William van Niekerk, TKI Building and Technology: ‘Learn to operate at the edge of where things become uncomfortable’

How would you explain what you do to a child?
Everything you see when you are outside, or even indoors, has something to do with the work we do. Tunnels, houses and roads constantly need to be built or adapted. TKI Building and Technology is a foundation that works together with organisations facing innovation challenges, always trying to figure out how we can make the world more future proof.

Children understand that it is getting warmer, that heavy rainfall is becoming more frequent, that materials are harder to obtain and that we need to save energy. I also often explain that when you drive over a bridge, that bridge is ageing a little as well. You cannot repair all bridges at the same time, so you have to think carefully about how we can build faster and how to decide what should come first.

Is that not the responsibility of Rijkswaterstaat?
Yes, but they do this together with companies and knowledge institutions. It is a complex puzzle. You have to take the market into account. Are there smarter ways of doing things. Do we have enough people.

A lot of existing knowledge is disappearing, and that is something to reflect on. Knowledge about a specific bridge or tunnel is not always written down. Much of it exists in people’s heads. I often describe knowledge as having information and the ability to apply it. That ability is much harder to transfer. It is the difference between reading a book and writing one.

The same applies to knowledge of the built environment. You can see a building, but that does not mean you can recreate it in the same way, for the same cost, in the same amount of time, and preferably a little better.

What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
A good leader is able to keep making progress in complex times. I learned this from one of my colleagues. We deal with multiple layers of government, in a politically quite unusual period. Companies facing major challenges. Knowledge institutions that are looking far ahead. There are many different perspectives to take into account.

What I always try to do is keep the goal clearly in sight. To emphasise what we stand for and why that matters.

What frustrates you most?
Sometimes I think it is so obvious that something needs to happen. Why are we not moving together.

Take cars, for example. Most of us still drive vehicles powered by petrol. Imagine people saying in twenty years’ time: we already knew this in 2025. We were putting something into cars that you should not breathe in and certainly should not drink. Something highly toxic. We put it in cars, set it on fire and then drove around with it. Completely harmful to the planet, and yet we still did it.

How does that happen. We know, after all, that extracting raw materials damages the environment. And yet we think the next generation will deal with it. I find that a very difficult realisation. Why do we not think just a little more often about solutions that do not push the bill onto the next generation.

What was the most difficult decision you have ever had to make?
The hardest decisions are about the things you stop doing. Sometimes you invest in new technology and still have to conclude that you cannot continue.

Innovations aimed at protection against high water levels, for example, are currently applied so little that we had to stop working on them. Even though we know they will be relevant in twenty or thirty years. Letting go of things you know will be needed in the future, but that require too much energy to keep alive in the meantime, is what hurts me most.

Is stopping always harder than continuing?
Try turning the question around. The easiest decisions are about things where you expect tailwinds. Take AI. When you start working with artificial intelligence, something will almost always start moving.

But when you stop something, there are stakeholders for whom this work is their passion and their life. And still you sometimes have to say: we are not doing this anymore. The costs no longer outweigh the benefits. That is difficult for me as well. I am very driven, but in those moments I am forced to be pragmatic.

What would you like to pass on, or leave behind?
Please think about the next generation. The world is becoming increasingly complex, so why would we assume that the next generation can solve things if we cannot.

Stay connected to your surroundings. Keep renewing yourself and do not lean back. Make sure you continue to develop new skills. We have two children, two daughters of 23, and what I gave them is this: assume that you can do anything, whoever you are and whatever you choose to do. Learn what it means to operate at the edge of where things become uncomfortable.

How did you come to that insight?
The world is full of rules from the past. Those rules are constantly changing, which means you always have to think about how to remain relevant and how to make a difference.You can only learn that by doing. You do not learn it from a handbook. I think the same applies to the people I work with. I give them the trust to stick their necks out and to mean far more to their environment than they initially think they can.

It all comes down to trust and collaboration. Taking risks and doing things that have never been done before requires courage, but also the confidence that there are people you can fall back on. That is something we can learn from the United States: fail fast, and fail cheap. Try something, let go of it in time if you think it will not work. But do dare to fail.

Do rituals matter to you, and if so, which ones?
There is an interesting parallel between innovation and religion. Someone once said to me: if you work on innovation, you need a church where you can profess your faith, and a guardian angel who helps you when things become complicated. I found that a beautiful thought.

With such a profession of faith come rituals. Fixed moments you go through together. At home, that is Christmas. It connects us. That ritual offers something to hold on to in times of uncertainty.

Who or what has shaped you most as a leader?
At the start of my career, I worked with a department head who had time to coach, a good sense of humour and deep expertise. Someone I could learn a lot from.

What I valued most was his ability to make things simple and clear, and to say things plainly and directly. That has shaped me.

Are you just as direct yourself?
If you know me, you can always see what I think about something. I cannot act, so I have to be straightforward. But sometimes the subject matter is complex.

Afterwards, I always check in. Did we understand each other properly. Are we both comfortable with how this went. We always evaluate our team meetings during the meeting itself, and that evaluation is not done by me, but by someone else. We always start with the question: what is on your mind.

Creating space for things that might otherwise get in the way allows the conversation itself to be as pure as possible. In that sense, those are rituals as well.