The mission of CIONET.TV is to discover the DNA of the most successful Digital Leaders in the world and present their stories to our Community. Today we are proud to publish our 100th #LeadershipDeepDive Interview with a seasoned and one of a kind leader - Sam Kini - who is the Global CIO at Unilever, an organisation active in 190 countries, employing 150,000 people (with 3.4 billion consumers in the world using their products every single day!).

In this episode Hendrik Deckers asks what is the CIO’s role in a company of this size with an ambitious goal to reduce their “application BMI”, move 90% of technology to the cloud by the end of 2022. Sam explains Unilever’s IT organisation and strategy behind creating simplicity at scale - mapping the application footprint globally, consolidating technologies and removing the complexity.

They discuss the importance of sustainability and Unilever’s goals in the area: being deforestation-free by 2023, innovations that support sustainability, such as refillable products and initiatives that help achieve these objectives, including the Climate and Nature Fund, set to effectively invest EUR 1 billion over the next 10 years.

“Our mission is to have purposeful brands to be able to prove that having a sustainable business increases performance”, says Sam.

Is the Metaverse on the top of the agenda at Unilever? Is Unilever fully agile yet? How important is diversity and inclusion for the organisation? Watch the full interview to find out!

Table of contents:

01:20 | Introduction

01:57 | Sam’s background

04:26 | About Unilever

05:53 | Main challenges

06:58 | Innovation: refillables

07:32 | Sustainability as business driver

10:47 | Simplicity at scale

13:00 | Application landscape and ERP strategy

15:02 | Cloud program

17:00 | IT organisation & operating model

18:57 | Agile at Unilever

20:14 | Strategic partnerships & partner consolidation program

22:27 | The most exciting technologies

26:13 | The role of the Global CIO

27:41 | Sam’s management style

30:00 | Attracting talent

31:19 | Leadership style

32:52 | Personality & MBTI profile

37:52 | Personal passions

38:30 | Motivation

39:29 | Diversity and inclusion at Unilever

42:13 | Most brilliant failures

44:57 | Personal mantras

46:38 | Best and worst things in life

48:44 | Loves and fears

50:24 | Advice for aspiring digital leaders

Founded in Germany in 1866 ,TÜV SÜD is a well-known brand focusing on testing, inspection and certification for the safety of the world. It hires 26,000 employees spread across 1,000 locations. Stefan Domsch, CIO of TÜV SÜD manages a team of about 1,000 IT professionals.

In this Leadership Deep Dive interview Stefan talks with Hendrik Deckers about harmonisation and simplification of the company's ERP systems and the cloud strategy that is connected with these processes. He also shares his views on data management and explains why it is important for TÜV SÜD to have control over its data.

Moreover, Stefan talks about his open-door policy and how it helps him to be not only an excellent CIO but also a good business leader. “My goal is to give IT not only the supporting function but to make it an enabler of change in the company,” he says.

Vice Admiral Arnaud Coustillière has spent his entire career in the French Army, during which he embarked on several warships where he held operational command positions. As of 2017, he is General Director of Digital and Information and Communication Systems, managing an IT budget of ca. €3.5B.

He has established the "Digital Platform Management Unit" (UM SNUM in French) and led the development of "Defense Connect" and "Defense Platform", which were essential for achieving the ambition of the Ministry of Armed Forces to leverage massive amounts of data and new technologies for digital transformation.

In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, Vice Admiral talks to Hendrik Deckers about how military experience shaped him as a leader, about facing cybersecurity threats of national security level, about France's ambition of operating a cuttine-edge innovation ecosystem, and about bringing agile culture into this traditional organisation.

In the 2 years as CIO of ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) Massimo Fedeli has led a transformation program which enabled fully digitalized census of about 1.4M Italian citizens - annually instead of every 10 years. The New Digital Census has eliminated over 125,000 tons of paper and saved the ISTAT tens of millions of Euro.

During his career, Massimo Fedeli has been in charge of developing the information system of the Treasury Department and the State Accounting Department at Consip, and previously Head of the Office in charge of developing the tools to support the production cycle at SOGEI. He was a senior consultant in the area of strategic planning and consultancy for Tecsiel, on whose behalf he carried out projects at many large Public Administrations and Banks.

In this episode of Leadership Deep Dive, he talks with Hendrik Deckers about leading such a large scale project, the digital transformation at this traditional, yet data-driven public institution and about bridging the digital divide.

The mark of a great CIO is, ten years in the future, how many people who worked for them are now CIOs.

In this Leadership Deep Dive episode Aidan Hancock, Group CIO of Network Rail talks with Hendrik Deckers about the Consolidation Program, the maturity level of digital data within the company, implementation of the Digital Twin and the new role of CIO who touches every part of the business and guides the company into the digital. Aidan also comments about one of his focus points, the security:

Network Rail provides critical national infrastructure

Close cooperation with the CSO

Linked into the wider eco system – intelligence services, British transport police

Strategy to response to security threats.

What is it that LCL does and why are they so concerned with sustainability? How can we create greater awareness for sustainability in society and in organisations? Why is sustainability so important for LCL? What is Laurens' advice for future entrepreneurs?

In this Leadership Deep Dive episode Laurens van Reijen, the Founder and Managing Director of LCL, talks with Hendrik Deckers about his journey as an entrepreneur, how he founded LCL and how he became one of the driving forces behind the European Data Center Association.

Listen to the interview to learn more and be inspired by Laurens van Reijen.

How to build trust with business and your employees? What's the digital level of maturity of SNCB and how far did they go with becoming agile?

