A view from the ops room:

Everyone is talking about digitalisation – the concept, the need for it, the threat of not doing it, doing it too slowly. The requirement for agile organisations, more efficient, automated work processes….

But what does it mean to go through with it, to live digitalisation? Hopefully, this can trigger an exchange of experiences about how digitalisation impacts on structure, people, culture, execution times, the pull between time intensive projects and expectations on line results? How do you lead digitalisation and what is different from “projects” as we all know them? And how do you take those employees and other stakeholders not so comfortable with change, technology and flexible roles with you (and what can you do when that’s not possible?). How do you deal with detours and, occasionally, failure (in a world without blueprint, this is inevitable). How do you cope with decision-making in an uncertain environment and about things (aka technology) you might not be entirely familiar with? Stakeholders will need to be managed, but how much time should you invest? Does it really have to cost THAT much (time/money/equipment/project working space?)? The list goes on.

So, thank you for reading – and for contributing to this.

 Who’s talking?

A digital native from the late 1990s, involved in building early online financial Service businesses (“no one will use their credit cards online or carry out financial transactions electronically”) – I remember brainstorming meetings with  financial analysts about the growth rate of internet use and online shopping (“you are crazy”) and working with beardy development gurus from the “Valley” in the first wave of incubators. The days when Ebay and Google had their small European offices in pretty random locations.

Starting off in management consulting in technology strategy for financial services and moving on to working in early stage venture capital, I was thrown in the deep end of the turnaround of a digital agency as CEO and that was it – I discovered the attraction of operational management. A avid consumer brand lover, I travelled all over the world developing new markets and product strategies for consumer goods companies for nearly 10 years before moving back into the world of digitalisation. In the past 4 years I have, built, run, restructured, tweaked a business unit for a media business and I’m now looking forward to managing the 3rd wave of digitalisation of this ever-changing business. I have learned to walk and talk tech with developers as well as at board level. As those who have worked with me will not be able to ignore, I have a really strong passion for leadership and talent management (well, people, really) in this changing, ever more virtual and global work environment.

A true personal passion, inspiration and source of energy is music.