THE chief executive of Philips, , looks momentarily bemused. I had asked if we could do the interview at his desk, not on the leather sofas nearby. “OK,” he says, warily.

Then I had asked whether he’d mind if I took my jacket off. He waits so long before giving me an answer that I think he is actually going to say no.

Eventually he barks “Sure” in Dutch-inflected English, and settles behind his large, pale-wood desk. His jacket remains firmly on, a three-cornered handkerchief on neat display.

Kleisterlee, imposing in physique and brusque in manner, is by reputation the least formal of Philips bosses, which tells you something about what went on before. This Dutch consumer- electronics giant — 160,000 employees, five divisions, myriad subsidiaries, sales of €30 billion (£20.4 billion) worldwide — likes a bit of order.

But behind the formality Kleisterlee is trying to shake it up. After a decade and a half of reorganisation, Philips needs a new vision, he reasons. Mainstream consumer electronics is too big a battle to fight now.

So for the next decade Philips will concentrate instead on developing products to fit a new focus, which he calls healthcare-lifestyle-technology — a catch-all that emphasises the innovative: everything from shower shavers and Senseo coffee machines to medical crossover products like the home defibrillator.

That may sound slightly bonkers, but Kleisterlee, 58, one of the most powerful bosses in Europe, is deadly serious. He wants to show his staff that Philips has a future. “If you need to engage the energy of people, fixing a problem is good, but it only lasts for so long, then that energy has to be engaged elsewhere,” he says.

“We have had our moment of crisis and people think we are out of it and then they say, ‘Grow? Where? How?’ So we needed to create a view of where we’ll be in five or ten years’ time, and that’s where healthcare-lifestyle-technology comes in.”

Sitting in his 14th-floor office at Philips’s corporate headquarters on the river Amstel, in south Amsterdam, Kleisterlee expounds his vision with a conviction that brooks little argument. Brought up in the Netherlands, the son of a Philips line manager, he has spent his whole working life at the group, starting as an engineer at a semiconductor factory.

For many in the Netherlands, of course, Philips is a way of life — one of the biggest employers in the country, the largest consumer-electronics group in Europe, and a barometer of Dutch business health. Lately it has been ailing, principally because, like many groups with a similar heritage, it stretched itself too wide. Just look at the product list: toothbrushes, televisions, telephones, domestic appliances, semiconductors, CT scanners, MRI machines, light bulbs and more.

Why so much? “Our founder’s son, Frits,” nods Kleisterlee, “had a philosophy when he ran the company: ‘anything that engineers can, Philips engineers can.’ That’s how you end up doing so much.”

He shrugs. Kleisterlee, tall, broad-chested, white-haired, likes to tell it straight. He has spent most of his four years at the top pushing round the Philips organisation, explaining how things have to change, holding regular “town hall meetings” with employees and stakeholders.

“My style is different from my predecessors. I like to spend more energy in engaging the organisation, rather than in re-engineering it.”

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