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Published on January 2, 2008

 Not one DTAC employee showed up. He asked himself what had happened and whether he should get mad. But at the end of the day, he felt happy.

He sent short messages to all DTAC staff, thanking them for not coming to his book launch.

"My book launch had nothing to do with the company. It's good that they knew that and did not come to play 'the pleasing game'," Brekke says. "This is exactly the culture that is changing DTAC. Everybody works and does not need to please the boss.

"Now, I plan to name my second book  Thanks for not Coming."

To Brekke, the incident marked another step closer to making his dream come true - the dream of becoming totally redundant to the operations of the company. To help him achieve that goal, he recruits only the best people and delegates authority to other executives, who are encouraged to create a spirit of teamwork. There's still a long way to go, but things are improving - such as the book launch experience.

After seven years of work in Thailand, Brekke accepts that the work culture he is promoting is not easily instilled. But he maintains that it is possible to achieve, particularly if executives at the top make it clear that "pleasing games" are unnecessary.

Making himself redundant seems a far-fetched aim for a man who regularly works from 7am to 10pm or 11pm on weekdays. Every weekday night, he has dinner with guests - not only businessmen, but also politicians and people from other fields. The Norwegian executive believes he should understand all aspects of Thais' thinking, so he understands how to lead his business.

During daylight hours he attends meetings, makes phone calls and sends short messages. At weekends, he normally punches in about 20 short messages each day, fewer than the 50 he usually sends on an average weekday. To Brekke, this is necessary routine.

At 7am every day he gets the sales figures from the previous day. A "vital" discussion follows in which every member of his staff recognises what he or she did on the previous day that resulted in a rise or fall in the number of subscribers. It's an ordeal, but Brekke treats it as routine.

"Passion is what you need. I always tell the people that I'm recruiting that it's necessary for them to keep working all the time," he says.

Brekke has spent an active, interesting life. Growing up in a small Norwegian province with fewer than 3,000 residents, he decided that a life on his family's farm was not right for him. He left his hometown when he was 18 and went to university.

At 20, he joined a political youth organisation and became an active member before moving up to a labour organisation.

At 30, he quit to join a fellowship programme to Harvard University in the US. He decided to continue his studies for a master's degree. With letters of recommendation from the then-prime minister of Norway and other high-ranking officials he had earlier befriended, he was welcomed despite his lack of an undergraduate degree.

After graduating, Brekke pursued his fondness for change by calling the president of the Norwegian telecom giant, Telenor, to ask if the organisation had a job for him. Since his master's degree focused on Asean economies, he was told to lead a team to the Asean region to assess the potential for Telenor to enter the region as an investor.

Brekke met a number of top executives of telecom companies in the region and recommended Telenor's purchase of a company in Malaysia and DTAC in Thailand.

Even though he had never been involved in the telecom industry, he gleefully accepted an offer to become an executive at DTAC. With Brekke as its representative, Telenor built up its stake in DTAC and now Brekke is the company's chief executive.

Although most of the financial problems suffered by DTAC in the 1997 financial crisis have subsided, Brekke believes there is still much to be done.

Another important mission he wants to accomplish is to deliver all of DTAC's promises to its customers. This, he says, will only come about with a change in the organisation's work culture. In the early days, particularly when networks were being installed, the engineering team played the most important role in the company. Later, the sales team slipped in. Then after a while the marketing team enjoyed a more important role. Brekke believes it is now time for all the teams to work together to ensure that the company's customers feel good.

"Now, only [the mobile phone] operators feel good. But their customers need to feel good also. They must be able to make calls whenever and wherever they want. They must feel good about the brand and this must be felt in their hearts."

Brekke knows it will take time. But as long as fun and problems are driving him towards set goals, he is happy to continue the hard work - with a team of employees that is never there to please him for personal reasons that do not involve the company.

Achara Deboonme,

 Sirivish Toomgum

 The Nation