Brussels - Day Three

Each twin bed in our hotel room was about three feet wide and there was only six inches or so between the two beds. Later we found out that all the other guys had rearranged their rooms and separated the beds, but we never thought of doing that. Looking back, this was a recipe for disaster.

Our air conditioning went out in the middle of the night and Kirk apparently got a little two hot for his clothes. I woke up at five a.m. to see a bare bottom staring me in the face. The horror! My phone was sitting on the bedstand, so in my quick thinking I grabbed it and snapped a photo so he could see in the morning what I had to deal with.
After another breakfast at the buffet (I passed on the pickled herring again) I showed Kirk the photo. He got pretty upset that I'd do such a thing both made me delete the photo and vowed to get me back. Vow to get me back? I thought I was the one who suffered? This wasn't fair at all.
Our first site visit of the day was the 3M European headquarters out by the NATO building. They are housed in a beautiful, new building that incorporates a lot of glass into the design. Very pretty and lots of light. After waiting in line for security badges we were stuffed into a room to listen to presentations for a few hours.
The first presenter bored most of the audience with a dry PowerPoint. The hour was filled with a promotional video and historical aspects of the company in an attempt to establish the company as an innovator in technology and an innovator in corporate social responsibility (CSR). They first confronted the issue of pollution in 1975 with the "Pollution Prevention Pays" initiative. I will admit that they were ahead of the curve in the idea that pollution prevention served as a long term cost savings.
The next presenter was the head of the European intellectual property legal department. He was a good Minnesota boy... how do people get these jobs? While an interesting speaker, he didn't say anything challenging or surprising. He described 3M policy on ethics as a three item list: 1) Comply with law, 2) withstand public scrutiny, and 3) create a culture open to these challenges. Having looked over all of the other companies' ethics policies this didn't seem a very bold step to take for 3M. The bold step on their part was the early adoption of the environmental issues.
The next presenter gave an in-depth look at 3M's CSR policy. She characterized the "old" CSR as compliance and the "new" CSR and engagement, and talked about the new focus on the triple bottom line: financial, societal, and environmental concerns. She cited an EU green paper that targeted CSR and gave direction to European companies. It wasn't clear whether all of 3M was embracing this or just the European office. I got the feeling that this was an issue being pushed for by Europe but had not been embraced by the US yet. 3M is also a part of the UN Global Leadership Network, a group created in part by Kofi Anon (if I remember correctly). Again, this is another global initiative to foster better CSR.
I came out of the series of dry lectures with a sense that 3M was a visionary company in both technological innovation and social causes. All of the causes and groups they joined made up an impressive list, and everything was state of the art and new, including the building.
After the lectures we were treated to a PR blitz of product demos and then were given lunch. Nothing beats free wine with lunch! I balanced the good out with the bad, though. I tried a tomato stuffed with mini-shrimp... however, the shrimp looked more like grubs and had been pickled somehow. I was worried that I was going to be sick from it but another glass of wine cleared it up just fine!
After lunch we went over to Honeywell. The building and environment couldn't have been more different than 3M. Honeywell was housed in a drab office complex from the 1980s, complete with moveable wall partitions and aging carpet. On first impression this reinforced the idea that 3M was a leading company while Honeywell was simply trying to keep up. The first speaker also stated that Honeywell's environment responsibility policy mainly focused on cleaning up existing sites... which was needed because polluting sites were often acquired by Honeywell and then forced to meet better standards afterwards. Because of the impression from 3M, I saw this in a negative light... a race to compliance rather than embracing environmental causes. In fact, their global CSR initiative was called "Global Compliance". I wondered if this strong focus on legal issues was due to the many defense contracts Honeywell is involved in. I would assume working for the government would require you to focus on legal compliance more than unwritten ethical standards. Also, Honeywell's mission statement lacked anything on integrity. This seemed odd because everyone else's did. Honeywell rationalized this by believing the integrity was the foundation and could never be removed, and therefore did not need to be addressed in the mission.
In hindsight my negative impression was probably wrong. Honeywell possibly did more for the environment by buying out local polluters and transforming them to modern standards. And, it came out later, they were confronting ethical issues very boldly and openly. One of the speakers, Jerry, the head of the Euro-African-Middle-East operations, told stories about being on the front lines of ethical decision making. He had employees in Iraq, in Nigeria, and in Russia. He had employees in places where he was not allowed to travel. That would be hard to manage! On bribes, Jerry cast his argument in a very interest-based perspective. He told his Russian employees that if you give a bribe once then the bribe will be expected a second time. And if you can't pay it then you will be killed. That is how the Russian system works in some cases. Very straight-forward. He had many stories like this and his honesty and openness was amazing. It seemed that where 3M was trying to create an open corporate culture, Honeywell already had one. Jerry told us stories about Nigeria and how he had to fire a person for breaking the Honeywell code of ethics but acting within the societal norm in order to give better service to a customer.
Jerry candidly talked about dilemmas such as reporting unethical competitors, what to do when a salesperson loses a bid because of failure to pay bribes, how U.S. companies are the worst offenders, how Haliburton's behavior is a large obstacle in his ability to do business in Iraq, and how it is not always feasible for smaller companies to avoid paying bribes.
One of the things they were doing to address ethical issues was "Rep Letter Reporting." Each quarter, every employee signs a letter stating that their work was within the ethical guidelines of the company, and each manager signs off on their employee's letters. This creates a direct line of accountability for ethical behavior and brings the issue to the forefront of employees' minds four time a year. I liked that idea a lot. Also, if a salesperson loses a sale because of unethical competition, they still reward the salesperson and take the failure into account when determining quotas. All in all, Honeywell was an eye-opening experience, and one of the best site visits of the trip... especially because it was such a sharp contrast to that morning's visit.
After the bus dropped all of us off at the hotel I wandered down to the shopping area to scope out what stores were worth going to later. I had talked a group into doing some shopping later and I didn't want to lead anyone astray. I found the shopping district and it was considerably seedier than the tourist area. There were a lot of naer-do-well looking youths hanging around looking like they could really use some air-conditioning. Along my travels I also ran across the Belgian stock exchange. I had no idea there was such a thing, but I wasn't surprised by its existence either. The building was a cool old building near the Brussels opera house, which is where the people rose up in the 1800s and marched on the government to win their independence. I should really know whether they won their right to sovereignty from France or Holland, but I can't seem to remember.
After an hour or so walking around I went back to the hotel to gather the troops to do some shopping. I'd been talking up the department store H&M for quite a while and we had about five people that wanted to go out and shop (mostly men, surprisingly). I led the group down to the shopping area and we promptly split up. Teriyuki and I browsed around H&M for a while but nothing there ever fits me right. Those Europeans are a lot skinnier than I am. I hit the jackpot over at Zara, though, with some linen trousers. I almost bought a gray suit with pink pin-striping but I just shouldn't be spending the money.
On the way back from shopping Kirk and I ducked into a dingy, small Belgian bar that hadn't seen tourists in a few years. Awesome. We also found that beers off of the tourist strip were about three dollars cheaper. The bar was playing some French heavy-metal when we came in but it soon switched to a French Tom Waits. Unique, to say the least. The great part Belgian beer is that every beer has it's own glass, and when you order a beer you are always served it in the correct glass. My favorite glass had a little glass house in the stem.


