Arthur van Bergen: the parallels of being a leader in both business and sports

Leading a sports team teaches you a lot that is useful in business, says former handball player and coach Arthur van Bergen , Cedo’s Group Supply Chain Director.

Managing your supply chain effectively is a complex process. The Supply Chain Director sits in the middle of the company and needs to deal with the commercial department on one side, while making sure everything runs smoothly with planning, factory supply, warehousing and logistics.

At Cedo this means that effective communication is vital across all of our facilities – in Europe, as well as the Far East – to ensure that the whole process from raw waste plastic, through to the finished product is managed as efficiently as possible.

And of course, those facilities are not the limit of our scope. We have clients and suppliers all over the world, and in the global market you have to be ready for all kinds of challenges.

So we plan as well as possible, like being flexible enough to adapt quickly when a client changes volumes or timings. Of course external events beyond our control can happen as well – and for times like these, I’m grateful not only to my years of experience in business but in teaching sports, too.

I played handball at national level for years, and later I coached several teams too. In sport you always train to play the best game, and to have the most successful season. But along the way you learn that circumstances can change. You maybe don’t want them to, but things happen. Athletes get injured, that’s life.

Well if you fall to pieces every time something goes wrong, you won’t get very far in sport. And the same goes for business. You plan for the best, but when something turns out differently, you take it on the chin, learn, adapt and move on.

I have been at Cedo for just over three years now. The company’s environmental stance has always been important to me. Because we have our own recycling facilities, we are helping to reduce the impact of vital products that everyone needs. And I am very happy to be playing my part.