Against All Odds. Jorma Ollila

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       Ollila family Christmas in Vaasa in the mid -1960s (left to right): father Oiva, Sirkku, Leena, Yrjö, mother Liisa, Harri, and I am standing in the back.

      The house had been built just after the war, so badly that it seemed about to fall down. Cold water came in and went out again. It was heated with logs. I slept in the attic room with my sister Leena.

      We moved to the western part of Turku and this was an improvement. Now we had three rooms and central heating. The rooms were heated by oil, so no one had to fetch logs any more. The windows were no long iced up on cold mornings. The rooms were upstairs; on the ground floor was a dairy. Town and country were still intermingled in 1950s Finland. Our house opened straight on to fields. There we grew spinach, which I helped to pick.

      One day when I was about ten I found a little growth on my neck, which required surgery to remove. There was nothing dangerous about the operation, which was a routine matter, and I wasn’t scared of blood or hospitals. My parents had just given me a proper, grown-up bike as a present – I kept it for years until it was stolen when I was a student. That morning I packed my rucksack, hopped on the bike, and cycled over the hill and then along narrow streets for a couple of miles to the university hospital, a big white building. I checked in for the operation. It went well and I spent a week convalescing in the hospital. My parents came to see me there once. In the next bed there was a very pleasant girl, who asked me something in her Turku accent that sounded like “ain’t it tough?” Only later did I realize that she was asking me if I had any toffee, rather than offering a comment on life.

      When I left the hospital a few days later I went home the same way I had come. The experience was vivid, but not particularly scary. Back at the turn of the 1960s it seemed perfectly normal for a ten-year-old boy to go to the hospital on his own.

      In spring 1961 my father announced another move. He had already changed employer in Turku, and his new company was transferring him to Vaasa. We were returning to Ostrobothnia.

      Because we moved so often I had developed my own interests and activities. One of the most important was tennis. It was a breath of air from a better world. Tennis is more often associated with large towns than with remote villages. It originates in the Anglo-Saxon world, where the more fashionable people play in pure white kit. Finnish sporting life consists of skiing, skating, running, the high jump, baseball, weightlifting, wrestling, and the shot putt – but not tennis. My father, however, was an exception: as well as houses he had decided to build a whole world. He played tennis. I don’t know what attracted him, whether it was the sport’s image or the technical skill it demanded of its players. Either way, he passed his enthusiasm on to me, and tennis became my lifelong friend, my therapist, and a way to work off the pressures of the day.

      When I was eleven I wrote a letter to my mother. She was at home in town; I was spending the summer at my grandmother’s farm. My large, carefully formed letters are easy to read. Even so, I nearly put the pen through the paper. I had just learned that we were to move again, to Vaasa. I had done my research and found out that tennis was played in Vaasa. “There’s a tennis course for beginners starting today,” I wrote. “When I can I am going to join the tennis club, whose name is Tennis-61,” I wrote solemnly. I folded the letter into an envelope, wrote mother’s address with care, and took the letter to the post office, which was next to the shop. Mother opened the letter the next day, saw my message, and was delighted. Nor was tennis the only reason I was glad to be moving to Vaasa. As I wrote: “It is indeed nice to move back to one’s birthplace.”

       CHAPTER 3

       The Birds and the Beatles

      MY SCHOOL – VAASA HIGH SCHOOL – educated the doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and engineers of the future. Many boys went into their fathers’ professions, but I had no idea then what my future might hold. We didn’t discuss it at home. My father had had enough of electrical installation and had become a factory manager. As for myself, I had made just one decision and I intended to stick to it: there was no way I was going into industry. Factories and workshops seemed dirty, and the work was monotonous. What was more, my father was at work every single day. I doubted whether I wanted such a tough career.

      My father never had enough time for me, and everyone else seemed to be in a hurry the whole time, too. Days were full of work and bustle. Everyone was on a journey somewhere, onwards or upwards. No one had time for frivolity, feelings, or fretting. We had a new home on account of my father’s new job, a large and light wooden house next to the factory. At home the only thing expected of me was that I would do well at school. This was no problem. Besides, our parents had somehow made me believe that by studying, working, and researching one could meet challenges that at first seemed impossible. By preparation and careful consideration one could get the better of any opponent.

      Knowledge was power, by which one could transform one’s destiny. With the help of knowledge one could advance and do great things. With knowledge one could compete and never be limited.

      I really don’t know where this optimistic view of the world came from. Perhaps my parents were drawing on their own disappointments to motivate their children. They had both been compelled to give up studying early. Both had been the first in their family to matriculate from high school, but neither had ever graduated from university. They really wanted their own children to have a chance to study and eventually to graduate.

      For my mother the decision to abandon her studies in order to establish a family had been a painful one. It was never openly discussed because it would have hurt my mother too much. It was only by good fortune that she had gone to secondary school after her father’s death and fought for a place at university, but she had never had the chance to show how far her intellect and talent would have taken her. I assume she would have gone far. My mother was bitter about her fate, and the bitterness gradually changed to a sort of gray cloud that everyone noticed but no one mentioned. That cloud acted as a silent demand that her children study and take the opportunities denied to her.

      My mother’s experiences came to mind much later, when I met Chinese president and Party Leader Jiang Zemin in 2002. My mother had died by then, so I couldn’t talk to her about my conversation with Jiang. The distinguished chairman and president wanted to know what I thought about setting up a stock exchange in China. My view was that the Chinese could indeed set up a stock exchange, but the most important thing was to take care of education. The country needed good engineers, lawyers, and industrialists in order to remain competitive.

      When later in the business world I encountered situations that seemed impossible, I went back to the lessons learned at home. Everything is possible, if only you research, study, and do things right.

      Nokia was full of people who thought the same way as me. We couldn’t accept that anything was impossible. Everything is possible for those who know what they’re doing. But without thorough knowledge, educated humility, and close attentiveness, nothing good will come. I have never been terribly good at improvising. I have always wanted to prepare for everything, both the expected and the unexpected. I am at my best when I know I am well prepared, whether the matter in question is a speech, a deal, or even a routine meeting.

      Of course I still knew nothing of this in Vaasa High School at the beginning of the 1960s. There I sat in class with the other boys. Sometimes the teachers were boring and narrow; sometimes they set my thoughts racing. For example, Raimo Teppo’s history and social studies lessons were spellbinding, so that every boy listened as quiet as a mouse. Teppo took a keen interest in the economy and in society, and he transmitted his enthusiasm to his pupils. Once we debated which of Finland’s banks was best. It was from him that I learned what a stock exchange СКАЧАТЬ