1. What specifically has transpired at Spaarbeleg since Johan took over? How was he successful? In four years since Johan Van Der Werf took over at Spaarbeleg, the company had introduced a number of new investments and saving products, and its nominal committed amount per year has gone some 27 times, while total cost has increased by a factor of three. He made a few changes to the business model by: * Restructuring the business model and focusing on Customer Value. Everything they built was on top of these customer values. They built a business matrix called “The House” – The diagram that locates products and customers on the chart through intense brainstorming. * They built a distribution model – “The Pinball Machine”: A direct advertising tool which use format of print, voice – to –voice, and face to face operating in sequence. Here the customer contacts were viewed as a series of activities, flipping from one to another depending on the type of customer and complexity of the product. * Built a management philosophy – Strategy, Vision, Values, Real and Unreal. Finally having a close relationship with his team members, both professional and personally. 2. What do you think of him? Of his relationship with his boss? There was nothing said about Johan relationship with his boss in the case study. By from our understanding we could see that Johan is a man of action than words. This could be seen during his first year, where he improved the company sales from 1986 by 50%, before he went to the management board meeting at Aegon to fight for abandoning the plan of moving to Hague.

This helps him not only to convince them to stop the plan but also put faith in his decision. Secondly, He takes responsibility for creating new models which were even new to the parent company and the way they did business. A simple example would be the ad distribution model. It took nearly 2 years for Johan to convince the upper management that the multi-channel distribution model really works. 3. How does he get such intense commitment? How does it compare to others we have studied? To yours? 4. How does he put his vision to work?

Johan is meticulous in hiring people who align with his vision, goal and strategy. So that he could spread his vision through them. A simple example would be when Johan hired Rene Sweyen, he wanted someone non Aegon type, who is intelligent, analytical, young, ambitious, and energetic, and who had experience in investment, not marketing or investment marketing. He then spreads his vision by creating an environment where people are allowed to learn and the part of the learning translate into what they call customer service, which becomes the backbone of his strategy.