Welcome everybody to the E X P series here at UN 10 10 dot com For all

new listeners in our E X P series we share leadership and career experiences from successful leaders around

the world So E X P stands for experience My name is Udon Newman I'm the

founder and chief experience officer at UN 10 10 dot com And in today's episode which has the title

a career from AC I N banking to a founder in Digital Health I welcome

a good friend of mine Alexandra Reiff Alexander was the cio and global head of technology for

years in different banks in the United Arab Emirates and is now the founder of Digital Health

So what makes Alex very unique is his energy and passion to transform business models and organizations He did that

in Europe in Asia and in the Middle East And I'm looking forward to hear from him

how he did that What are his challenges and what were opportunities around his career in these different kind

of regions of the world So welcome Alex and thank you for being my guest It's

great to have you on the E X P series and I'm sure our listeners will also get

a lot of positive feedback out of your experience Thank you And let's get in it

Hi Thanks for inviting me to be part of your podcast and happy to share

some insights experience knowledge uh from my past and from my presence and looking forward to a few

challenging questions from you Let's get into the question Alex Um Your career is a trip from

Stuttgart to Beijing to Abu Dhabi and to Dubai And these are only uh some some top names of

cities They were for sure more around that So a lot of people me included have international careers

But I must say yours is a special selection of countries and challenges And I remember some of

your career steps when we work closely together but please for our listeners share your bio and more important

where your decision points on your career are and what are the different challenging milestones on your career

path You mentioned a few of my stations as you said where I have been

and it's you've mainly focused out around the locations I'll try and extend that a

bit And before I go into my bio the locations were only one part usually

the other part was always the location the culture the business culture in that location And then the

company the company culture of the company that I was working for in these locations

And I think that's uh was very often for me decision points um where I where I took

the decision to move somewhere Now very often I got offered something uh sometimes I declined sometimes I accepted

But before going also into the bayou you said what are your drivers and decision points For me I think

the main thing that always drives me and that's probably not the same for everybody But for me

I put that even on my linkedin profile as a quote from Albert Einstein which says I'm neither very

clever nor especially gifted I'm only very very curious and a similar thing is for me right

I I was never good at school I was just average everywhere Um I'm not very gifted in anything

The only thing I have is a drive and a curiosity I always want to

know more things want to learn different things want to expand my knowledge my experience And then usually when

a decision point came or when something came um it was either an offer that came from somewhere

and then I had to decide you know in the current position or in the current assignment Am I still

progressing Am I still satisfying my curiosity or am I not Or do I agree

with the direction that was basically brought to me Uh Can I identify myself with that or not

And then usually you start to rethink and uh you you start to rethink whether you know

is it still the progress I want to make is it the direction I want to go to

And that's kind of always the decision points and the drivers and that has never changed over the last many

years going back into um bio or where does all of that come from or

how did I end up doing that I mean originally I studied electrical engineering in Germany Graduated as a master's

in what was at that time what do you call digital at that time which was

kind of the technical part of computer science And that went down to really you know switching switching flip

flops and um basically programming F GPA S and all that stuff really the the hardcore bit

of computer science and all of that was in the last millennium So at the very early

stages of this whole thing now after graduating and after basically being in the job um

being uh taken over by the company for whom I did my final thesis I realized that you know

developing hardware and writing low level software was interesting but was not going to cut

it for me for the whole life So I went back to university and did kind

of the German equivalent of an M B A which we call engineer I did half

of that in Germany And as I thought you know there must be something else I did half of

that in Singapore which was kind of my first real international stint And that was quite interesting to be exposed

to a different culture to be exposed to also a different educational environment which was

not what I had experienced so far studying all my time up to a first degree in Germany

So that kind of got me very interested to see Oops there's more out there and there's much more

to learn there's much more to experience and it's not only the content of your job your education

there's a lot around this which is cultural which is business practices which is different behaviors

And I sometimes as I say I somehow as I say I I think I leaked blood

at that point Then once that was finished I basically applied and I signed up

with uh at that point uh Shell trading and shipping or shell the oil company But in their trading

arm which was um and in their actually in their I T which was a good combination

of my electronics I T skills and uh the M B A slash business skills

I had acquired at least theoretically during my university time So I ended up in London at a

company called Shell Trading They were doing the crude and products trading and I was in the

I T there Very interesting for me Um first as an I T consultant Then when

this whole thing again remember we talk about the last millennium when this whole thing with

the web started I was very keen to get into that to understand that And we developed in-house

development In-house developed a few productivity applications stuff you you take for granted today stuff you

get off the shelf today with office 3 65 and others But that was quite

interesting So I did that for quite some time for them And then also did some

infrastructure work for them on the network level understanding how IP networks work and uh basically rolling

out messaging projects Um Again very interesting Lots of facets Uh The thing then was I

was in their trainee program But you know what um there was no real progress anymore and

there was no real projection for me anymore What comes next and where to go next So

something happened some old friend called me and said look there's this startup here in Germany they're

looking for somebody to basically help drive the development So I left a very safe job and I left a

prescribed career and I jumped into that start up and was doing e-commerce software again very interesting

set up there The whole thing the software the whole dream was already sold to a few customers but

nothing was really built or not a lot Let me say it this way and uh somebody

had to get the whole things together that was a very engaged team Um And um a very

also knowledgeable and very skilled team I just needed to be pulling together a bit of architecture which

I hadn't come across before that but a bit of systems architecture uh how to do these things

properly how to do them in a scalable way So we build software and that

was great So I was there for three years It was running quite well It was a startup I put

some money in Unfortunately you know there was this external event which they called the dot com bubble burst

which hit us unfortunately before the next f funding round And uh we were not yet

cash flow positive We had a good cash flow but we were not yet cash flow positive And that's when

you get in trouble with the startup Usually uh you're not yet cash flow positive there's not enough

money anymore and you need to then do something So we had to restructure the company

It was a very tough way We had to downsize things were not going necessarily the trajectory

I thought they should be going We built a great software We had quite a few customers We were running

the biggest e-commerce site in Europe on Microsoft basis But still at the end there came a decision

point when um I got an offer from a company called Daimler slash Mercedes from uh which

is when I met UDO basically And that sounded actually interesting And um you know so I had to

rethink do I want to keep spending my time in the startup environment Um or do I want

to move back into Big Cop and uh and operate there And at that point

I felt I can learn more by moving back into big corporation Um Plus in all fairness I

had two little kids Uh you know you need to bring the money home in

order to have the food on the table So I switched I switched to Daimler at

that point and was then under UDO responsible for the cluster Central Europe as a as a cluster C A

O uh with quite a few with quite a few group companies there running largely vehicle finance on the retail

side and also vehicle finance a bit on the corporate side for the deal of financing

And interesting enough many of them had all the same problems They were engaged in some transformation programs they

were engaged in some uh system migrations and they were largely how should I say tackled

only technically but not organizationally Uh They were very often you know conceptualized purely technically and neglected the

whole organizational piece and how to get how to get such a thing implemented or

changed Uh Because it's the technical part is just one part it's an important part and

it needs to be done well but it's not the only part So cut the long story short

I ended up going around the Europe uh trying to basically bring such projects back

on track or to run them completely and somehow in some cases I was successful in some

cases you couldn't fix them And um that was all very interesting And I kept learning I

kept learning system approaches I kept learning different organizations I kept learning different financial products which I had

not come across before And as it is my it as it is my kind of

personal endeavor I want to know not only how do things work technically but also how do they work

Uh conceptually So I wanted to learn how does a leasing work How does a loan work How

does that get calculated How does that get accounted for How does that get amortized How

and so on and how does that get serviced Uh how do you interact with the customer and within

this project you know I had lots of um lots of um opportunities to ask people who know

how this works So that went on for a while then uh somebody realized uh that you could send me

into some burning platforms And the next burning platform was Beijing at that point in

uh in China where Daimler Le Mercedes were just building a new financial services company at that point

which I think it's become a bank in the meantime and they needed somebody to basically make

sure this thing goes live properly and then uh it is operational and can be built out uh with

further products further systems and so on So we packed the container and went to Beijing with the whole family

That was interesting completely different culture completely new environment Sure it challenging Yes But you know

what I think it was it was great It was a great experience So that went on for about

two years Um I was just about to renew my contract for another year because there

was more things to come on that side that the company was growing like mad and um

additional systems for additional products needed to be implemented Uh I enjoyed that very much and then

I got another call saying look um you just have to go over the water into Japan Um

There's a few other there's a few issues with a few of the financial service

companies there because there is three and then there is the vehicles import side and the part logistics

side So quite a few things need to be done there Can you please go

So I looked at it like Japan it was never in Japan Don't know that culture really heard

lots of things But uh anyway so again packed the container moved the family to Japan was there for three

years Um doing replacement projects doing refurbishment projects and doing I think still the only demerger of my career uh

where uh Daimler and Chrysler or Mercedes and Chrysler basically dem Meg very interesting exercise Um If you ever

get to do one of those again for three years doing system replacements and and architecture overhauls landscape overhauls there

