Jan Baan - A Man of unbridled Vision, Passion and Compassion

The First Meeting: In mid-1999, more than a 100 of us joined the Baan Company. All of us campus recruited, just out of college, with lots of ambitions, raring to do something big.

Within a month of joining, we came to know that the CEO of the organization was going to visit our Hyderabad office and we will have an opportunity to listen to him during the employee meet. At that time, Baan being a billion dollar company and a top global player in ERP, we couldn’t wait to get a glimpse of its CEO and listen on how he wanted to take the company closer to #1. One of the topmost CEOs in the world, it would be a privilege to even see such a person from a far distance from the stage. We were literally counting our days to the event.

On that day, we were in for a surprise. We were informed that Mr Jan Baan would apart from the employee meeting, will also have an hour long special meeting for the freshers. “Oh wow !!” we thought, more than happy that we can see him twice !

When we went to the venue of the meeting in the company bus, we were dumb struck ! Mr Baan was standing at the entrance of the hotel, enthusiastically welcoming each of us with a warm hand-shake, a big smile, happiness written all over and a few words with each of us informing us how happy HE was that we have joined his Baan family !!

The hour long meeting was equally interesting, to say the least. He told us what is most important for him – the 3 “I”s – Integrity, Innovation, Initiative. With the 3 “I”s as the foundation, he gave us many advices and set rules for life:

• Very important to enjoy what we are doing. Else, stop doing it!
• Learn and never stop learning. Each year see if your knowledge is much higher than the previous year.
• Don’t ask for permission. Instead ask for forgiveness.
• Family is the most important aspect of our lives – don’t be a workaholic and remember to spend quality time with family every day/week.
• Its OK and nothing wrong to be #2 in the market !! Don’t take too much pressure to be #1, because, then you stop enjoying what you are doing.

We were only freshers, but we knew that we were looking at a totally different CEO who was not looking at things in $$$$ and discussing just revenues. We were looking at a person who was interested in each of our development, growth and well-being. Lot of people can communicate, but only a few connect. With his down-to-earth and genuineness, he had connected with each of us. We went into the meeting to meet the CEO of the company, and returned back meeting a great leader and a hero for whom people wanted to work for.

The famous 'Baan Culture': Working at Baan was one that was filled with respect for every individual, where fairness of treatment was very core in each and every aspect. It created an environment which was very friendly and trustful, nurtured talent,  brought out the best in people and created openness where the most junior of employees can meet any of his team mates or senior management with equal ease, discuss any topic and brainstorm any ideas.

In 10 years at Baan, I have never encountered anyone having “Monday morning” blues!! It was a place where people enjoyed their work. It was a place where people simply loved to come every morning.

Its hard to define what really is ‘Baan Culture’, but in brief, it was the essence of the above. If any Baanite is asked what his first thoughts on working at Baan, it would be the fond memories of the ‘Baan Culture’. This culture was directly a result of the consistent messages of Mr Baan and what he strongly believed, preached and followed.

Innovate. Share: This environment of enjoying the job, integrity, trust, openness, expecting initiatives, responsibility and accountability created the perfect settings where people could be very productive and come up with lots of ideas and work on them. Ideas were most welcome and encouraged and were one of the reasons why there were so many innovations happening in any of Mr Baan’s initiatives.

In the 1970s, Baan created the Baan 3G/4G technology – a platform independent, Rapid development technology layer for building ERP apps. It was such an innovative and productive technology that the modern tools such as Java and .Net will pale in comparison.

Innovations never stopped in the next 4 decades. Over the years, Baan / Cordys / Vanenburg Software were filled with dozens of innovations and it was all the push of Mr Baan and his visionary thinking. In meeting after meeting, he would discuss ideas with various teams, see internal demos of innovations, and not only encourage and provide constructive feedback but also teach and share his perspectives on what is happening around the world now and what will be useful in the future. Nothing interests Mr Baan more than seeing innovations. His passion towards innovation was unbridled.

When I joined Cordys in 2009 (from Baan), the product Cordys Process Factory (CPF) was already well in shape. It was a platform to build and run workflow applications on the public cloud. It was in already in development since 2005-06 and was the coming from Mr Baan’s vision of having workflow solutions on the cloud. Only that, at that time, the term “cloud” or the cloud concept itself was not yet known in the IT industry! Later, as the Product Manager for CPF, I had the good opportunity of showing it to many prospects globally. At Korean Telecom, Fujitsu Japan, Google Developer IO, Dubai Expo, Valeo France, several large IT vendors at Banglore, Mumbai and many more. It was when most companies where still on the drawing board on how to leaverage the cloud !! At each place the product was given demo, it enthralled the audience, because of what it could already achieve on the cloud and its advanced level in handling things in a purely public cloud, multi-tenant, self-service offering.  Clearly, it was years ahead of the competition and the market.

Within CPF, there were several components which were very innovative and ‘patentable’. We had to go thru dozens of patents of competitors to make sure that we were not infringing on any of them. But Mr Baan never encouraged us to patent our in-house innovations. He used to always say that thru innovations we have gained knowledge. And knowledge has to be shared and not protected thru patents! A CEO who has spent millions in fostering innovations didn’t want to keep its fruits for himself. He wanted everyone to know about it and use it and benefit from it!

His support for students and freshmen were equally enthralling. He encouraged us to visit colleges and universities and spread the knowledge actively. He happily sponsored several advanced labs at colleges and entered into programs where employees from VS will regularly have knowledge sharing sessions with the professors, PhD and engineering students on the latest topics and innovations. The colleges and universities showed enthusiastic participation and gained immense knowledge from those programs – all of it sponsored by Mr Baan due to his passion of sharing knowledge.

Family: I have had the great opportunity of listening to Mr Baan in the last 16 years - at employee meets, during team meetings, demo sessions, lunch and dinners.  His messages have always been consistently same as our first meeting. Employee and their family well-being have been at the core of Mr Baan’s concerns. Everything else was next.

Few years back, my wife had lost her cousin brother in a tragic road accident and I had applied leave to attend the funeral. Within hours, Mr Baan had come to know of it, and he had written a long mail conveying his condolences and asking me and wife to remain strong. He narrated his personal experiences as well and guided us on how on to keep the perspectives in troubled times. It meant so much to me and my wife at that moment. He called up a few days later to know how we were doing and during his next visits also used to enquire about how my wife was coping up. 

Within our family, we discuss what Mr Baan advises during our various meetings and my parents have always had high regards for him and his messages. Periodically they check with me to know if I am making my best possible contributions to Mr Baan’s organization. Their connect and affection for Mr Baan is so much, that probably there is more pressure on me from my family to perform well for the organization than even what expectations are set by the organization!

Loving every bit of it: Knowing Mr Baan over the years has been one of the most satisfying, motivating and learning experiences. It’s difficult to meet another person who is a globally respected IT leader, having such a far-sighted vision, so much passion for innovation and new ideas, yet down-to-earth, one who is genuinely interested in the well-being of employees and wants to share all the learning and knowledge. 

I had the good opportunity of joining a “Mr Jan Baan” company for the third time (Baan Info, Cordys, Vanenburg Software) and I am loving every bit of it.