by Sören Stamer March 17, 2007 at 07:44 PM

As an entrepreneur it is always a very inspiring opportunity to listen to Ben Verwaayen, the highly successful CEO of BT Group. Ben has managed the turn-around of BT Group and made it a bright star in its segment. Fortunately, he openly shares some of his insights with all of us.

Last Wednesday was such a day to remember - Ben Verwaayen gave the Keynote Speech at the International CeBIT Summit: “Embracing Change – The Untapped Potential of Technology”. Here are some of the insights that resonate most with me:

Choices in a globalized business environment
If you are an entrepreneur, the choice is yours about going global. You can be global at once if you want to, since it is easier than ever to work with people all over the globe, and start a global business. Through the Internet we have more and more options to employ workforces or to buy components anywhere in the world.

The next big thing: “Your time” vs. “our time”
Customers will be in the driver’s seat in the future. They will decide on the right time to access a service. It’s their choice, not ours anymore.

“Open” vs. “locked in”
Services have to be open to enable others to build on top of them and add value. If you try to lock users in you will fail sooner or later. (In a way, Apple looks like an exception to this rule. Well, I tend to believe that Apple knows very well, when and how to open up parts of their closed systems to strengthen their competitive position.)

Demand for “Integrity of an organization”
While we see more and more loosely coupled social groups on the Internet – e.g. Wikipedia with all of their contributors – enterprises have still a very distinct role: they are able to keep the privacy of sensitive information, and they are able to agree and deliver against service level agreements.

Leadership
Every CEO and CIO listening to his speech (or reading blogs) will take a lot of different aspects with him or her. Leadership means to choose. It is the ability to say “No”. Ben made perfectly clear what he meant with this: “Be authentic in your choices and have the guts to follow your instincts.”

Change Management
With regard to successful change management Ben pointed out three aspects: people, tone and risk taking. First, you need the right people at the right places. They have to have personality and meet highest ethical standards. Secondly, the tone of communication matters a lot. Does your style of communication appreciate other opinions, or not? Thirdly, are you and your team willing to take risks?

“Please the boss” vs. “please the customer”
Ben shared with us a great story about a weakness of BT Group as an organization. I guess this weakness is present in every other company as well. People want to please their bosses. Therefore, every idea and proposal is shaped in such a way, that the next level in the hierarchy should accept it. With every other level in the hierarchy things get worse. Therefore, a lot of innovative ideas will be crippled when they meet the eyes of the CEO.

Pleasing your CEO might sound like a good idea, but it’s not. If everyone wants to please the CEO the whole organization is just as smart as one person. “The limitation of your own brain limits the thinking of the whole organization.” You won’t get any unfiltered feedback.

As a leader you have to change this by encouraging people to think freely and have their own opinion. You have to be able to endorse things you do not understand. It is “the art of letting go”.

Harvesting the collective intelligence
BT Group has set up an internal video platform like “YouTube” where everyone can broadcast his/her ideas and get feedback from all over the world. Those ideas that resonate well with other have a good chance to be implemented regardless whether Ben might be a user.

The best input for CEOs
The best input you can get as a CEO is customer feedback. Customers that come to you when things go wrong will give you the deepest insights and an unfiltered view. Therefore, Ben has opened up his e-mail account to every one of BT’s customers.

Be unreasonable
As a CEO you have to stay totally unreasonable. It is a bad sign when you think everything is fine. You always need to have a bit of distance from your own company.

“Stars” vs. “movie directors”
Bosses should not be stars. They should be movie directors that help the stars to shine bright. The real stars are the people in front of the customer.

How to setup a global enterprise?
Distributed intelligence will outperform the client-server approach by far.

Dear Ben,
It has been a great pleasure to listen to your talk. Thank you very much for sharing your insights so openly with us. I am deeply impressed by your leadership and the corporate culture at BT Group. Therefore, I made a choice right after your speech: I want to win you and the BT Group as a customer and partner for CoreMedia. I share your vision and I am absolutely sure that BT’s and CoreMedia’s corporate culture will be a perfect fit.

Best regards,

Sören