First time I did virtualization there Very interesting And with that one got exposed to let me call

it what we call cloud today at least on the technology side So that was quite interesting Uh Then I

got called back into Germany to basically take care of a few things One was the home build um

course system uh that they were running out of Milton Keynes Plus there was a project going on in

Detroit Plus moving the financial services headquarter from Berlin to Stuttgart and so on and so forth

And that was then for me a bit how should I say Awkward I didn't

know really you know where was this going And and um my boss had changed didn't like that guy

So you know then all of a sudden I had hunted ok And and said look

there is this uh actually it was two things happening at the same time I

had literally two job offers at the same time which is very rare One was uh to go to London

and the other one was to go to this weird place called Abu Dhabi uh where there was a

bank who needed somebody to you know do what I used to do Overhaul the whole thing

I then thought you know London I was already uh my son was born there So why

not try something new Let's go to Abu Dhabi So we went to Abu Dhabi That was for me

probably one of the bigger challenges because I was all of a sudden not only

responsible for um some part of the banking business but they literally they were a universal bank

and they literally had everything that you can think of in banking from retail conventional Islamic over sme to corporate

banking to um to brokerage to wealth management to private banking you name it they had it And um the

whole thing was pretty pretty pretty um underserved on the I T side I should say uh

I was really surprised what you can on which footprint you can run a bank So everything needed

to be done That was down from the data centers from the networks from the server

landscape up to the application landscape to the whole application architecture replacing core systems replacing payment systems building out

the channels which were not there before and then basically ramping them up and putting

them onto a footprint so you can run The whole thing was quite interesting And um that went

actually it took me about six years or so to refurbish that whole shop And just at the moment

when it would have become boring there was another challenge which was you know three banks merging So

I went into a three bank merger and uh got the task to kind of get that

done on the I T side which again was a very interesting one Never done the three

way never done such a merger But um then just right in the middle of that everything was designed set

up was running was running Well actually at that point there was a personal event in my

life which was my daughter had an offer to basically join the United World College And um

well that would have meant for her a change in the location for her last two years in

the diploma program and she was prepared to go to boarding But at the same time I had a

few health issues and I had done this for quite a while And so I thought maybe

time for a change maybe time to retire Now I I can probably while I

talk about this I can hear UDO laughing in the background Alex and retiring And that was really

my goal I had to fix a few health issues which I did And together with my daughter

my wife we then went to to Thailand and you know try to recover health wise Plus um

enable my daughter to do her to do her to finish her school there And um I

really wanted to opt out but then obviously as it was still within that merger um somebody needed to you

know finish that So my boss came to me and said you need to find me

a solution So basically for the best part of the year I was shuttling back and forth

between Thailand and Abu Dhabi in order to pull this merger over the line which we then successfully did we

merged the systems and everything worked all well And uh I left then uh like two days or

three days after the final merger and after the final go live of the systems

I boarded the plane flew back to Thailand I think I landed one day the

next day the airport was locked for over a year due to COVID So I was I

was stranded in Thailand which was actually quite nice you know I fixed my health issues

and then things started to happen I really wanted to retire but uh didn't pan out like this as it

was COVID and as everybody was kind of and now all of a sudden accepting remote

working um I got quite a few people who called me who were aware that this guy Alex has

nothing to do Um So I got lots of things Can you have a look at

this one Can you please check out that one Can you whatever you know lots of

and or I even went into some consulting engagements because nobody wanted you on site anyway at

that point in time So I did a lot of stuff remote and that's how all

of this started I got into some um some startups who were asking for advice So I

and some of them were so interesting that I decided I want to even put some money

into them So I started what you would call angel investment for angel investing for

no better word So I started to put money into it put my knowledge into it

try to coach a few of these founders And that became really interesting and um that went on until

kind of COVID was over until my daughter graduated And then we decided that probably Thailand is a bit

too calm So we came back to the UAE um still had an apartment in Dubai moved

into that one And then again things started to happen I was very busy with my

um startups on the fintech and red side and on the crypto asset side And all of

a sudden another bank here local bank came and said look we're looking for somebody

who can you know inflict the change of also to say fix up things Um So I started with

them and uh that was also very interesting Again another universal bank lots of projects

in trouble which needed to be on track Um a landscape which needs overhaul a lot of

work So that was going on while that happened I met um I met an old friend of mine actually

he was the first guy I had ever hired and we compared notes and he had some ideas and

uh how does that uh came a startup So we we we threw our ideas together we threw our concepts

together And at the end uh we started a startup we put quite a lot of money in

and uh now I'm running a startup I'm still in the bank as a consultant Uh basically

to help them finish off all the things that I tried to on track and that I started with them

that I needed to finalize But but couldn't because I can't I can't do two full

time jobs At least not in how I'm engaging usually So I'm still working with them as

a consultant And uh on the other side um I have a start up with a

bunch of uh friends where we're trying to do something completely different And again that's the story

for now let's see where we're going from here Alex Uh Very interesting uh listening to your story and yeah

let let's move into another topic Um Please share with us some career highlights There

are highlights in every career whether promotion or changes in a professional environment I know you stepped out

of your comfort zone several times and started in completing new environments where you need to learn not only

new business rule rules but also new cultures So please describe a moment or a decision

in your career that you consider a major success or highlight What was it And uh why did

you select that and share that with us Now what was the um the special

moment in that decision OK Before I come to moment of decision which was a major success or which I

would deem a major success I have to go back a bit to how you

framed the whole question When you said you know stepping out of your comfort zone and so

on and so forth Actually that concept doesn't exist for me Uh there is no comfort zone there's

a boring zone and there is an exciting zone The comfort zone or the boring zone is for me always

when things get repetitive and it's always the same when I'm doing things again and again that I've done

before there's no excitement in there because I'm not learning anything anymore I'm a change manager and

as a change manager you're always looking for change and not for continuing the same thing in

a slightly different fashion in order to achieve another 1% efficiency a change manager you know lives and

breathes um change like change Meaning you take something from a stable state via an unstable state

to the next stable state Now um That's why you know whenever something becomes you know repetitive for me

or comfortable it's time to find something new So it's exciting again And that goes together with what

I said earlier that I'm always trying to learn I'm always excited about new things

and I I always I'm always curious to find other things and coming back then to your question

like when is something successful or what is a major success for me I don't

want to go into individual ones but it was largely around um some turnarounds and

which was often around either um system implementation ations or about whole transformations You know when

they go live in a bank that's usually a pretty tricky piece because the bank never stops And

that means that whenever you're operating you know you can't take the things down you have to change

the engine while the race is running And that is usually pretty complex And usually you

know a few things could potentially go wrong because it's complex and not everybody will

know everything at any point in time that can happen So I think such migrations let me

call it this way largely of core banking systems of payment systems They are what I would consider major

successes or highlights because not only because of the technical life because things going also

because of all the excitement around it Because usually if the thing is set up properly and if you're running

it properly you have a very good team spirit You have a team which is basically doing the utmost

to get things done and to do them successfully and in quality and in time And that is definitely

one thing when you then go through that with the team and things go live successfully and they

they they they cut over successfully Um because that's a major achievement not only for one person but usually

for the team The other thing is that usually in such exercises or very often

you have to take very unconventional decisions because normally not everything goes to plan and when not everything goes to

plan usually you have to very quickly grapple Ok What's the situation Who can help me

in the concept And then you have to take the tough decisions usually very quickly

You don't have time to mull over it and and uh and do all your academical

research over it You have to go by experience by trust to people who know

some fields that you don't know yourself And then basically um take the decisions very

quickly Um And I think I I draw a lot of energy out of such events and that's why I

also consider them as as major successes when things are then going live Actually another one which

people would usually not associate with success is when uh when things have gone majorly wrong when disasters have

struck and you need to bring things back into into a proper run into a proper control Give an

example I had one event where there was a major actually power failure in a data center

which is not supposed to happen And literally the whole bank went down and we

had to bring the thing back up in Um Actually no time because customers were waiting

to get served on the channels And as you can assume this is not a very easy

exercise because you know when things are down some things are coming back up properly some things don't come back

up properly You have to take lots of decisions at all based on experience and based

on a few good people you have around you as as as coworkers and and advisor

in in such case and I draw a lot of energy out of such events even

though they are actually negative events But you know once you solve them once you get things

back up running um ideally in a very quick time this is for me also um

a major highlight um because it shows you that number one you have the ability to basically correlate task and

you have the team to basically help you um to get the right information at the right

time in the right depth in order to make the right decisions And again it's a mixture

of uh knowledge skills experience and people people people teams usually and team spirit um without

a team such things can never be pulled And uh again most of the most of such successes that

I would say are are successes I I I like and I would like to drill on is is

all such goal lives or such major fixes after a disaster struck somewhere I know it's

a bit unconventional I know this is not what everybody would think is an exciting moment But uh

for me that's what cuts it usually now uh I don't want to make it too easy

for my guests here Alex So here comes a tough question Which decision in your career was the toughest one

