Successful leadership aims to inspire people and take them on a journey

An apprentice at Swisscom approached me in August?2022 asking if he could do an interview with me for our intranet. He wanted to talk to me about my understanding of management and what is important to me personally as CEO. We had a very interesting conversation, and his questions continued to preoccupy me afterwards. What are the specific responsibilities of a manager? Which principles do I adhere to personally? And what does it mean to be a manager? I’m going to get to the bottom of that here soon.

Despite many years in management positions, 1?June?2022 was a whole new era for me as CEO of a company like Swisscom. At the same time, I was faced with the question of how I intend to develop Swisscom. Or rather: in which direction do WE want to develop Swisscom? After all, what do I have to do as CEO or manager, and when do I involve my team or the entire company?

In my view, a manager has three primary tasks that they need to do with all their energy:

• Defining a vision or goal: that’s where we want to go!
• Mobilising and inspiring employees
• Finding a way to reach the goal

All three tasks interact with each other and are mutually dependent. And none of them can or should be carried out by the manager alone.

Vision is the boss’s job

Every manager should have this aspiration: to know where they and their team or company want to go. No one is allowed to take this unique task away from you. After all, it is at the heart of successful business management. It’s a compass for me as CEO, so to speak. If I don’t know where north is, my team won’t know either. I need to have a clear picture of where things are going.

And yet, no one knows everything or always has the best ideas. For this reason, defining the specific goals and setting the ambitions remains a team task.

It is essential that the CEO sets the key pillars of a vision. On the other hand, fleshing out the vision requires a team.

Even before I stepped down as CTIO/CTO at Swisscom to become CEO, I set up a ‘transition team.’ This team includes more than just the Group Executive Board. I deliberately brought colleagues from a wide range of Swisscom divisions on board. In order to be able to integrate different points of view and opinions. Together with this team, I asked myself the question: what will it take to get Swisscom on track to achieve our ‘vision’? What can we build on and where do we need to readjust? And above all, what is the concrete path for the years? Because a vision without implementation remains a dream. I firmly believe that this requires a team to find the best possible solution. But it is the role of the CEO to define the key aspects, facilitate the process, set guard rails and ensuring that finally we have a clear vision that is exciting to all stakeholders.

Motivation as a core task

Four to five years ago, Swisscom did not have a clear vision that was supported by everyone in the Group. There were corporate targets; there were operational targets. Shortly before I joined Swisscom, the Group Executive Board started to refine the objectives both for the Group and for the individual divisions. Today, we know exactly how we want to develop the business customer segment by 2025. Which technologies and network topology we want to use. And the direction in which we are driving our B2C business. How did we do that?

We have come together as a Group Executive Board – as a team. And set goals for ourselves as a team. Goals that each and every one of us stands behind. In other words, we had a 100% buy-in from the management team. And that’s the first key to success.

For me, one thing is clear: if your team doesn’t stick to their goals and vision, every manager is lost.

The second key is to inspire and motivate all employees to embrace the vision. Most importantly, you need to ensure that everybody fully understands in which direction we are headed and understands the most important goals and milestones. I am convinced that a high alignment is necessary to enable decentral, autonomous, and agile strategy implementation. Otherwise, the friction losses are so high and in extreme cases actions are implemented that even run counter to the strategy. In order to communicate the vision and to inspire people for it, it takes an extreme amount of?communication. But be careful: traditional top-down communication via the line structure no longer works today. It’s like playing Telephone – too many translation errors and too many interpretations obscure the goal and the path to it. That’s why I see it as one of the most important responsibilities of managers – right down to the CEO – to speak to employees at all levels. And not just once. But again and again. According to a McKinsey study it takes 7-times (!) more communication than you think resp. planned initially.

A sentence like "I’ve already told you" doesn’t work, because learning works through repetition. As leaders, we need to be aware that we have an immense edge in knowledge. While we’ve been dealing with one topic for a long time, it’s completely new to most others. Patience and persistence are therefore required - over years! And plain language. A dog is a dog and a cat is still a cat. It is particularly important to call things by name. Because that’s the only way I can provide orientation. If something’s good, I’ll say it. And if something doesn’t go right, I’ll say that too.

Execution – the high art

Place your hand on your heart. Is everything going well in terms of implementing the agreed paths and objectives? In my experience, execution is often the many companies’ Achilles’ heel – including Swisscom’s. For example, Swisscom is fantastic when we go into task force mode. Then, we tackle big things very successfully in a very short time. That’s because:

• The task force has a clear objective
• High alignment on goals and strategy within the taskforce
• People are motivated and committed to what they want to achieve
• There is a tight management rhythm
• Objectives are measurable

But it’s not just Swisscom that is struggling with the consistent implementation of these ‘old leadership virtues’ in day-to-day work. I fundamentally believe that a manager should pay particular attention to good execution. Despite all the open communication and involvement of employees, this includes consciously demanding discipline and measurable goals. Once a decision has been made, it applies and it is implemented. Otherwise, we’ll paralyse ourselves. And our goals will remain a long way off.

In Swisscom, on 1?June?2022, I took over a well-run company with many highly motivated and outstanding employees. This allows me to concentrate entirely on my three core tasks: setting the vision, inspiring people and successful execution. And on one thing in particular: communication. As leaders, we need to be with people, talk to them, motivate them, persuade them and take them on an exciting journey.

Do you see any other points that we as managers should focus on? And how do we need to change as managers to be successful?

I look forward to exciting interactions and opinions. In my next articles, I’m going to explore my leadership principles in more detail and what constitutes a manager.

Kind regards, Christoph Aeschlimann

Christoph Aeschlimann, CEO Swisscom. My passions include the latest technologies such as 5G, cloud, AI and everything else related to software. After all, they have a huge impact on how our society develops and how we deal with the environment. I’m also fascinated by modern forms of collaboration and how they challenge us as managers.