Douglas Henck, a global perspective
From 2000 until his retirement in 2005, Doug served as President, Asia and a member of the Executive Team of Sun Life Financial with overall management responsibility for Sun Life Financial’s operations in Asia. The Canadian-based Sun Life Financial is a Forbes and Fortune Global 500 financial services companies.
"Successfully bringing Sun Life into China in 2002 was one of the most challenging and at the same time most interesting experiences I’ve had in this role. It became evident how business at this level is directly influenced by politics as we had to overcome difficulties caused by an ongoing political dispute between Canada and the PRC"
For the previous three years he was Senior Vice President at AIG’s Life Division, responsible for various strategic initiatives, such as merger & acquisition work and new country entries.
"Leading the negotiations for AIG’s purchase of Lippo Life, the number one life insurance company in Indonesia, taught me to be very patient. The entire process took 18 months, and I found myself negotiating with James Riady’s Lippo team during the day and then spending half the evening on the phone with AIG executives in New York! "
Ten years earlier found Doug moving to Hong Kong to start Aetna’s operations in the region.
"From one small life insurance joint venture in Hong Kong dating from 1984, Doug built operations across ten countries in the Asia Pacific region serving over one million customers. These companies were sold in 2000 for more than $3 billion."
On another continent, as Chief Financial Officer of Aetna International between 1981 and 1987, Doug met over several years with top regulators of Chile’s nascent and innovative social security system. He presented several papers on critical issues such as proper levels of capital, managing unemployed individuals’ accounts, and the opening of capital markets. Many points were adopted as public policy.
Citizen of the World
Moving his family to Hong Kong in 1987, Henck says, “put cultural differences in our daily lives.” One of the first lessons they learned, is “to learn what is ‘American’ about our own personality.”
- Suzanne and Douglas Henck
“There are many elements of our personality — how we react to certain things, for example — that are distinctly American,” Henck says. “Once you are sensitized to this key point, you open your mind to learning how other cultures react differently, and your own reaction to other cultures takes on a new light.”
Henck says that his children reaped the benefit of attending an international school with classmates from diverse countries and cultures, and of visiting many countries on trips. “The results are clear: our children are ‘citizens of the world,’ comfortable traveling or living almost anywhere.”
Responsible Business Practices
While in Hong Kong, Doug was active in the community, including leadership roles in several organizations. At different times he led both the regional and Hong Kong American Chambers of Commerce (AmChams), the latter during 1997, the historic year of handover of Hong Kong to China.
It was as a leader of these organizations that he had the opportunity to testify before the United States Senate and to meet President Clinton and many of his cabinet officials to discuss trade and other issues.
Doug’s focus in these and other leadership roles was ethics and responsible business practices. While Chairman of the Hong Kong AmCham, for example, he organized a Business Ethics Conference that took place shortly after the handover and guided the development of the city’s first Women in Business conference held the following year.
He continues to keep a close link to the region and the issues as Vice Chairman of the influential Asian Corporate Governance Association.
Doug’s retirement from Sun Life Financial has not lasted long as he is now posted to Haifa, Israel where he serves as Chief Financial Officer at the Bahá’í World Centre. Serving in a work environment where individuals from no less than 60 different nations "share the office", finding ways to create positive opportunities harnessing their cultural diversities.
EBBF asks: Individuals with a strong spiritual foundation sometimes find themselves at odds with the career-driven rationale of business individuals, how did you find the balance between your own spiritual values and work aspirations?
Doug replies: That’s a broad question, and it depends on whether we are talking about one’s superior or a competitor or a colleague. I am fortunate to say that I never had to deal with an unethical boss. If I had been forced to do something that violated my own values, I hope I would have had the courage to walk out.
The other two are different questions. I did have colleagues who sometimes exhibited what we called the “drowning man’s syndrome”, where an individual would “push down everyone’s head under the water” (i.e. by criticizing colleagues) in order to make himself look better. Sometimes such people even got ahead, although any such gains were usually temporary. My reaction was to continue to communicate as openly and transparently as possible about the businesses I was responsible for so that the decision makers could be fully informed and would recognize back-biting and half-truths for what they were.
As for competitors, that was a bit harder. I spent my career in the insurance industry, and that is one industry where the failure or bad behavior of any one company affects the public’s trust of all companies. When our competitors acted too stupidly in their predatory recruiting practices or pricing or other actions, we all suffered. In the last few years of my career, I found that I had developed a friendly enough relationship with my counterparts in other companies that I could call them up to talk about problematic behavior of any of their staff; most of the time, this cleared up the issues pretty quickly once such behavior had light shed upon it. I remember one time early in my Hong Kong days when the insurance companies refused to cover claims from AIDS. I got the group together and insisted that we come up with a sensible policy or risk the wrath of the regulators unilaterally applying an unsustainable policy. It took just two meetings and we got a consensus (and covered the claims).
EBBF asks: Business Organizations operate in a distinctly secular world, how did you find ways to apply your values in such an environment?
Doug replies: I was fortunate to work in the insurance industry, an industry that very clearly benefits both individual customers as well as society as a whole. The challenge with the industry is that it involves money moving from one hand to another, and any industry that includes such transfers inevitably has some people along the chain who want to take more than a fair share – whether sales people or company management or shareholders.
I felt very comfortable talking about these divergent interests very openly and promoting the idea of win/win/win. Decisions have a better chance of being ethical, in my view, if they start off by considering the legitimate interests of all stakeholders. As long as each component is “fair”, then you are serving your multiple constituencies fairly.