Why was it tough And for sure we want to know what was the outcome Well which decision

was the toughest one That's actually very easy to answer There's only one thing coming to mind and

that was the most difficult one and remains the most difficult one that I had to ever decide Um That

was actually during the times uh with our ecommerce startup we were actually doing great We were building software

It was going well We had uh customers we rolled out Uh we had an excellent team and we were

working our backsides off right So we're working with the team like day and night over the weekends

to pull things off to build things to get them live and so on So on

That was great Unfortunately there was this uh external event called the dot com Hubble Bust Um And all

of a sudden you know funding dried up we were not yet cash flow positive So the company

couldn't fund itself Um because again we still were burning money um rather than earning enough because we're still

in the build phase Um So it was actually all going to plan The thing that was unplanned

is that we would not be able to basically match the next funding round and get enough money in um

to basically fund us up to profit full profitability So what happens in such case there's two choices

right And by the way that's the easy part of the equation The choice is not to

let the company go bust And uh basically all the people lose their job and all the assets that

were building or everything that you have done so far was for a toss or do you reduce

your workforce in order to cut cost So the decision was again the easy part of the decision was does

the whole thing go bust or do we cut half of the workforce out That one

was simple right Because you know rather than letting 100% go you let 50% go the difficult part is whom

will you let go You know and you don't have to take decisions on a personal basis to say

like who can stay who can go whom do we actually need as a skeleton

group to continue the company and to continue the build Um who has families whose hardest hit by

this decision It's not like making one or two nonperformance redundant It's like you will have to

release a few people who have become close friends who have worked with you day and

night through who are part of the team So you rip the team apart Uh You rip the spirit apart

Um You release people who you don't want to release because they've done a fabulous job with you and they've

worked with you again day and night through to pull things off Um yeah that is probably the hardest

decision I had to take who are the ones who have to leave who are the ones who can

stay and and then basically communicating that to these people And again it's not just like a person a number

you know a a staff number or something like it it's much easier actually in a

big company when there's lots of severance packages and blah blah blah in a small

company in a startup that struggles for survival This is a very very very personal story and it's a very

sad personal story I hope for all the ones and maybe one of of these guys and

girls here's this Now I hope I've handled it Um ok for everybody even though it was a very

negative decision and it was a cut for quite a lot of people I still

hope that I handled it very humane and personal and explain to everybody as to why and as to

what and again what's the toughest decision Don't wanna go through it again if I can

avoid it as I'm helping or guiding uh questions here I would say did you

have a plan for your career Was it all by accident Uh Was it the

roles the chop itself or the challenges What motivated you for Always the next step How did

your family um support you in that Because without that it's not not possible And I know from

my own experience this is not always easy for for our wives and our kids moving around the world that

starts a new challenge and uh family follows So please feel free But uh in a short reflection um

try to bring some main decision and building blocks for our listeners so that they may be prepared when

they are in front of their decisions OK Um These are quite a few questions all

merged into one Um Now from the overarching topic like development and success and how that that will

happen in my case And what could I potentially recommend to somebody Um First I would try and dissect

the whole thing a bit into let me call it personal development and career development I think

you can have a great personal development without ever forwarding your career and vice versa You can

uh have an excellent career but not at all developed Personally I think the real story

is um if if you can combine the two um that is the best thing you can

do from my perspective Now on the personal development side I can only speak for myself and there's probably

different paths for me It was always that curiosity that um eagerness to learn find

new things go into a bit uncharted territory um that kept me going Um And again that's for me I'm

not sure if this is the same for everybody but it definitely helps if you're

very curious and it definitely helps if you uh if you can take the things

that you're curious about into your work life and into your um business career I'm always

saying also to my kids you don't have to be the fastest one You don't have to

be the best one You don't have to be the brightest one You just have

to be there when the others have given up and then pull the thing to the end now And that

has always worked for me by the way or you pick up things that others couldn't complete It's difficult

But if you're curious and if you try and understand why things fail if you understand why things how things

should be done properly If you plan them properly it will always work Uh don't fight losing battles though

right If you're in a losing battle better get out But if you see that there is

a path to success in that battle even though that battle is a hard one always go and fight

it till the end And usually if you're successful where others failed that gives you a much

better trajectory Also on your career side So that's more the personal side Uh On the career development side for

me was there a planned career path Yes and no on the one hand there was always a path forward

There was always some ideas what I wanted to do where I wanted to go Um So it's always

better to have a plan and then change it rather than to have no plan and and walk through your

career and through your life without a plan Um But um you know things do change circumstances change and when

they do change you need to act or react or decide not to react So

was it all by accident No probably also not again I think um well let me go back to

my first interview that I had for my interview that I had in the Assessment Center

for my first job at at Shell I was actually interviewed by the Shell C

A O in Germany And he asked me the usual question where do you want to be in 10

years And I thought I want to have your seat in 10 years Obviously I didn't tell him that

I was too shy at that point in time I was not bold enough Uh But I should

have actually I should have told him that but I felt this was not appropriate at the

time Was that the plan Uh Actually there was no clear plan how to get there There was no clear

plan how to get into a cio seat But you know there was this ambition and I would say the

most important thing more than having a plan is what is your ambition and which steps can you

take to get a bit closer towards your ambition So it's again it's not about having a laid

out career path for your life for your next 10 2030 years I think that's

not going to work today You know technologies things environments are changing too fast for you to have

a mapped out career for your next like two digit years uh timeline Again you should have

an ambition you should know where you want to go You should be open when

new things happen And even if you have a clear path for the next five or 10

years if new opportunities arise you should be prepared to rethink and at least reevaluate so

that it's it's basically coming back the the jobs that we learned back in university

at least for me or the job I'm doing today didn't exist in that form and shape as

I learned it in university Um And I think that applies to all of us especially today

things um develop faster than we think And um there are going to be jobs in five

or 10 years that nobody knows about today So you better prepared for that You better prepared to

keep learning on your personal development side Uh On your professional side you better evaluate when there

are opportunities coming in Now opportunities are coming in two flavors from my perspective One

is let me call it positive opportunities So somebody comes to you and says look

I have this job I have this thing you know would you be interested Never say no In

the first instance always look at it always talk to people and very important Actually I

learned that I'd be too late in my career because I thought I would stay in the big

companies where I was until you know either a very unexpected opportunity came or until things went sour

one way or another What I'm trying to say is never get stuck in your in your a prescribed

corporate career in the big Corp where you are always stay open and always network network network

network with people outside keep contact talk to people understand what they are up to It's very

important especially for people like me I'm an engineer by trade I would say originally I was probably an introvert

very difficult for me to go out just meet people and and talk about what are they doing business

wise How is this working learning from them and so on But I can only emphasize

it's important It's important It's important Network invest the time the more time you invest the

more interesting things will come to you over time again This is not something I met

I network with a guy or a person today And tomorrow he comes with a

job to me that's not going to happen But uh networking is a long term game and you have to

be in it for the long run you build networks you liaise with people you understand what they're doing

you try and read up on you know how is this working what they're doing You try and learn from

them As long as you're always keen in learning networking always works And you know the more

network you have the more opportunities will rise for you That's one So that's the positive opportunities And again

when an opportunity comes never say no in the first place always have a look at it Talk about

the details understand what this opportunity is about and then sit back and reflect and

say is that the right thing for me to do at this point in time then you

have negative opportunities You know your job runs sour for whatever reason your boss changes

Uh your company is an M and A exercise and lays off people Um things are happening you know and

nobody is safe from that Now if these things happen I think I can only give you one advice

If you get kicked in the ass take the impulse forward and run with it and

do something with it Don't get stuck right If these things happen again somebody kicks you in the backside use

the use the moves the movement forward and run with it right And and uh speed up get things done

find something new network even more Go into your contacts find out you know what can be done Where

are other opportunities Don't take the first best be very conscious but also negative changes in your

work environment can have very positive effects Sometimes you know we all get uh what we call the comfort zone

I would say the boring zone these things do happen And you know some of us get lifted out

of that comfort or boring zone by getting kicked and you don't want to be in that position But

when it happens you need to be prepared for it and you need to know

how to deal with it Don't stagnate Uh don't procrastinate always move I think that's what I would

have to say in the whole thing Um I can give you many examples but I think that would

probably get get us into too long a debate uh for this podcast Know you

mentioned one other thing which is uh family and moves international moves and all of

that actually a very very very important thing and there is no you know recipe one size fits all

