CIONET

In this Leadership Deep Dive episode, Hendrik Deckers talks to Vargha Moayed, Chief Strategy Officer of UiPath, about growing up in Morocco, living in France, USA and most importantly, what his background taught him about resilience as well as balancing humility and boldness in order to go global.

Listen to this episode of #LeadershipDeepDive and deep dive into Vargha Moayed's leadership philosophy, his views on how to build a successful team and how he got into the RPA technology.

Vargha has become the CSO of UiPath and from this conversation, you can find out why.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00:00 - Introduction

About UiPath

1:50 - What does UiPath stand for?

2:20 - What solutions does UiPath offer?

3:20 - When was UiPath born?

4:47 - What makes Daniel Dines, UiPath's CEO & Founder, special?

7:32 - UiPath's growth story

13:40 - What are the biggest challenges faced by Digital Leaders around the world that UiPath can help solve?

About Vargha Moayed

15:53 - The story of Vargha Moayed

27:05 - Views on innovation in big companies - elephants and cheetahs

29:16 - Lessons learned from working in investments in startups

31:44 - How did the move to east Europe came to be?

Vargha Moayed in UiPath

34:25 - Getting into the RPA technology

39:47 - What are the key events that need to take place for an European startup to become a success?

42:12 - How important is the view of the analysts on technology companies?

44:24 - What exactly is the role of the Chief Strategy Officer in UiPath?

47:19 - Building successful teams in a fast growing company

49:05 - Vargha's leadership style

Vargha Moayed in life

50:43 - What are the values he's passing on to his children?

51:50 - Why does Vargha love change?

53:29 - How many languages does Vargha speak?

54:24 - MBTI Profile

57:21 - Advice for those starting out and have the ambition to be successful

59:42 - The meaning of resilience

1:00:44 - Most important learning in life so far

After a career as IT Director, Krzysztof Dąbrowski became a COO at mBank - Poland's first digital bank that was a fintech before fintech was a thing.

In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, Krzysztof Dąbrowski talks with Hendrik Deckers about his passion for "stealing like an artist" from different management systems to approach complex operational challenges and to always be learning, even if he's exhausted the learning materials from a given domain.

He shares the behind-the-scenes view of building efficient operational processes and banking systems on the foundations of obsolete technologies. He dives into a transformation program that compiled COBOL applications into .Net in real time, without stopping any systems, and another that translated a proprietary language into one they could actually find programmers for.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

01:00 - Introduction: Krzysztof Dąbrowski, COO of mBank

01:50 - about mBank - the first digital bank in Poland

03:20 - The role of COO at mBank and the operations transformation he led

10:50 - Defaulting on technological debt: compiling into a new language without slowing down the systems

20:00 - mBank's cloud ambition

22:30 - Translating the corporate banking core system

25:50 - How IT is organised at mBank: balancing agility and compliance processes

mBank scaled agile model

navigating "agile islands"

33:04 - The changing role of a CTO/CIO

36:05 - Krzysztof's management style

39:55 - Recruiting top talent in Poland

43:20 - mBank's innovation strategy, startup incubator and ecosystem

44:00 - What your team says about you when you're not around

45:58 - People and books that inspire Krzysztof

The importance of surrounding yourself with kind people

You need to know good specialists when you see them, even if you don't understand their craft

52:30 - The difficulty of keeping it simple

54:45 - The values he wants to pass on to his children

56:20 - His advice for future CIOs

How learning new skills used to be different

Why you should do things you're not yet good at

In this Leadership Deep Dive episode, Francois Locoh-Donou, CEO of F5 (www.f5.com), takes us inside his leadership philosophy and demonstrates in a hard to refute way why diversity, open company structures, constant learning and ongoing transformation are not just values to look into, but crucial strategies to adopt if a company wants to stay competitive in its (ever evolving) market.

Francois has become CEO of F5 in 2017 and from this conversation, you can find out why in this time F5 has made a conscious and strategic decision to only acquire two companies (nginx and Shape security)

Francois also talks about growing up in Togo and living in the US, why he decided to invest in agricultural industry in his and what his background taught him about identity, pride, privilege and perseverance.