In this Leadership Deep Dive episode Guido Lemeire, CIO of SNCB (Belgian Train), talks with Hendrik Deckers about the internal and external strategy for the digital, challenges of the transportation system and the need to be flexible to customers needs. Guido explains how starting at level zero helped him when he joined in 2018 and what he achieved since then:

SAP implementation in 2018

Built full cloud infrastructure and a data center

Migration of 500 applications completed in June 2020 requirements

Doing "the full transition without losing one employee

We want to be trusted", says Guido and explains why communication is really the key.

"I hope my legacy is leaving some thoughts about how to really take advantage of our digital world which will be so different to the world we grew up in."

Let us take you to a journey across five decades. In this special edition of Leadership Deep Dive, Roger Camrass, International Research Director CIONET talks with Hendrik Deckers, Founder and MD CIONET on how the digital world of today has been shaped and how he contributed to this exciting technological revolution.

Listen to the full interview now! With degrees from Cambridge University and MIT, Roger had the opportunity to get the first-hand experience in numerous technological endeavors across telecommunications, IT consulting and outsourcing. Having worked with first start-ups on the market and initiating IT consulting, Roger has witnessed the true technological change:

The roaring 70s: ARPANET, the precursor of Internet – the real game changer

The 80s: explosive growth of IT

The 90s: hyper-connectivity

The new Millennium: the start of digital era

Second decade of XXI c.: hyper-personalisation

Listen to this amazing testimonial, Roger’s personal journey that took him across Europe and USA. Having participated in seminal tech developments such as call centres, ERP, Cloud and 5G, Roger anticipated in nineties that hyper-connectivity would transform the industrial landscape. Today Roger stresses that the data is the new Gold and the big question to all of us is how do we protect and monetise our own intellectual property?

What is the magic behind UiPath? How was it possible to grow from a local Romanian company into a global unicorn in spite of the pandemic? What role did the culture of togetherness play in it?

In this #LeadershipDeepDive interview Hendrik Deckers discusses with Andreea Baciu, Chief Culture Officer at UiPath, their transition from a dynamic, yet local start-up to a global IPO organisation with around 4000 people. „The culture itself is everybody’s job”, Andreea says and explains how the culture is blending with technology. She also shares insights on the cultural aspects of Automation and the challenges as well as benefits of scaling Automation inside the organisation.

Watch the full interview to find out how UiPath nurtures innovation within the Immersion Lab and why it offers its employees and unlimited PTO policy.

#DigitalLeadership #UiPath #FullyAutomatedEnterprise #WaronTalent #TheGreatResignation #CIO #CXO #CTO #CCO #CIONET #innovation #technology #data #DigitalTransformation #Automation #RPA #AI

Table of contents:

01:17 | Introduction and Andreea Baciu’s background

02:32 | About UiPath

05:51 | Chief Culture Officer

09:03 | Culture of togetherness and belonging in a remote set up

12:35 | Company-wide hackathon and the Podium

13:54 | Facing the change

15:26 | Insights from listening to the workforce

17:17 | Unlimited PTO policy and the importance of taking private time

19:39 | UiPath culture

22:01 | Impact on local businesses in Bucharest

23:31 | Cultural aspects of Automation

25:21 | Challenges of scaling inside the company

26:42 | Main benefits of Automation

28:31 | UiPath’s Immersion Lab

29:59 | Andreea’s role as Chief Culture Officer

32:07 | Andreea’s management style

34:43 | Attracting and retaining top talents

36:45 | Andreea’s leadership style

38:41 | MBTI: the Executive

43:37 | Personal mantra

44:22 | Andreea’s values

46:02 | The most brilliant failure

50:05 | Andreea’s mentors

52:52 | Andreea’s passions

54:40 | The best and worst moment in life

56:44 | The biggest fear

57:45 | Advice for people starting out

How is Carrefour going to realise their ambition to become a digital retail company by 2026? Is implementing an in-house-built point of sale for the entire Group a good strategy? Are fully automated stores and instant delivery service - Bringo - the future of Carrefour?

In this #LeadershipDeepDive interview Hendrik Deckers discussed with Gabriela Stanica, CIO & CDO at Carrefour Romania, their journey to a cloud-based, data-driven company and implementing the product mindset. Gabriela explained what strategies have been adopted to battle the talent shortage and monetise data from one of the biggest data lakes in retail (over 8 billion transactions). She also shared how Carrefour is using algorithms to predict over 80% of customer basket choices using AI.

Watch the full interview to find out how the use of RPA and AI can foster digital transformation and how Gabriela’s experience at Carrefour in New York shaped her leadership style!

Table of contents:

01:02 | Introduction

01:50 | Gabriela’s background

06:21 | About Carrefour Romania

07:55 | About Carrefour’s delivery service - Bringo

08:58 | Business challenges

12:21 | Journey towards product mindset

14:10 | IT solutions at Carrefour

15:21 | Development of group point of sale

16:57 | Cloud migration

17:39 | Data strategy

21:09 | Solutions to talent shortage

23:18 | Use of automation & bots

26:40 | IT & Digital organisation

28:40 | Gabriela’s role as CIO & CDO

32:27 | Women in digital leadership

35:09 | Management style

38:28 | Personality

42:55 | MBTI profile | development areas

44:44 | Motivation

45:13 | Core values

46:01 | Personal mantra

47:02 | Gabriela’s projects in New York

51:04 | Mentors

53:13 | Hobbies

54:56 | Failures & lessons learned

57:22 | Best things in life

58:53 | Worst things in life

1:00:19 | Loves and fears

1:01:30 | Advice for aspiring digital leaders