I think the first thing I've seen people having international careers and having their families back in the

old place and then moving around a lot flying around a lot working remotely working in several places

kind of living on the plane very successfully and also with their families very successfully and

it has worked out for them I've seen more people who are basically uh where the

whole family always moved And I think in that respect what makes or breaks the one or

the other model is basically your partner If your partner is up for a move your partner is ready to

basically um you know change the environment take the challenge you know build the social

networks new in a new place in a different culture There's nothing better like it but it's

not for every relationship So relationships can break over that And you have to take a very conscious

decision when these things get offered You know are you and your and your partner

ready for that You think you can live through it or not if not and your

relationship um is precious don't do it if you think it can work out And again sometimes

you need to plunge in and take the challenge and see that it works out Um I

would say always do it You know you were talking about kids I mean you have kids yourself

I have kids I think you know we are very often not moving because of our kids I think

kids take a very positive thing out of moving getting into new environments seeing different things

having different experiences going into different schools Um You know being in different places in different cultures My claim

is kids will ultimately always benefit from it from it Kids will never never never not benefit from it

Um If you basically orchestrate the whole thing right That's why I would always say the

most important thing is is your family um stable is your spouse with you in the whole

thing And um I would say even moves can have and in most cases I have seen had very very

positive effects on families because the cohesion within the family gets much stronger At least in my

experience and many people whom I have seen I would even claim that people who have moved a lot

or who have lived their life on the move the divorce rate is probably much lower At least from my

observation I don't have a real stat for that So family for me is always

um a very important one and I think it's more positive for most families Again Always as long as

your partner is uh is interested and is ready to do it again Could I give any advice for your

career Probably not I could only give you the advice do what you love and

what you're interested in That's a very important one because without that you will never have a career

and um always be open for new things network keep your eyes open evaluate new things never say no

in the first place be very conscious And by the way there's no wrong decisions when

it comes to career moves As long as you take into account all the information that you can

get and that you have at the point when you make the decision and you make a rational decision

to move or not to move the decision is always right And in most cases I would say

in all cases I can't remember who coined that term It's a two way door right This is not If

you go forward you can't go back you can go forward you can go sidewards Sometimes you also can go

back and by the way sometimes it's even worth evaluating a proposal um that somebody

makes you for a new job And if you don't really want to move bring that proposal back to

your old employer what happens to many people from my perspective is that you know they get stuck in that

place because they're good at what they're doing Now obviously your boss in most cases doesn't want

you to move then because you know he has a very strong workhorse in his team

Why would he want that workhorse to leave and go elsewhere Um Not all bosses are

like this Um Many bosses are looking at the career development of their people but many

bosses are actually especially if they are not themselves strong in the topic they are managing they are looking to

keep the strong horses in their stable rather than letting them move and letting them and have their own career

So always keep that in mind and when you get a good offer and you want

to stay maybe bring the offer back to your employer and that this is what I have on the

table Can you do something for me in my current company Sometimes worth doing needs to be taken with a

pinch of salt It's not working in every company um depending on the company culture but I would claim 70%

It can give you a very positive move Um I think yeah that was a long talk for that

topic I I hope I could give some insights at least from my perspective And

again there's no right and no wrong This is my mantra My way how I've managed things You

may have a completely different way which may be even more successful than what I

have done Alex Uh A very important question is what is digital health We all know

what health means and how important it is But uh uh interesting to learn from

you what digital health means You told me you are working on an idea to transform the digital health business

and found a digital health So can you share your passion and what it's all about and

how this idea came to you Um Was it your network who helped in that

area or how did you start a new venture I know you cannot share everything at

the moment but would love to get a little bit more around digital health So before coming

to uh what is digital and health um you asked the question you know how did this come about Again

I have emphasized the importance of network So at some point I met a guy whom I had met I

don't know 25 years back 30 years back and whom I had worked with we had developed

into different directions We were both in I T at the time And I have

um I went deeper and deeper and deeper into the whole finance I T banking

I T topic and he ventured into the health I T topic So we met up we

discussed you know we compared notes and I always thought up to that point that uh

you know banks are very much behind in digital But if you compare banks being in

the stone age or sorry in the iron age or bronze age then you know hospitals

and the health system is probably in the stone age We still wrestling with the dinosaurs

from my perspective So many parallels on how to address things Uh many tools concepts

ideas developments that happened uh on the technical side but also on business development side

based on technical developments had somehow not made it into the health sector Uh They were just not adopted

or never never transformed So we are three founders again one is uh a um health I T

architect Let me call it this way Um I'm the old banking I T Finance I

T guy and we have one medical health professional who is a um a medical doctor and a

professor in his field and we thought we can probably do something So what are we doing

What we are building is we're calling this a vertical business ecosystem uh broad word

Um We think a lot of digital transformation needs to happen in the health sector And from experience

we had all seen in all our fields that when these digital transformations are happening what's usually happening

is that um people start that from the technical angle I implement a new system and it

will all be better And then you discover oops but with the new system comes new processes or different processes

And once you overhaul your processes you need to revisit you know what are my products and how

do I want to run my products in the future Plus you get new technical opportunities to do things

completely different So your products may be coming which were physical products before may now become service products or they

may even become completely virtual products like API based products And there is a whole transformation there And most

of what I've seen in my career was always coming from the technical angle from replacing

systemss And again in the recent let's say 1 1.5 decades the technology space has churned

out so many new concepts that you can't apply to business concepts to processes to products

But ultimately it's only successful people adopted So at the end it's about the people and

people meaning it's the professionals as well as your customers Now everybody talks customer journey

one way or another to be very fair Many things I have seen so far in

different industries are not customer journeys they are product journeys or product service journeys or product

on boarding or sales journeys um rarely real customer journeys Um And again same applies basically for the professionals working

in a field if especially if that field is highly knowledge skills and and work intensive and and and people

intensive So what we thought is that we need to address the transformation of the

whole health space from the people angle in the first instance from the professionals So we're building a platform basically

where um people can be trained can share knowledge can acquire knowledge can pursue career opportunities and we will

serve Corporates the Corporates where these people are working usually also help their in their staffing needs in their acquisition

of expertise in their general procurement and so on and so forth The field is very wide So far

we've built an M V P a minimal viable product and we now need to basically refund

the company to be ready for the launch and for the operations because that will cost us a bit

of money Uh So far we've invested all our own capital all our own work Now we need to basically

broaden that a bit And once we have um the investment in then we will

launch hopefully soon and that's what we're working towards And after that I can also disclose

a bit more how things are working Exactly and how we are doing So as I said the question I'm

asking myself is basically um you know what are the important topics on my bucket list Because my bucket

list keeps growing You know I never have enough time to do everything that I

would love to do and that I would like to do and that I think

needs to be done So you have to have a selection mechanism My selection mechanism is always like

which are the important topics There's always some urgent topics and very often they get imposed on

you by somebody else or something some outside um influence now Never let something urgent

Basically bog you down on something important because if something important becomes urgent you're in trouble So try and

get the important things done properly and early and try and get the urgent things either

than yourself or you outsource them or you buy a service to get them done or do them quickly as

as much as you can and never lose sight of the really important ones because these are the

ones that determine your career your future your personal life And I'm always asking myself

when I go through my bucket list do I have to do all of those And which

ones are the important Ones the important ones I think I must tackle and ideally

important tackle them before they become urgent but at least some wisdom I'm following So Alex here

comes now the question with a little bit uh a challenge around the timing You

have exactly 60 seconds to answer most of the things which come to your mind But at least five M

I CS so called five most important career advices So what are your five most

important career advices for all the listeners out there Get your mind ready and 54321 go Ok Number

one do what you're interested in and stay curious and learn There's nothing better than managing a field that

you understand to the largest extent Number two whatever you do do it properly to the best

of your knowledge to the best of your ability Number three network network network stay

in touch with people liaise with people understand what they're doing how they are ticking and

keep exchanging ideas for them Number four be open Look at opportunities if they present themselves don't say no immediately

even if you're comfortable in the job even if you like your job always evaluate what's being brought

to you and then take the decision Number five If you get kicked If you

get kicked out of a job if things don't go well take the forward impulse and move don't be

stagnant Number six you don't have to be the fastest The best the brightest you just have to

be there when the others have flunked out have failed or have given up and you can carry

it out to the end Um The last one number seven work in a team get

feedback solicit feedback honest feedback because the boss is not always right and there's always something to

be learned from feedback Alex Thank you so much for making the time for this

interview I really enjoyed it and learned a lot of new things Thank you Also for sharing your

experience openly with our listeners This is all about what the E X P series is

really a lot of valuable learning and you opened a big box with great personal career advice

Thank you for that I wish you all the best with digital health And let me know

if you need an advisor who helps and overcomes some challenges You have my contact details

No question about it Uh I see you either in Dubai or somewhere else in the world have

a great trip back home and uh see you soon Bye Thanks We will definitely stay

in touch about digital health and about other things that we're doing And um to everybody who has listened to

this podcast until this point One other word of advice from my side you know listen to as

many opinions as you can get listen to how people have mastered their careers their

trajectory their their personal development But at the end you know digest it digest it think

about it and then create your own way Usually no two ways are the same No two problems

are the same and no two solutions are the same So you have to learn digest

and then basically make your own solution out of it At least that would be my advice Thank

