. Then when you start your professional life, the years between 25 and 35, those are the years where you are the most prone to change, to learn. You behave more like a sponge.

And in my case, that happened in Africa. I was sent by Heineken, a little bit by accident, to Africa. I was speaking French, and there weren’t that many French-speaking guys around in Heineken, so I was sent to countries like Cameroon and Rwanda, and the former Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I spent ten years of my life there. Those were very exciting years where, beyond leading a commercial organization, you also had to deal with a lot of societal problems, emergency problems, all kinds of things you were unprepared for. They were extraordinary people with an extraordinary energy in very adverse conditions, and that has shaped me.

I think my experience in Africa brought very early to me the understanding of the relativity of the power positions that you are dealt when you are in a leadership position in a company. Because never forget that you can be a CEO of a company like I am today, but it is a rented position. It’s only temporary. So never forget when you climb up the stairs to tip your hat to those who climb down the stairs. One day you will do the same. So I thought it was worth three times Harvard.

Learning from acquisitions

When we acquire a company, there are always two sides to it. You have the processes that you discover in an acquired company, and you have the people. And from time to time, you see that processes in an acquired company are interesting and could be adapted for the worldwide Heineken Group. In 2010, we took over a huge Mexican brewery, Cuahautémoc Moctezuma. They had very tight processes for planning, and that inspired us to really tighten up our planning processes for the whole organization. There is a lot of benefit of blending in, for example, taking people who worked in mature, hyper-competitive, sophisticated markets in, let’s say, Europe, with very specific and delineated brand portfolios, and putting them into a growing, high-growth market.

And at the same time, putting people who were used to working in high-growth markets where lines of command are very short and simple, and very much action-oriented, and putting these kind of leaders in a mature organization to speed up that organization.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Jean-François van Boxmeer is chairman of the executive board and CEO of Heineken NV. This interview was conducted by Rik Kirkland, senior managing editor of McKinsey Publishing, who is based in McKinsey’s New York office.