Kirk and I talked for a long time about the four months he spent in India and about the nature of ethical decisions. I have a very firm belief that the knowledge of right and wrong is inherent to a person, comes from within, and does not need to be taught. Kirk, on the other hand, sees ethics and morals as a learned behavior. Like all great debates we didn't make any headway in convincing the other person of our views... but it was a very interesting conversation.
At eight o'clock we met more of the group to walk up to the area I had found the night before. We walked up to a cute little street with an outside bar and an accordion player. I love street musicians, but I don't quite understand the dynamic of paying them. If I like the musician, then I give him some money, and then he leaves. Why does he leave? I don't understand this. Anyway, as sun set we walked up to the overlook I had been on the night before and snapped some good photos.


The overlook was situated right by the court of justice building. The sunset was really pretty and we stayed up on the overlook for quite a while. I think everyone enjoyed the night away from the Grand Plah-sah. It was a lot quieter and more intimate. On the way home we all stopped at a different outside bar and got to know each other. Two members of the group are single parents of teenage daughters, and it was fun to hear the stories about their kids. Man, am I glad to be out of that phase.
On the way home Kirk and I decided to search out a Belgian waffle because it was our last chance to have one before leaving. Everything was closing up except for the Turkish stands, so we ended up settling on gyros. I never know that gyros were supposed to be served with sauerkraut, but apparently they are... and it's pretty good! The gyros stand happened to be right by the cabaret from a few nights before, so I was sure to get a picture of myself outside of it.


Before going to bed that bastard Kirk decided the best way to get back at me for the derriere photo from the night before was to give me a full moon at the foot of the bed. I'm not sure I deserved this type of treatment. I made sure that the air conditioning was properly adjusted before getting into bed so that we wouldn't have any repeats of the night before.