Welcome everybody to the E X P series here at UN 10 10 dot com For all

new listeners in our E X P series we share leadership and career experiences from successful leaders around

the world So E X P stands for experience My name is Udon Newman I'm the

founder and chief experience officer at UN 10 10 dot com And in today's episode which has the title

a career from AC I N banking to a founder in Digital Health I welcome

a good friend of mine Alexandra Reiff Alexander was the cio and global head of technology for

years in different banks in the United Arab Emirates and is now the founder of Digital Health

So what makes Alex very unique is his energy and passion to transform business models and organizations He did that

in Europe in Asia and in the Middle East And I'm looking forward to hear from him

how he did that What are his challenges and what were opportunities around his career in these different kind

of regions of the world So welcome Alex and thank you for being my guest It's

great to have you on the E X P series and I'm sure our listeners will also get

a lot of positive feedback out of your experience Thank you And let's get in it

Hi Thanks for inviting me to be part of your podcast and happy to share

some insights experience knowledge uh from my past and from my presence and looking forward to a few

challenging questions from you Let's get into the question Alex Um Your career is a trip from

Stuttgart to Beijing to Abu Dhabi and to Dubai And these are only uh some some top names of

cities They were for sure more around that So a lot of people me included have international careers

But I must say yours is a special selection of countries and challenges And I remember some of

your career steps when we work closely together but please for our listeners share your bio and more important

where your decision points on your career are and what are the different challenging milestones on your career

path You mentioned a few of my stations as you said where I have been

and it's you've mainly focused out around the locations I'll try and extend that a

bit And before I go into my bio the locations were only one part usually

the other part was always the location the culture the business culture in that location And then the

company the company culture of the company that I was working for in these locations

And I think that's uh was very often for me decision points um where I where I took

the decision to move somewhere Now very often I got offered something uh sometimes I declined sometimes I accepted

But before going also into the bayou you said what are your drivers and decision points For me I think

the main thing that always drives me and that's probably not the same for everybody But for me

I put that even on my linkedin profile as a quote from Albert Einstein which says I'm neither very

clever nor especially gifted I'm only very very curious and a similar thing is for me right

I I was never good at school I was just average everywhere Um I'm not very gifted in anything

The only thing I have is a drive and a curiosity I always want to

know more things want to learn different things want to expand my knowledge my experience And then usually when

a decision point came or when something came um it was either an offer that came from somewhere

and then I had to decide you know in the current position or in the current assignment Am I still

progressing Am I still satisfying my curiosity or am I not Or do I agree

with the direction that was basically brought to me Uh Can I identify myself with that or not

And then usually you start to rethink and uh you you start to rethink whether you know

is it still the progress I want to make is it the direction I want to go to

And that's kind of always the decision points and the drivers and that has never changed over the last many

years going back into um bio or where does all of that come from or

how did I end up doing that I mean originally I studied electrical engineering in Germany Graduated as a master's

in what was at that time what do you call digital at that time which was

kind of the technical part of computer science And that went down to really you know switching switching flip

flops and um basically programming F GPA S and all that stuff really the the hardcore bit

of computer science and all of that was in the last millennium So at the very early

stages of this whole thing now after graduating and after basically being in the job um

being uh taken over by the company for whom I did my final thesis I realized that you know

developing hardware and writing low level software was interesting but was not going to cut

it for me for the whole life So I went back to university and did kind

of the German equivalent of an M B A which we call engineer I did half

of that in Germany And as I thought you know there must be something else I did half of

that in Singapore which was kind of my first real international stint And that was quite interesting to be exposed

to a different culture to be exposed to also a different educational environment which was

not what I had experienced so far studying all my time up to a first degree in Germany

So that kind of got me very interested to see Oops there's more out there and there's much more

to learn there's much more to experience and it's not only the content of your job your education

there's a lot around this which is cultural which is business practices which is different behaviors

And I sometimes as I say I somehow as I say I I think I leaked blood

at that point Then once that was finished I basically applied and I signed up

with uh at that point uh Shell trading and shipping or shell the oil company But in their trading

arm which was um and in their actually in their I T which was a good combination

of my electronics I T skills and uh the M B A slash business skills

I had acquired at least theoretically during my university time So I ended up in London at a

company called Shell Trading They were doing the crude and products trading and I was in the

I T there Very interesting for me Um first as an I T consultant Then when

this whole thing again remember we talk about the last millennium when this whole thing with

the web started I was very keen to get into that to understand that And we developed in-house

development In-house developed a few productivity applications stuff you you take for granted today stuff you

get off the shelf today with office 3 65 and others But that was quite

interesting So I did that for quite some time for them And then also did some

infrastructure work for them on the network level understanding how IP networks work and uh basically rolling

out messaging projects Um Again very interesting Lots of facets Uh The thing then was I

was in their trainee program But you know what um there was no real progress anymore and

there was no real projection for me anymore What comes next and where to go next So

something happened some old friend called me and said look there's this startup here in Germany they're

looking for somebody to basically help drive the development So I left a very safe job and I left a

prescribed career and I jumped into that start up and was doing e-commerce software again very interesting

set up there The whole thing the software the whole dream was already sold to a few customers but

nothing was really built or not a lot Let me say it this way and uh somebody

had to get the whole things together that was a very engaged team Um And um a very

also knowledgeable and very skilled team I just needed to be pulling together a bit of architecture which

I hadn't come across before that but a bit of systems architecture uh how to do these things

properly how to do them in a scalable way So we build software and that

was great So I was there for three years It was running quite well It was a startup I put

some money in Unfortunately you know there was this external event which they called the dot com bubble burst

which hit us unfortunately before the next f funding round And uh we were not yet

cash flow positive We had a good cash flow but we were not yet cash flow positive And that's when

you get in trouble with the startup Usually uh you're not yet cash flow positive there's not enough

money anymore and you need to then do something So we had to restructure the company

It was a very tough way We had to downsize things were not going necessarily the trajectory

I thought they should be going We built a great software We had quite a few customers We were running

the biggest e-commerce site in Europe on Microsoft basis But still at the end there came a decision

point when um I got an offer from a company called Daimler slash Mercedes from uh which

is when I met UDO basically And that sounded actually interesting And um you know so I had to

rethink do I want to keep spending my time in the startup environment Um or do I want

to move back into Big Cop and uh and operate there And at that point

I felt I can learn more by moving back into big corporation Um Plus in all fairness I

had two little kids Uh you know you need to bring the money home in

order to have the food on the table So I switched I switched to Daimler at

that point and was then under UDO responsible for the cluster Central Europe as a as a cluster C A

O uh with quite a few with quite a few group companies there running largely vehicle finance on the retail

side and also vehicle finance a bit on the corporate side for the deal of financing

And interesting enough many of them had all the same problems They were engaged in some transformation programs they

were engaged in some uh system migrations and they were largely how should I say tackled

only technically but not organizationally Uh They were very often you know conceptualized purely technically and neglected the

whole organizational piece and how to get how to get such a thing implemented or

changed Uh Because it's the technical part is just one part it's an important part and

it needs to be done well but it's not the only part So cut the long story short

I ended up going around the Europe uh trying to basically bring such projects back

on track or to run them completely and somehow in some cases I was successful in some

cases you couldn't fix them And um that was all very interesting And I kept learning I

kept learning system approaches I kept learning different organizations I kept learning different financial products which I had

not come across before And as it is my it as it is my kind of

personal endeavor I want to know not only how do things work technically but also how do they work

Uh conceptually So I wanted to learn how does a leasing work How does a loan work How

does that get calculated How does that get accounted for How does that get amortized How

and so on and how does that get serviced Uh how do you interact with the customer and within

this project you know I had lots of um lots of um opportunities to ask people who know

how this works So that went on for a while then uh somebody realized uh that you could send me

into some burning platforms And the next burning platform was Beijing at that point in

uh in China where Daimler Le Mercedes were just building a new financial services company at that point

which I think it's become a bank in the meantime and they needed somebody to basically make

sure this thing goes live properly and then uh it is operational and can be built out uh with

further products further systems and so on So we packed the container and went to Beijing with the whole family

That was interesting completely different culture completely new environment Sure it challenging Yes But you know

what I think it was it was great It was a great experience So that went on for about

two years Um I was just about to renew my contract for another year because there

was more things to come on that side that the company was growing like mad and um

additional systems for additional products needed to be implemented Uh I enjoyed that very much and then

I got another call saying look um you just have to go over the water into Japan Um

There's a few other there's a few issues with a few of the financial service

companies there because there is three and then there is the vehicles import side and the part logistics

side So quite a few things need to be done there Can you please go

So I looked at it like Japan it was never in Japan Don't know that culture really heard

lots of things But uh anyway so again packed the container moved the family to Japan was there for three

years Um doing replacement projects doing refurbishment projects and doing I think still the only demerger of my career uh

where uh Daimler and Chrysler or Mercedes and Chrysler basically dem Meg very interesting exercise Um If you ever

get to do one of those again for three years doing system replacements and and architecture overhauls landscape overhauls there

