Telekom IT is changing radically under the leadership of Peter Leukert. The CIO wants to develop the IT to the thought leader for the group and relies thereby on the initiative of the employees as he stresses in the interview with Detecon.
Mr. Leukert, as Deutsche Telekom CIO, you are responsible for the company's internal IT systems. Change and transformation come naturally with that territory. You also have to deal with major technical challenges, such as IP migrations, harmonization of complex IT systems and introductions of innovations. To top it all off, you're also having to manage cultural changes, and help redefine the IT area's basic role throughout the Group.
Peter Leukert: There's no doubt that the IT area's role has changed fundamentally. The customer-contractor types of relationships that we used to have, between the company's various departments and our IT area, have faded out of the picture, and there would be no point in trying to bring them back. Today, the area of IT has become an integral part of the company's business, and part and parcel of our every business process including both internal and customer-oriented processes.
What are the consequences of these changes for a CIO and, say, a CDO?
First of all, we've had to become what I would call 'ambidextrous'. On the one 'hand', we still handle much of our operations via legacy platforms, as is typically the case for IT departments of large organizations. Such platforms have to be optimally managed, meaning they have to be maintained at maximal quality levels, and run cost-effectively and with a maximum degree of orientation to our customers. At the same time, and on the other 'hand', we're rapidly investing in all kinds of innovations, within an environment with completely different game rules, oriented to agility, flexibility and flat hierarchies. The 'C' in titles such as 'CIO' and 'CDO' no longer fits into this new type of culture, and truly innovative organizations have been phasing out top-down management. The task of a manager, whether CIO, CDO or 'C' of you name it, is to create the perfect framework for an innovative, successful team that can make the right decisions at the right time. When we talk about building things, the manager is now more of an architect, and less of a foreperson on the construction site.
What leadership skills would you say such ambidexterity calls for, and what is Deutsche Telekom doing in order to promote such skills?
I think the key difference it calls for - and this has been coming into ever-sharper focus for me - is a new way of looking at and understanding people. The classical way of looking at human beings, dating from the Taylorism of the 19th century, was a highly misanthropic one. It was based on the idea that people are basically lazy and unreliable, and unable to think for themselves, and thus, from a managerial standpoint, it called for telling people exactly what to do. Thinking and doing - the execution - were kept separate, and control was the most important management instrument. That of course places unbelievable constraints on an individual. The secret behind today's successful, agile tech companies is a completely different way of looking at people, a post-modern approach.
It works from the principle that people basically want to achieve, and that they want to find meaning in their work. Leaders should help employees in that search for meaning; leaders should motivate people to be the best they can be, to find achievement within themselves. We now know that agile and self-determined ways of structuring work are superior, in almost all respects. In addition to being supported by anecdotal evidence gained within the market - and reported on Facebook, for example - this view is now substantiated by serious research. Such work structures cannot emerge unless a modern understanding of leadership prevails, one that allows room for innovation, creativity and creation of meaning. To this end, we leaders need to be scrutinizing our own work approaches and our own attitudes constantly.
We at Deutsche Telekom's IT department have now completed three years of intensive cost-cutting, with highly detailed performance targets. For our leadership team, suddenly doing away with hierarchical work structures is a jarring change of course. It is all the more jarring in that our existing IT structures limit our options. When you operate in the context of a highly integrated legacy architecture, such as we do, you cannot simply shift hundreds of employees out of conventional waterfall-model structures, and into agile teams, overnight. Younger companies of course have an advantage over us in this regard. Leaders thus have to find ways of cleanly managing the interfaces between the 'old' and 'new' worlds. And - this is especially important they have to ensure that employees who are not yet working on any of the 'new' topics understand they have not lost out in any way.
So how would you describe the kind of managers we will need in the future?
