My journey and insights during my three years as CTIO of Swisscom

When I boarded the train from Geneva to Bern on my first day working at Swisscom in the early morning of 1 February 2019, I had overwhelming feeling – a mixture of drive, curiosity and a sense of responsibility. It wasn't just a commute to work; it was the start of a mission. I had chosen Swisscom because it stood out in terms of its relevance to the digitisation of Switzerland. Swisscom's telecommunications networks and systems can rightly be described as Switzerland's digital lifeline, shaping the country's future. I wanted to make my contribution to writing this history. 

Of course, my Swisscom journey had started a few weeks before that February morning. Stacked up at home were documents relating to all the Swisscom technology domains. Reading them to prepare for my new challenge had broadened my horizons further and inspired me with new ideas. 

I had chosen Swisscom because it stood out in terms of its relevance to the digitisation of Switzerland. 

Three years on, I can look back and appreciate the valuable experience I have gained. I am convinced that I joined Swisscom at the most exciting time: a moment when the company was consolidating the experience from its cautious digitisation steps and laying the foundations for a future-oriented, state-of-the-art technology company – both at home in Switzerland and at new development sites in Europe. It is a good time to share and discuss some of the lessons learned from this turning point with you as a community. 

The courage to rethink the tried and tested 

We are in the midst of major upheavals that are affecting almost every area of our society and economy. Digitisation has long since established itself in our everyday interactions between people, companies and organisations. This truth was brought home to us forcefully by the COVID-19 pandemic that is still raging worldwide. As a company, Swisscom suddenly found itself at the centre of events in March 2020. Its telecommunications networks and systems provided an almost unquantifiable benefit for the country – for months they provided a basic digital service that ensured the economy and civil society could function.

Although numerous companies and industries quickly learned new skills during this time or identified where transformation was still needed, I have encountered many examples in recent months and years where I believe they lack cohesion in the final analysis. 

Digitisation has long since established itself in our everyday interactions between people, companies and organisations.  

It needs radically new skills and concepts to keep pace. If you want to remain successful in the market and realise the efficiency gains of digitisation, you have to drive the transformation of employees, the organisation and the IT infrastructure consistently, based on a resilient strategy. 

I am convinced of one thing: complete renovation is always better than a simple paint job. My experience has taught me that unless the foundation is rebuilt from scratch, we achieve the exact opposite of the goals we set. Complexity tends to increase to the same degree that efficiency decreases. Likewise, investments turn out to be “sunk costs”. A holistic approach right from the start requires a higher initial investment, but it pays off over time. 

From transformation to initial success 

I don't think Swisscom's technology division was transformed consistently enough in the past – we lacked a vision of the future to guide us. We integrated numerous new systems or platforms without getting rid of legacy systems at the same time, for example. Or we added new ways of working to an old and hierarchical organisational structure, which led to conflicts and a corresponding breaking effect. When I started in my role, I was motivated to tackle this and fully exploit the scope this gave for change. I am convinced that outlining a vision for the future and taking employees along with you on the journey is one of the most important tasks of leadership. 

We started the turnaround in 2019 – a shift that would increase our output, improve cost efficiency and ensure service quality. Working with my management team, we drew on people from a wide variety of backgrounds to define a clear vision and strategy for our organisational and technical transformation over the coming years. It is based on three fundamental pillars:

• People & Culture: Continuous training on new forms of collaboration such as agility, DevOps and new skills, increasing diversity, consistent feedback and learning culture, scrupulous customer orientation and positioning change and transformation as an ongoing process. 
• Organisation: Flat hierarchies, transversal collaboration, establishing end-to-end topic handlers and reducing suppliers and partners. 
• Technology: Consistent decoupling, simplifying as well as updating applications, IT infrastructures, networks and telecommunication platforms. 

It goes without saying that these thematic clusters and measures are highly interdependent. Agile forms of collaboration and end-to-end responsibility mean that when we introduce a new system, we always develop a plan to decommission the old one, for example. 

I am convinced that outlining a vision for the future and taking employees along with you on the journey is one of the most important tasks of leadership. 

A look at some of the figures proves our approach to be right. Since 2020, we have been able to reduce the number of network platforms by 14%, the number of applications by 10% and the number of suppliers by 69%. These results are obvious in terms of labour and cost efficiency.  

But that's not all. Personally, I am particularly excited about the huge reduction in development time for new products that we have achieved. In many cases, we now develop new products in about a third of the time we would have needed before. Considering the rapid changes in technology and markets today, this is a key success factor. 

Against the backdrop of the shortage of skilled workers, another important step is our stronger international orientation. In 2019, we established our first two DevOps development centres outside Switzerland in Rotterdam, Holland and in 2021 in Riga, Latvia. These centres support us to recruit the best specialists worldwide, providing the developer resources we need for our projects. The most important resource in our business is and will remain our creative and highly trained employees. 

Swisscom’s DevOps Center in Rotterdam is located in one of the most vibrant cities in Europe, famous for its diversity and unique architecture. Our international team comprises more than 230 employees and 41 different nationalities, including software engineers, full stack developers, junior java developers, and many other IT talents. 

I’m motivated by my ambition for Swisscom to become the #1 DevOps team in Europe by the end of 2025! We work on innovative and challenging projects that use state-of-the-art-tech in an Agile environment. As DevOps engineers, we understand that relationships, culture, soft skills, and collaborative working are equally important in a tech-friendly environment. We are looking for talent who want to join and shape the DevOps world! 

We work on innovative and challenging projects that use state-of-the-art-tech in an Agile environment 

Transformation requires leadership that impacts everyone 

What has influenced me most in my three years at Swisscom is the diversity of the people. From day one, I have felt an extraordinary degree of identification with the company – a will to achieve great things. Ready to open up the digital opportunities of tomorrow for Switzerland. A foundation that made it easy to outline a vision of the future together – and believe in it. And yet nothing transforms or moves by itself. An alignment across all teams is essential and that requires high management visibility. With around 3,600 employees, that is a task that takes a lot of time and energy.  

It is all about involving employees, instead of presenting them with a fait accompli. 

Rather than a traditional top-down approach, this is much more about the need for trust and empathy. Communication is the key to transformation. It is all about involving employees, instead of presenting them with a fait accompli. It was important to me not to define our vision and strategy behind closed doors, stuck in our own offices with our managers and strategists; instead, we engage in broad dialogue, continuously gathering feedback and learning from each other. 

In my career, I have always pursued the goal of being accessible to people – there is no space for hierarchy here. If you are serious about a culture of feedback and learning, you first need to put it into practice for yourself. It doesn't matter if you are a CEO, a CTIO or a team member. I take it upon myself to personally reply to every employee message and answer every employee question at our Q&A sessions every quarter, without exception. This proximity helps to ensure the alignment I mentioned and reduces fear at the same time. This is how we achieve what I have identified as the most important factor in my professional career: when people have security and direction, their power really emerges and then nothing stands in the way of successfully stepping into the future. 

Future CEO of Swisscom

I am very much looking forward to leading this fantastic company as its new CEO from June 1, 2022. I would like to thank all of our highly talented and motivated Swisscom employees in Switzerland, Rotterdam and Riga for their willingness and passion to turn a shared vision into reality. Enabling the digital future of Switzerland. 

Digital greetings, Christoph Aeschlimann 

Christoph Aeschlimann, CTO and CIO Swisscom. My passions include the latest technologies such as 5G, Cloud, AI and everything to do with software – modern forms of collaboration such as agility and DevOps also fascinate me. These allow employees to become more involved and autonomous when working towards achieving a common goal.