First time I did virtualization there Very interesting And with that one got exposed to let me call

it what we call cloud today at least on the technology side So that was quite interesting Uh Then I

got called back into Germany to basically take care of a few things One was the home build um

course system uh that they were running out of Milton Keynes Plus there was a project going on in

Detroit Plus moving the financial services headquarter from Berlin to Stuttgart and so on and so forth

And that was then for me a bit how should I say Awkward I didn't

know really you know where was this going And and um my boss had changed didn't like that guy

So you know then all of a sudden I had hunted ok And and said look

there is this uh actually it was two things happening at the same time I

had literally two job offers at the same time which is very rare One was uh to go to London

and the other one was to go to this weird place called Abu Dhabi uh where there was a

bank who needed somebody to you know do what I used to do Overhaul the whole thing

I then thought you know London I was already uh my son was born there So why

not try something new Let's go to Abu Dhabi So we went to Abu Dhabi That was for me

probably one of the bigger challenges because I was all of a sudden not only

responsible for um some part of the banking business but they literally they were a universal bank

and they literally had everything that you can think of in banking from retail conventional Islamic over sme to corporate

banking to um to brokerage to wealth management to private banking you name it they had it And um the

whole thing was pretty pretty pretty um underserved on the I T side I should say uh

I was really surprised what you can on which footprint you can run a bank So everything needed

to be done That was down from the data centers from the networks from the server

landscape up to the application landscape to the whole application architecture replacing core systems replacing payment systems building out

the channels which were not there before and then basically ramping them up and putting

them onto a footprint so you can run The whole thing was quite interesting And um that went

actually it took me about six years or so to refurbish that whole shop And just at the moment

when it would have become boring there was another challenge which was you know three banks merging So

I went into a three bank merger and uh got the task to kind of get that

done on the I T side which again was a very interesting one Never done the three

way never done such a merger But um then just right in the middle of that everything was designed set

up was running was running Well actually at that point there was a personal event in my

life which was my daughter had an offer to basically join the United World College And um

well that would have meant for her a change in the location for her last two years in

the diploma program and she was prepared to go to boarding But at the same time I had a

few health issues and I had done this for quite a while And so I thought maybe

time for a change maybe time to retire Now I I can probably while I

talk about this I can hear UDO laughing in the background Alex and retiring And that was really

my goal I had to fix a few health issues which I did And together with my daughter

my wife we then went to to Thailand and you know try to recover health wise Plus um

enable my daughter to do her to do her to finish her school there And um I

really wanted to opt out but then obviously as it was still within that merger um somebody needed to you

know finish that So my boss came to me and said you need to find me

a solution So basically for the best part of the year I was shuttling back and forth

between Thailand and Abu Dhabi in order to pull this merger over the line which we then successfully did we

merged the systems and everything worked all well And uh I left then uh like two days or

three days after the final merger and after the final go live of the systems

I boarded the plane flew back to Thailand I think I landed one day the

next day the airport was locked for over a year due to COVID So I was I

was stranded in Thailand which was actually quite nice you know I fixed my health issues

and then things started to happen I really wanted to retire but uh didn't pan out like this as it

was COVID and as everybody was kind of and now all of a sudden accepting remote

working um I got quite a few people who called me who were aware that this guy Alex has

nothing to do Um So I got lots of things Can you have a look at

this one Can you please check out that one Can you whatever you know lots of

and or I even went into some consulting engagements because nobody wanted you on site anyway at

that point in time So I did a lot of stuff remote and that's how all

of this started I got into some um some startups who were asking for advice So I

and some of them were so interesting that I decided I want to even put some money

into them So I started what you would call angel investment for angel investing for

no better word So I started to put money into it put my knowledge into it

try to coach a few of these founders And that became really interesting and um that went on until

kind of COVID was over until my daughter graduated And then we decided that probably Thailand is a bit

too calm So we came back to the UAE um still had an apartment in Dubai moved

into that one And then again things started to happen I was very busy with my

um startups on the fintech and red side and on the crypto asset side And all of

a sudden another bank here local bank came and said look we're looking for somebody

who can you know inflict the change of also to say fix up things Um So I started with

them and uh that was also very interesting Again another universal bank lots of projects

in trouble which needed to be on track Um a landscape which needs overhaul a lot of

work So that was going on while that happened I met um I met an old friend of mine actually

he was the first guy I had ever hired and we compared notes and he had some ideas and

uh how does that uh came a startup So we we we threw our ideas together we threw our concepts

together And at the end uh we started a startup we put quite a lot of money in

and uh now I'm running a startup I'm still in the bank as a consultant Uh basically

to help them finish off all the things that I tried to on track and that I started with them

that I needed to finalize But but couldn't because I can't I can't do two full

time jobs At least not in how I'm engaging usually So I'm still working with them as

a consultant And uh on the other side um I have a start up with a

bunch of uh friends where we're trying to do something completely different And again that's the story

for now let's see where we're going from here Alex Uh Very interesting uh listening to your story and yeah

let let's move into another topic Um Please share with us some career highlights There

are highlights in every career whether promotion or changes in a professional environment I know you stepped out

of your comfort zone several times and started in completing new environments where you need to learn not only

new business rule rules but also new cultures So please describe a moment or a decision

in your career that you consider a major success or highlight What was it And uh why did

you select that and share that with us Now what was the um the special

moment in that decision OK Before I come to moment of decision which was a major success or which I

would deem a major success I have to go back a bit to how you

framed the whole question When you said you know stepping out of your comfort zone and so

on and so forth Actually that concept doesn't exist for me Uh there is no comfort zone there's

a boring zone and there is an exciting zone The comfort zone or the boring zone is for me always

when things get repetitive and it's always the same when I'm doing things again and again that I've done

before there's no excitement in there because I'm not learning anything anymore I'm a change manager and

as a change manager you're always looking for change and not for continuing the same thing in

a slightly different fashion in order to achieve another 1% efficiency a change manager you know lives and

breathes um change like change Meaning you take something from a stable state via an unstable state

to the next stable state Now um That's why you know whenever something becomes you know repetitive for me

or comfortable it's time to find something new So it's exciting again And that goes together with what

I said earlier that I'm always trying to learn I'm always excited about new things

and I I always I'm always curious to find other things and coming back then to your question

like when is something successful or what is a major success for me I don't

want to go into individual ones but it was largely around um some turnarounds and

which was often around either um system implementation ations or about whole transformations You know when

they go live in a bank that's usually a pretty tricky piece because the bank never stops And

that means that whenever you're operating you know you can't take the things down you have to change

the engine while the race is running And that is usually pretty complex And usually you

know a few things could potentially go wrong because it's complex and not everybody will

know everything at any point in time that can happen So I think such migrations let me

call it this way largely of core banking systems of payment systems They are what I would consider major

successes or highlights because not only because of the technical life because things going also

because of all the excitement around it Because usually if the thing is set up properly and if you're running

it properly you have a very good team spirit You have a team which is basically doing the utmost

to get things done and to do them successfully and in quality and in time And that is definitely

one thing when you then go through that with the team and things go live successfully and they

they they they cut over successfully Um because that's a major achievement not only for one person but usually

for the team The other thing is that usually in such exercises or very often

you have to take very unconventional decisions because normally not everything goes to plan and when not everything goes to

plan usually you have to very quickly grapple Ok What's the situation Who can help me

in the concept And then you have to take the tough decisions usually very quickly

You don't have time to mull over it and and uh and do all your academical

research over it You have to go by experience by trust to people who know

some fields that you don't know yourself And then basically um take the decisions very

quickly Um And I think I I draw a lot of energy out of such events and that's why I

also consider them as as major successes when things are then going live Actually another one which

people would usually not associate with success is when uh when things have gone majorly wrong when disasters have

struck and you need to bring things back into into a proper run into a proper control Give an

example I had one event where there was a major actually power failure in a data center

which is not supposed to happen And literally the whole bank went down and we

had to bring the thing back up in Um Actually no time because customers were waiting

to get served on the channels And as you can assume this is not a very easy

exercise because you know when things are down some things are coming back up properly some things don't come back

up properly You have to take lots of decisions at all based on experience and based

on a few good people you have around you as as as coworkers and and advisor

in in such case and I draw a lot of energy out of such events even

though they are actually negative events But you know once you solve them once you get things

back up running um ideally in a very quick time this is for me also um

a major highlight um because it shows you that number one you have the ability to basically correlate task and

you have the team to basically help you um to get the right information at the right

time in the right depth in order to make the right decisions And again it's a mixture

of uh knowledge skills experience and people people people teams usually and team spirit um without

a team such things can never be pulled And uh again most of the most of such successes that

I would say are are successes I I I like and I would like to drill on is is

all such goal lives or such major fixes after a disaster struck somewhere I know it's

a bit unconventional I know this is not what everybody would think is an exciting moment But uh

for me that's what cuts it usually now uh I don't want to make it too easy

for my guests here Alex So here comes a tough question Which decision in your career was the toughest one