About F5

03:15 About F5 - Enabling 24/7 delivery and security of applications

04:40 Challenges of application delivery

- multi-cloud

- microservices and distributed architecture

- automation of continuous improvement

07:04 Telemetry-based security (Shape security)

11:47 Application capital economy

13:58 Code To Customer - integrated view across silos

15:47 How F5 has been evolving with IT architecture trends

Building Successful Teams

17:22 Company culture at F5

- humility

- loyalty

- embracing rapid transformation

18:36 How to make successful acquisitions

21:47 The roles that CEO has to play

- vision

- leadership

- strategy

- building relationships with clients

24:47 Developing and driving vision for the company with diverse perspectives

28:12 Building and supporting successful teams

- traits of a good leader

29:00 Using humility to grow and listen

31:00 How hierarchies kill innovation

31:40 The value of diversity and nurturing passion and commitment

36:57 Francois' fundamental values

- sense of identity and awareness of privilege

39:40 "Development in Africa will come from agricultural revolution"

- Francois' investment in developing Togo's economy

42:48 Mentors in Francois' life

- The driving force of drive and transformation

48:25 Francois' most memorable failure and what he learned

- persevering despite self-doubt and learning from mistakes

51:05 "Once you go through a period of severe adversity and self-doubt, your confidence and desire to take risks is greater."

51:29 Advice for future CIOs and digital leaders

- managing your time investment into risks and learning

- nobody gets anywhere on their own

Before Martijn Stegink became Global IT Director at Greenpeace 12 years ago, the people on that position changed almost yearly. The first thing he did was ask the global team what they needed and consistently delivered on their top 3 requests.

Everyday, Martijn and his team balance technology needs of activists and offices in 28 countries. In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, Martijn talks to Hendrik Deckers about working across every time zone for global change, with sometimes extreme cultural differences. He talks about keeping an open mind for possibilities, rolling with the punches, learning from mistakes and balancing weaknesses.

WATCH AS VIDEO:

▶ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdkhETWjOHE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

01:09 - Introduction: Martijn Stegink - Global IT Director of Greenpeace

02:25 - How Martijn has built the IT systems and regained trust of the organisation

06:30 - Transformation program: Global online collaboration system

10:13 - Billion Acts of Courage

12:50 - How IT is organised at Greenpeace

15:00 - Working with different global cultures

16:24 - Martijn's role as global CIO

23:58 - Martijn's management and leadership style

28:12 - Martijn's MBTI profile: ENFP

38:20 - His Mentors (or: why he doesn't believe in mentors)

40:30 - His most brilliant failure

47:12 - Advice for future digital leaders

EUROPEAN DIGITAL LEADER OF THE YEAR 2020

Martijn Stegink is a finalist in the European Digital Leader Of The Year contest organised annually by CIONET. Find out the B2B and B2C winners and learn more about the other 16 finalists in the Public and Financial sectors - the winners will be announced at CIONEXT on 26th June 2020.

https://ecoty.eu/

Anke Sax wrote her PhD thesis based on interviews with 40 CIOs. She has dedicated years of her career to figuring out how accomplished digital leaders manage their departments and company strategy. Anke was also chosen CIO of The Year 2019 in Germany and has 30 years of executive experience in the financial sector - both on the business side and the IT side.

In today's episode of Leadership Deep Dive, she talks with Hendrik Deckers about the difference between a CIO and IT leader, about making the best decisions by listening to the team, engaging ambitious IT talent and the future of IT organisations.

Watch Part 1:

▶ https://youtu.be/lyNPa1oKdZk

Anke Sax has interviewed 40 CIOs and wrote a PhD thesis based on that. She has dedicated years of her career to figuring out how accomplished digital leaders manage their departments and company strategy. Anke was also chosen CIO of The Year 2019 in Germany and she has 30 years of executive experience in the financial sector - both on the business side and the IT side.

In today's episode of Leadership Deep Dive, she talks with Hendrik Deckers about the difference between a CIO and IT leader, about making the best decisions by listening to the team, engaging ambitious IT talent and the future of IT organisations.

01:05 - Introduction: Anke Sax

01:40 - Anke's most accomplished transformation programs

04:40 - Second transformation program: Building a market strategy for the bank

11:20 - Anke's management style and leading an IT team without an engineering background

"A leader should moderate the process and asking the right questions to get the best answers. I don't think that a leader should always have all the answers."

15:12 - Best practices for organizing an IT department

17:25 - How has the role of a CIO changed over the last 10 years?

19:00 - The future of IT departments

19:50 - The key to engaging top IT talent

21:20 - Anke's leadership style

23:30 - How to train listening skills

24:15 - Making companies more agile

EUROPEAN DIGITAL LEADER OF THE YEAR 2020

Anke Sax is a finalist of European Digital Leader Of The Year 2020. Find out the B2B and B2C winners and learn more about the other 16 finalists in the Public and Financial sectors - the winners among the latter will be announced at CIONEXT on 26th June 2020.

https://ecoty.eu/

In the second part of the conversation with the leaders behind BBVA's award-winning mobile banking experience, Hendrik Deckers talks to Rafael Lopez Gracia, Head of IT at BBVA Transformation Factory. Rafael shares the technological and organisational background of the transformation that made BBVA's IT organisation fast, efficient and innovative.

