Alexander Alonso

Alexander Alonso's central preoccupation is the gap between preparing for a role and actually being ready for it, and he resolves that tension with a line worth remembering: "Ik heb nooit klaar geweest om die rol te doen, we altijd klaar geweest om die rol te nemen" ². For him leadership is not a credential you earn beforehand but a capacity you grow into after you've already said yes. That belief runs through everything else he says about management: a leader's job is not to be the smartest person in the room but to orchestrate everyone else's knowledge. "Soms ben ik de minst expert van iedereen rond de tafel, maar ik ben wel degene die de expertise van iedereen op tafel kan brengen op de juiste manier," he says, and he frames the whole exercise of leadership as getting a team "van punt A naar B op een hele authentieke manier" ².

Feedback is not an abstract value for Alonso but a practice he insists on modeling from the top. He asks for coaching feedback himself and then visibly acts on it, the clearest example being that after being told his loose, slide-free presentation style lacked structure, he went back and redid a talk to 250 people with proper slides rather than defending his original approach ². The logic is that a feedback culture only takes hold if the person at the top is seen changing because of it, not just requesting it as a formality.

His view of work and flexibility is built the same way, from the inside out. He keeps no fixed office, schedules calls and presentations from home, and uses his in-office days purely to walk the floor, hitting 10,000 steps a day talking to people ². He shares his midday bike rides on Strava so colleagues see, in practice, that managing your own time and exercising during work hours is not just permitted but normal ². This is the same instinct behind his summary of his own life: "Ik werk twee honderd procent en ik leef 400%" ². Work and life aren't opposed in his framing, they're both maximized, and flexibility is the mechanism that makes that possible rather than a perk bolted on afterward.

Alonso is explicit that this philosophy is generational as much as personal. He rejects the common complaint from older business leaders that younger employees lack ambition, arguing instead that they are ambitious in a different way, driven by passion, and pointing out that by 2025 roughly 70% of customers and employees will have been born after 1985 ². He doesn't just say this, he acts on it structurally: he runs round tables with young employees built around one blunt question, "if you were in my place, what would you change immediately," and has actually implemented what came out of those sessions, including extending flexible opening hours from 6:30 to 19:00 ². The result he points to as evidence this works is that despite 30% of BD Benelux's roughly 1300 employees being under 30, average tenure still runs around 15 years, because people are pushed to move internally and build new competencies rather than leave ².

His own career reflects the same directness he asks of others. He told the sitting General Manager he wanted that job in his very first interview at BD, asking outright what the path to the chair looked like, and he credits open career blueprints and mentors for actually getting him there ². When later tempted by a lucrative GM offer elsewhere, he spent three days torn over it before a mentor refused to make the call for him, on the principle that only the person themselves can weigh their own drivers. Alonso stayed and calls it "de beste beslissing ooit" ².

Two smaller but recurring convictions round out his thinking. One is about pacing ambition: set achievable bars in small steps rather than one distant high bar, and look back regularly at bars already cleared, because always chasing something higher makes you forget what you've already achieved ². The other is about celebration, which he treats as the most neglected part of success. Success you don't mark gets forgotten and gives you no energy to keep going, a point echoed in the wider Connexi compilation of entrepreneurs' lessons on resilience and success ¹².

Underneath all of it sits a simple stated ambition and a settled temperament. He wants BD to become "de beste werkgever in België," and he frames his outlook plainly: "Voor mij is het glas altijd halfvol" ². The throughline across his comments is that leadership, flexibility, feedback, and generational trust are not separate policies but one consistent stance, that authenticity and visible practice matter more than title or expertise, and that life, including work, is too short not to build it that way. "Het leven is te kort om dat niet te doen," he says, and it functions almost as his summary thesis ².