In the late 1990s, a few years after graduating with an MBA from IMD, Alex Wilhelmsen was on vacation with his family, taking an internal flight in China to visit the Terracotta Army at Xi’an. Suddenly, he heard a familiar voice. “Alex! Alex!” He looked up to see his friend and fellow IMD alumnus Ken Wu. They greeted each other and arranged to meet for a meal once they were back in Beijing.
In any part of the global village, IMD alumni may encounter one another. When they do, the reconnection tends to be both deep and instant. In common with many others who completed their MBA on the Lausanne campus, Alex finds that the experience was more than an education. He describes this formative year as the start of a slow maturation as a business leader:
“IMD provides a good approach because it’s practical rather than academic. It’s problem-solving. They bring you up from basic learning to how a business works and how an industry works as well as how we can get a quick overview of the important factors.”
On top of this foundation, the course adds capabilities and knowledge around strategy, negotiation, teamwork, and personal development. Typically, the full significance only comes to be appreciated much later.
“You don’t necessarily become a great leader [with the MBA]. It took years for me to develop these skills further. It prepares you and gives you some of the foundation, and you start to understand what kind of people you need to have around to succeed, which I think is probably, as a human being, the most important learning we can get.”
The Managing Self module also had a long-term impact, enabling him to learn to control emotions in stressful situations, and encouraging the practice of meditation, which helped strengthen this discipline.
“You start to understand what kind of people you need to have around in order to succeed” – Alex Wilhelmsen, Chairman A Wilhelmsen AS, MBA at IMD 1994
Alex was born into a successful business-owning family, principally in the shipping industry, with his father Arne having founded Royal Caribbean Cruises in 1969, a pioneering company that established high levels of luxury and a wider range of leisure activities on cruise ships.
Early in his career, Alex stayed out of the family firm, though he worked in the same industry, as a ship broker. He read finance and economics at Babson College in Massachusetts, where he heard about IMD from Jean-Pierre Jeannet, who noticed his interest in international business and marketing.
A few years after graduating, he took up a managerial post in the Wilhelmsen group, and when his father retired in the early 2000s, Alex was appointed chief executive. As he took over, the long-term benefit of the IMD training came into play. He set about a strategic reorientation to become an investment management company with interests that include offshore oil services, shipping, financial and direct investments, as well as a growing real estate company. The configuration that has proved well suited for the 21st century, with growth not overly dependent on a single sector.
He did not wish to be chief executive for long and began planning his succession almost immediately. After four years he found a successor and stepped into the chairman role. “We found a good model. That has been the model ever since.”
The Wilhelmsens have introduced moves towards sustainability in the companies and through the family office which, just after Alex took over the chairman role, was developed separately from the investment company. The cruise sector has a potentially significant environmental impact, and the company is committed to reducing the use of diesel, sustainable sourcing of food, and working with the World Wildlife Fund to help protect ecosystems.
Separately, the travel sector faced the tumultuous challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-22, which forced the suspension of cruises for extended periods. Yet the support the company received from its backers was heartening, and the expectation was that by the second half of 2022 cruises would have returned to normalcy.
Being prepared for unexpected events was part of the IMD training. He recalls a vivid memory of working all night on an end-of-module presentation. In the morning, when his group was ready to present, they were told by the professor to “put all the slides away”. Astounded, they were not sure how to proceed and had to rely on memory and each other’s support.
“The learning was that you had to think on your feet.”
This type of training helps prepare an executive for unpleasant real-world shocks. They also help forge deep personal bonds, as demonstrated by Alex’s joyous encounter with his friend Ken on vacation in China. The learning and the friendships last a lifetime.