I think there are widely different dimensions of leadership, and leadership is a role that can change dynamically. One leadership style, for example, is the "thought leadership" that has emerged in the U.S. In practice, such leadership rarely starts with the persons who have been formally designated as the leaders. Then there is "people leadership," involving the coaching and developing of employees. And there is "delivery leadership," practiced in projects. In practice, such roles may have nothing to do with the boxes in the organizational chart that would otherwise apply. Then you have leadership roles in teams, the sorts of roles that you need, for example, when a team has to work together with other teams. In the world of IT in particular, you often need roles - such as "scrum masters," for example - to be very clear. How radical do we as an IT organization want to be in terms of our approach to leadership? That is part of what we are intensively discussing in our major change process, which we are calling IT@MOTION.
Do you plan to rely on rotation programs at all? In China, for example, it is now common practice for small teams, with high degrees of project responsibility, to be disbanded when their projects are completed. Their members then get separately reassigned.
We are indeed applying that kind of an approach. Very recently, we 'internally' rotated an entire management level, with the aim of tearing down persisting silos and encrusted line structures. Suddenly being part of new teams gave our managers perfect opportunities to reflect and 're-invent' themselves. In general, we are currently interacting intensively on ways of making our organization more flexible. This all amounts to a balancing act. For a team to achieve true excellence, its members of course have to get to know each other well. Teams that are able to function for a certain period of time get on a common learning curve and achieve more.
On the other hand, when we have a fast pace of innovation, we need the flexibility to be able to form, restructure and disband teams quickly. This is not about change for change's sake, or about reshuffling teams for the fun of it, every couple of months or so. My experience from my earlier positions has taught me that a rotation level of at least twenty percent per year makes sense. What's more, rotations should extend in all directions, such as from development to operations, and from business to IT. Ideally, at some point, rotations are no longer anything special anymore - they are simply the norm.
How do you get employees believing that permanent change is the way to go? I recall one leadership training course I took part in in which we talked about two trust killers that are especially "toxic." One is self-orientation, meaning concentrating only on yourself and your own career, and the other is fear, especially the fear of change. I find these choices accurate. Would you agree?
I would add a third toxic element: cynicism, or hypocrisy. We need to be honest in our dealings with other people, and call a spade a spade. But back to your question: The topic of a 'culture of trust' is indeed right at the top of our agenda. And of course there are numerous different aspects to it, including leadership, feedback, etc. As a leadership team, we go to great lengths to ensure that what we say is reliable and believable, and that our communication is positive and full of respect. At the same time, I'm not trying to kid myself - I know it's going to take us 2-3 years to make lasting overall changes in this area. I want us to reach a level of honesty on which employees openly communicate what's on their mind. Including their fears and their concerns. That is the first important step toward a culture of trust. A person who is able to voice his or her opinion openly is a person with hope. People who no longer say anything have given up all hope. This is why we need to practice a 'culture of error'. Only by allowing errors, and learning from them, can people and organizations be truly innovative and successful.
Does an employee in such a learning organization still even need personal goals, in addition to the company goals he or she pursues?
We need to do away with all those burdensome quantitative goals. I do think that qualitative goals can be very helpful, however. As long as they are developed by the employees themselves, that is. The leadership of course has to define the overall direction for the organization's development. Surprisingly enough, the goals that employees and teams develop for themselves are often more ambitious that what management might try to prescribe. And the goals that employees and teams develop for themselves are backed by their own commitment.
In closing, I would like to put a classical HR-style question to you. How would you define the success that you would want to see in your organization five years from now? What would tell you that the transformation was successful?
I would want the IT department to have dramatically increased its contribution to Deutsche Telekom's success. And this is something we need to do, because in the future IT will no longer just have a support function; it will be part and parcel of the company's core business. We thus need to become more flexible, more agile and more innovative. And we have to develop into coaches and forward thinkers. We're definitely already on the right path, however.
Mr Leukert, thank you very much for this pleasant conversation and we wish you continued success on your' It in Motion' journey.
Peter Leukert has been CIO of Deutsche Telekom since January 2017 and CEO of Deutsche Telekom IT GmbH since April 2017. As CIO of Commerzbank he was elected "CIO of the year 2011.
This interview was conducted by Marc Wagner.
