“Best Driver 2025” finalist Neeme Tammis: burnout forced him to make a life plan

Neeme Tammis, the head of the Hansa Group, a decades-long entrepreneur and finalist in the Best CEO competition, has repeatedly burnt himself out in the pursuit of ambition. The last of these made him think more deeply about the life he has left and make a plan.

Neeme Tammis, finalist of the competition organised by the Pärnu Leadership Conference, the Estonian Personnel Management Association PARE, the Estonian Employers’ Confederation and Äripäev, shared his leadership experience and lessons learned in an Äripäev radio programme. “Juhi jutud” (Leader’s Tales).

Here are some worthwhile reflections from the conversation.

– I like crises. Maybe it’s because once you’ve got everything sorted and you’ve got a leader in place, you don’t have to do very much yourself. As a rather impatient and enterprising person, I have had periods in my leadership where I feel that I am no longer needed.

– When there’s a crisis, I can jump in, lead, manage, decide, negotiate with partners, suppliers, banks. A crisis or a self-imposed ambition are both challenges. And I like big challenges.

– I’ve been burnt out, burnt out, burnt out several times in my career. Twice lightly, and twice seriously. The last one was at the end of 2021. I don’t know why it happened – maybe age, maybe stress, maybe all the things combined. Then I worked for two months and wrote down what I wanted and expected from the rest of my life and how I should live it. I wrote 30-40 pages, the action plan for five years ended up being 15 pages. It can be summed up in three key words.

– Physical and mental health is then the foundation of everything. When health is out of order, everything else is out of order. I have found Chinese medicine for myself, I have been following Rene Bürkland’s tips.

– Then time use. Where I put my time and attention. You can manage your relationships, you can look after your health, but you can’t get more time from anywhere, so you have to watch very carefully and decide quickly whether this is a subject that speaks to you.

– Third, good relations at work and elsewhere. If you don’t have a good relationship with your colleagues, partners, friends and family, there’s not much point in living at all. If you are curious about people, attentive, sincere, humble when necessary. And certainly, when necessary, apologetic – these ingredients are the recipe for good relationships.

Neeme Tammis’s question to Estonian leaders: maybe a bit of a train of thought, a bit philosophical. I have imagined life as a river. You start from a small spring, a puddle, you flow in a riverbed, eventually you flow into the sea, you evaporate, it rains and life starts all over again. When we are on a river with a strong current and often there are obstacles in the river. Some kind of branches, reeds, water, some kind of big rock. My question is, do you wait there behind the rock and see what happens, go to the left side of the rock or the right side of the rock, go through the rock, go over the rock, or lift it off the rock?

The best manager will be announced on 16 May at the Pärnu Management Conference.

The article was published in Äripäev newspaper.