⭐ This interview is in Spanish ⭐

TABLE OF CONTENTS

00:00 - Introduction: Rafael Lopez Gracia, Head of IT at BBVA Transformation Factory.

04:44 - Attracting and keeping IT talent

06:50 - Working with the IT ecosystem

09:00 - Rafael's role in the IT organisation

11:34 - Rafael's personal values and strengths

13:16 - Advice to future digital leaders

14:22 - How has the role of a CIO changed in the last 10 years?

- distributed leadership

15:45 - Rafael's leadership style

17:50 - Rafael's MBTI profile - ESTP

19:55 - Rafael's personal mantra and mentors

BBVA's mobile app was named best banking app by Forrester for 3 years in a row.

In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, Hendrik Deckers talks to the two leaders who transformed the organisation culture so they could transform the customer experience in a radically human-centric and Agile way: Sofía Rodriguez-Sahagún, Head of Retail Digital Banking at BBVA and Rafael Lopez Gracia, Head of IT at BBVA Transformation Factory.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

01:11 - Introduction: Sofía Rodriguez-Sahagún, Head of Retail Digital Banking at BBVA

02:10 - The ECOTY-nominated program: Digital factory and transformation of IT organisation

- propagating Agile culture

- designing and testing with customers

- continuous improvement

- good practices for transformation

14:20 - Sofia's leadership style

15:50 - BBVA's values

16:40 - Interdisciplinary teams

17:50 - BBVA's nearest future

Barcelona Supercomputing Center is home of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe and is used to run Nobel Prize-winning research. Dr. Sergi Girona, the BSC's CIO and Operations Director, is responsible for enabling Europe's groundbreaking scientific discovery.

He states outright that his role is not to lead digital transformation or tell scientists how to innovate or improve their business, because the people he works with are some of the most accomplished scholars and engineers in the world - they know better than anyone what they need.

In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, Sergi talks with Hendrik Deckers about competing with USA and China in the computing power arms race, about attracting and retaining the best engineers in the world, working with suppliers and rapid development of top of the line infrastructure.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

00:51 - Introduction: Dr. Sergi Girona, history of Barcelona Supercomputing Center, architecture and the research projects it ran

07:38 - The future of BSC and challenges of running a supercomputing facility

09:20 - Suppliers and procurement process

10:20 - European and worldwide ranking of supercomputers and serving the EU interest

14:28 - Sergi's role at BSC

15:15 - How IT operates at BSC

20:36 - Sergi's management style

21:22 - Finding and retaining top IT talent

23:51 - Sergi's leadership style

25:00 - Sergi's MBTI profile - ISFJ

28:14 - His personal values and mentors

30:03 - Sergi's most brilliant failure

32:19 - Advice to future digital leaders

EUROPEAN DIGITAL LEADER OF THE YEAR 2020

Dr. Sergi Girona is a Public sector finalist in the European Digital Leader Of The Year contest organised annually by CIONET. Find out the B2B and B2C winners and learn more about the other 16 finalists in the Public and Financial sectors - the winners among the latter will be announced at CIONEXT on 26th June 2020.

https://ecoty.eu/

When the IT talent shortage in Poland was estimated at roughly 100 thousand people, Sebastian Jaworski, then IT director and CIO at ARIMR (The Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture) decided to fire outsourcing partners and build an internal software development factory and hired 40 people within a year.

He also led an Agile transformation in this quite calcified 25-year old government organisation. The online platform that his team built has served 2 million farmers in its first year.

In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, Sebastian talks with Hendrik Deckers about:

▴ always seeking a challenge,

▴ agile transformation in a government agency

▴ impressing the business stakeholders who used to resent exorbitant bills for software development

▴ balancing trust and control in leading a high-performance team

TABLE OF CONTENTS

00:45 - Introduction: Sebastian Jaworski, CIO of ARIMR (The Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture)

01:17 - Transformation: Reducing software development cost by €50M through building internal software factory of 40+ developers

05:22 - Hiring and developing the IT team

07:50 - IT market in Poland, technologies and potential of blockchain

13:30 - How is IT organised at ARIMR?

14:48 - ROI of the transformation

16:30 - The role of CIO and how it's changed in the last 5 years

18:04 - Sebastian's management style - balancing trust and structure, cultivating team leaders

20:19 - Sebastian's leadership style

22:24 - Sebastian's MBTI profile - ENFJ

European Digital Leader Of The Year Finalist

Sebastian Jaworski is a Public sector finalist in the European Digital Leader Of The Year Awards. Find out the B2B and B2C winners and learn more about the other 16 finalists in the Public and Financial sectors - the winners among the latter will be announced at CIONEXT on 26th June 2020.

https://ecoty.eu/