Why was it tough And for sure we want to know what was the outcome Well which decision

was the toughest one That's actually very easy to answer There's only one thing coming to mind and

that was the most difficult one and remains the most difficult one that I had to ever decide Um That

was actually during the times uh with our ecommerce startup we were actually doing great We were building software

It was going well We had uh customers we rolled out Uh we had an excellent team and we were

working our backsides off right So we're working with the team like day and night over the weekends

to pull things off to build things to get them live and so on So on

That was great Unfortunately there was this uh external event called the dot com Hubble Bust Um And all

of a sudden you know funding dried up we were not yet cash flow positive So the company

couldn't fund itself Um because again we still were burning money um rather than earning enough because we're still

in the build phase Um So it was actually all going to plan The thing that was unplanned

is that we would not be able to basically match the next funding round and get enough money in um

to basically fund us up to profit full profitability So what happens in such case there's two choices

right And by the way that's the easy part of the equation The choice is not to

let the company go bust And uh basically all the people lose their job and all the assets that

were building or everything that you have done so far was for a toss or do you reduce

your workforce in order to cut cost So the decision was again the easy part of the decision was does

the whole thing go bust or do we cut half of the workforce out That one

was simple right Because you know rather than letting 100% go you let 50% go the difficult part is whom

will you let go You know and you don't have to take decisions on a personal basis to say

like who can stay who can go whom do we actually need as a skeleton

group to continue the company and to continue the build Um who has families whose hardest hit by

this decision It's not like making one or two nonperformance redundant It's like you will have to

release a few people who have become close friends who have worked with you day and

night through who are part of the team So you rip the team apart Uh You rip the spirit apart

Um You release people who you don't want to release because they've done a fabulous job with you and they've

worked with you again day and night through to pull things off Um yeah that is probably the hardest

decision I had to take who are the ones who have to leave who are the ones who can

stay and and then basically communicating that to these people And again it's not just like a person a number

you know a a staff number or something like it it's much easier actually in a

big company when there's lots of severance packages and blah blah blah in a small

company in a startup that struggles for survival This is a very very very personal story and it's a very

sad personal story I hope for all the ones and maybe one of of these guys and

girls here's this Now I hope I've handled it Um ok for everybody even though it was a very

negative decision and it was a cut for quite a lot of people I still

hope that I handled it very humane and personal and explain to everybody as to why and as to

what and again what's the toughest decision Don't wanna go through it again if I can

avoid it as I'm helping or guiding uh questions here I would say did you

have a plan for your career Was it all by accident Uh Was it the

roles the chop itself or the challenges What motivated you for Always the next step How did

your family um support you in that Because without that it's not not possible And I know from

my own experience this is not always easy for for our wives and our kids moving around the world that

starts a new challenge and uh family follows So please feel free But uh in a short reflection um

try to bring some main decision and building blocks for our listeners so that they may be prepared when

they are in front of their decisions OK Um These are quite a few questions all

merged into one Um Now from the overarching topic like development and success and how that that will

happen in my case And what could I potentially recommend to somebody Um First I would try and dissect

the whole thing a bit into let me call it personal development and career development I think

you can have a great personal development without ever forwarding your career and vice versa You can

uh have an excellent career but not at all developed Personally I think the real story

is um if if you can combine the two um that is the best thing you can

do from my perspective Now on the personal development side I can only speak for myself and there's probably

different paths for me It was always that curiosity that um eagerness to learn find

new things go into a bit uncharted territory um that kept me going Um And again that's for me I'm

not sure if this is the same for everybody but it definitely helps if you're

very curious and it definitely helps if you uh if you can take the things

that you're curious about into your work life and into your um business career I'm always

saying also to my kids you don't have to be the fastest one You don't have to

be the best one You don't have to be the brightest one You just have

to be there when the others have given up and then pull the thing to the end now And that

has always worked for me by the way or you pick up things that others couldn't complete It's difficult

But if you're curious and if you try and understand why things fail if you understand why things how things

should be done properly If you plan them properly it will always work Uh don't fight losing battles though

right If you're in a losing battle better get out But if you see that there is

a path to success in that battle even though that battle is a hard one always go and fight

it till the end And usually if you're successful where others failed that gives you a much

better trajectory Also on your career side So that's more the personal side Uh On the career development side for

me was there a planned career path Yes and no on the one hand there was always a path forward

There was always some ideas what I wanted to do where I wanted to go Um So it's always

better to have a plan and then change it rather than to have no plan and and walk through your

career and through your life without a plan Um But um you know things do change circumstances change and when

they do change you need to act or react or decide not to react So

was it all by accident No probably also not again I think um well let me go back to

my first interview that I had for my interview that I had in the Assessment Center

for my first job at at Shell I was actually interviewed by the Shell C

A O in Germany And he asked me the usual question where do you want to be in 10

years And I thought I want to have your seat in 10 years Obviously I didn't tell him that

I was too shy at that point in time I was not bold enough Uh But I should

have actually I should have told him that but I felt this was not appropriate at the

time Was that the plan Uh Actually there was no clear plan how to get there There was no clear

plan how to get into a cio seat But you know there was this ambition and I would say the

most important thing more than having a plan is what is your ambition and which steps can you

take to get a bit closer towards your ambition So it's again it's not about having a laid

out career path for your life for your next 10 2030 years I think that's

not going to work today You know technologies things environments are changing too fast for you to have

a mapped out career for your next like two digit years uh timeline Again you should have

an ambition you should know where you want to go You should be open when

new things happen And even if you have a clear path for the next five or 10

years if new opportunities arise you should be prepared to rethink and at least reevaluate so

that it's it's basically coming back the the jobs that we learned back in university

at least for me or the job I'm doing today didn't exist in that form and shape as

I learned it in university Um And I think that applies to all of us especially today

things um develop faster than we think And um there are going to be jobs in five

or 10 years that nobody knows about today So you better prepared for that You better prepared to

keep learning on your personal development side Uh On your professional side you better evaluate when there

are opportunities coming in Now opportunities are coming in two flavors from my perspective One

is let me call it positive opportunities So somebody comes to you and says look

I have this job I have this thing you know would you be interested Never say no In

the first instance always look at it always talk to people and very important Actually I

learned that I'd be too late in my career because I thought I would stay in the big

companies where I was until you know either a very unexpected opportunity came or until things went sour

one way or another What I'm trying to say is never get stuck in your in your a prescribed

corporate career in the big Corp where you are always stay open and always network network network

network with people outside keep contact talk to people understand what they are up to It's very

important especially for people like me I'm an engineer by trade I would say originally I was probably an introvert

very difficult for me to go out just meet people and and talk about what are they doing business

wise How is this working learning from them and so on But I can only emphasize

it's important It's important It's important Network invest the time the more time you invest the

more interesting things will come to you over time again This is not something I met

I network with a guy or a person today And tomorrow he comes with a

job to me that's not going to happen But uh networking is a long term game and you have to

be in it for the long run you build networks you liaise with people you understand what they're doing

you try and read up on you know how is this working what they're doing You try and learn from

them As long as you're always keen in learning networking always works And you know the more

network you have the more opportunities will rise for you That's one So that's the positive opportunities And again

when an opportunity comes never say no in the first place always have a look at it Talk about

the details understand what this opportunity is about and then sit back and reflect and

say is that the right thing for me to do at this point in time then you

have negative opportunities You know your job runs sour for whatever reason your boss changes

Uh your company is an M and A exercise and lays off people Um things are happening you know and

nobody is safe from that Now if these things happen I think I can only give you one advice

If you get kicked in the ass take the impulse forward and run with it and

do something with it Don't get stuck right If these things happen again somebody kicks you in the backside use

the use the moves the movement forward and run with it right And and uh speed up get things done

find something new network even more Go into your contacts find out you know what can be done Where

are other opportunities Don't take the first best be very conscious but also negative changes in your

work environment can have very positive effects Sometimes you know we all get uh what we call the comfort zone

I would say the boring zone these things do happen And you know some of us get lifted out

of that comfort or boring zone by getting kicked and you don't want to be in that position But

when it happens you need to be prepared for it and you need to know

how to deal with it Don't stagnate Uh don't procrastinate always move I think that's what I would

have to say in the whole thing Um I can give you many examples but I think that would

probably get get us into too long a debate uh for this podcast Know you

mentioned one other thing which is uh family and moves international moves and all of

that actually a very very very important thing and there is no you know recipe one size fits all

I think the first thing I've seen people having international careers and having their families back in the

old place and then moving around a lot flying around a lot working remotely working in several places

kind of living on the plane very successfully and also with their families very successfully and

it has worked out for them I've seen more people who are basically uh where the

whole family always moved And I think in that respect what makes or breaks the one or

the other model is basically your partner If your partner is up for a move your partner is ready to

basically um you know change the environment take the challenge you know build the social

networks new in a new place in a different culture There's nothing better like it but it's

not for every relationship So relationships can break over that And you have to take a very conscious

decision when these things get offered You know are you and your and your partner

ready for that You think you can live through it or not if not and your

relationship um is precious don't do it if you think it can work out And again sometimes

you need to plunge in and take the challenge and see that it works out Um I

would say always do it You know you were talking about kids I mean you have kids yourself

I have kids I think you know we are very often not moving because of our kids I think

kids take a very positive thing out of moving getting into new environments seeing different things

having different experiences going into different schools Um You know being in different places in different cultures My claim

is kids will ultimately always benefit from it from it Kids will never never never not benefit from it

Um If you basically orchestrate the whole thing right That's why I would always say the

most important thing is is your family um stable is your spouse with you in the whole

thing And um I would say even moves can have and in most cases I have seen had very very

positive effects on families because the cohesion within the family gets much stronger At least in my

experience and many people whom I have seen I would even claim that people who have moved a lot

or who have lived their life on the move the divorce rate is probably much lower At least from my

observation I don't have a real stat for that So family for me is always

um a very important one and I think it's more positive for most families Again Always as long as

your partner is uh is interested and is ready to do it again Could I give any advice for your

career Probably not I could only give you the advice do what you love and

what you're interested in That's a very important one because without that you will never have a career

and um always be open for new things network keep your eyes open evaluate new things never say no

in the first place be very conscious And by the way there's no wrong decisions when

it comes to career moves As long as you take into account all the information that you can

get and that you have at the point when you make the decision and you make a rational decision

to move or not to move the decision is always right And in most cases I would say

in all cases I can't remember who coined that term It's a two way door right This is not If

you go forward you can't go back you can go forward you can go sidewards Sometimes you also can go

back and by the way sometimes it's even worth evaluating a proposal um that somebody

makes you for a new job And if you don't really want to move bring that proposal back to

your old employer what happens to many people from my perspective is that you know they get stuck in that

place because they're good at what they're doing Now obviously your boss in most cases doesn't want

you to move then because you know he has a very strong workhorse in his team

Why would he want that workhorse to leave and go elsewhere Um Not all bosses are

like this Um Many bosses are looking at the career development of their people but many

bosses are actually especially if they are not themselves strong in the topic they are managing they are looking to

keep the strong horses in their stable rather than letting them move and letting them and have their own career

So always keep that in mind and when you get a good offer and you want

to stay maybe bring the offer back to your employer and that this is what I have on the

table Can you do something for me in my current company Sometimes worth doing needs to be taken with a

pinch of salt It's not working in every company um depending on the company culture but I would claim 70%

It can give you a very positive move Um I think yeah that was a long talk for that

topic I I hope I could give some insights at least from my perspective And

again there's no right and no wrong This is my mantra My way how I've managed things You

may have a completely different way which may be even more successful than what I

have done Alex Uh A very important question is what is digital health We all know

what health means and how important it is But uh uh interesting to learn from

you what digital health means You told me you are working on an idea to transform the digital health business

and found a digital health So can you share your passion and what it's all about and

how this idea came to you Um Was it your network who helped in that

area or how did you start a new venture I know you cannot share everything at

the moment but would love to get a little bit more around digital health So before coming

to uh what is digital and health um you asked the question you know how did this come about Again

I have emphasized the importance of network So at some point I met a guy whom I had met I

don't know 25 years back 30 years back and whom I had worked with we had developed

into different directions We were both in I T at the time And I have

um I went deeper and deeper and deeper into the whole finance I T banking

I T topic and he ventured into the health I T topic So we met up we

discussed you know we compared notes and I always thought up to that point that uh

you know banks are very much behind in digital But if you compare banks being in

the stone age or sorry in the iron age or bronze age then you know hospitals

and the health system is probably in the stone age We still wrestling with the dinosaurs

from my perspective So many parallels on how to address things Uh many tools concepts

ideas developments that happened uh on the technical side but also on business development side

based on technical developments had somehow not made it into the health sector Uh They were just not adopted

or never never transformed So we are three founders again one is uh a um health I T

architect Let me call it this way Um I'm the old banking I T Finance I

T guy and we have one medical health professional who is a um a medical doctor and a

professor in his field and we thought we can probably do something So what are we doing

What we are building is we're calling this a vertical business ecosystem uh broad word

Um We think a lot of digital transformation needs to happen in the health sector And from experience

we had all seen in all our fields that when these digital transformations are happening what's usually happening

is that um people start that from the technical angle I implement a new system and it

will all be better And then you discover oops but with the new system comes new processes or different processes

And once you overhaul your processes you need to revisit you know what are my products and how

do I want to run my products in the future Plus you get new technical opportunities to do things

completely different So your products may be coming which were physical products before may now become service products or they

may even become completely virtual products like API based products And there is a whole transformation there And most

of what I've seen in my career was always coming from the technical angle from replacing

systemss And again in the recent let's say 1 1.5 decades the technology space has churned

out so many new concepts that you can't apply to business concepts to processes to products

But ultimately it's only successful people adopted So at the end it's about the people and

people meaning it's the professionals as well as your customers Now everybody talks customer journey

one way or another to be very fair Many things I have seen so far in

different industries are not customer journeys they are product journeys or product service journeys or product

on boarding or sales journeys um rarely real customer journeys Um And again same applies basically for the professionals working

in a field if especially if that field is highly knowledge skills and and work intensive and and and people

intensive So what we thought is that we need to address the transformation of the

whole health space from the people angle in the first instance from the professionals So we're building a platform basically

where um people can be trained can share knowledge can acquire knowledge can pursue career opportunities and we will

serve Corporates the Corporates where these people are working usually also help their in their staffing needs in their acquisition

of expertise in their general procurement and so on and so forth The field is very wide So far

we've built an M V P a minimal viable product and we now need to basically refund

the company to be ready for the launch and for the operations because that will cost us a bit

of money Uh So far we've invested all our own capital all our own work Now we need to basically

broaden that a bit And once we have um the investment in then we will

launch hopefully soon and that's what we're working towards And after that I can also disclose

a bit more how things are working Exactly and how we are doing So as I said the question I'm

asking myself is basically um you know what are the important topics on my bucket list Because my bucket

list keeps growing You know I never have enough time to do everything that I

would love to do and that I would like to do and that I think

needs to be done So you have to have a selection mechanism My selection mechanism is always like

which are the important topics There's always some urgent topics and very often they get imposed on

you by somebody else or something some outside um influence now Never let something urgent

Basically bog you down on something important because if something important becomes urgent you're in trouble So try and

get the important things done properly and early and try and get the urgent things either

than yourself or you outsource them or you buy a service to get them done or do them quickly as

as much as you can and never lose sight of the really important ones because these are the

ones that determine your career your future your personal life And I'm always asking myself

when I go through my bucket list do I have to do all of those And which

ones are the important Ones the important ones I think I must tackle and ideally

important tackle them before they become urgent but at least some wisdom I'm following So Alex here

comes now the question with a little bit uh a challenge around the timing You

have exactly 60 seconds to answer most of the things which come to your mind But at least five M

I CS so called five most important career advices So what are your five most

important career advices for all the listeners out there Get your mind ready and 54321 go Ok Number

one do what you're interested in and stay curious and learn There's nothing better than managing a field that

you understand to the largest extent Number two whatever you do do it properly to the best

of your knowledge to the best of your ability Number three network network network stay

in touch with people liaise with people understand what they're doing how they are ticking and

keep exchanging ideas for them Number four be open Look at opportunities if they present themselves don't say no immediately

even if you're comfortable in the job even if you like your job always evaluate what's being brought

to you and then take the decision Number five If you get kicked If you

get kicked out of a job if things don't go well take the forward impulse and move don't be

stagnant Number six you don't have to be the fastest The best the brightest you just have to

be there when the others have flunked out have failed or have given up and you can carry

it out to the end Um The last one number seven work in a team get

feedback solicit feedback honest feedback because the boss is not always right and there's always something to

be learned from feedback Alex Thank you so much for making the time for this

interview I really enjoyed it and learned a lot of new things Thank you Also for sharing your

experience openly with our listeners This is all about what the E X P series is

really a lot of valuable learning and you opened a big box with great personal career advice

Thank you for that I wish you all the best with digital health And let me know

if you need an advisor who helps and overcomes some challenges You have my contact details

No question about it Uh I see you either in Dubai or somewhere else in the world have

a great trip back home and uh see you soon Bye Thanks We will definitely stay

in touch about digital health and about other things that we're doing And um to everybody who has listened to

this podcast until this point One other word of advice from my side you know listen to as

many opinions as you can get listen to how people have mastered their careers their

trajectory their their personal development But at the end you know digest it digest it think

about it and then create your own way Usually no two ways are the same No two problems

are the same and no two solutions are the same So you have to learn digest

and then basically make your own solution out of it At least that would be my advice Thank