The world around us is in transformation. Global challenges force us to make big changes. Digital technologies are permeating our lives much more and are helping us to solve issues in new ways. Transformation affects us all. In this blog, we give the floor to SWITCH employees at all levels. They share how the transformation affects them and what their contributions look like. This platform will allow them to share their views.
SWITCH is in a unique position due to its decades of experience with internet technologies, its national and international network, and the fact that it was established as a foundation. With this in mind, we are a trusted partner to universities, companies and politics. We want to make a significant contribution to help shape the digital world.
Transforming leadership, collaboration and organisation
Many previously proven concepts and structures no longer serve today's world – today, more flexibility and agility are required. Consistently, in small steps, we are transforming ourselves in the areas of leadership, collaboration and organisation.
Our environment has become more dynamic, complex and volatile, and many things turn out differently than we would like. We see people not only as professionals, but also as personalities. Leading means creating an environment in which people feel psychologically safe, can motivate themselves and can develop in their entirety.
Our cooperation is built on a strong foundation of trust, appreciation and helpfulness. We leverage the strengths, skills and experience of our colleagues, as well as our customers and partners. We like to work in an interdisciplinary way, because we know that other perspectives and complementary knowledge enrich and develop us further. Through our collective knowledge, we are able to adapt to new demands and unforeseen events and learn and act quickly. By engaging in dialogue with our communities, we see things from their perspective. This helps us to better understand their needs and forms our basis for creating mutual value and meaning.
Our organisation supports us in aligning our actions with the needs of our clients. It allows us to learn from our environment together and to constantly evolve. We are structured in such a way that the services of our different teams complement each other to form a coherent overall portfolio.
Supporting communities and societies
In a dynamic, complex and volatile world that’s becoming ever more digitalised, our community expects more than just stability and security; it’s also looking for innovation, flexibility and speed. We want to not only offer stable and secure services, but also create spaces for experimentation in which we implement, test and algorithmically develop innovation quickly and pragmatically. That certainly sounds like a challenging balancing act, and a lot of flexibility is required to pull off such a feat. This flexibility requires many small concrete steps, as well as practice and patience. But it also takes courage, openness and foresight.
Harnessing collective intelligence
The whole world is undergoing a transformation, the development of which cannot be predicted. We don't know today what will come our way tomorrow. We don't know how the world around us will change. We don't know what new opportunities and ideas we will come across. Collective intelligence opens up a broader view of the complexity of development and unlocks new, unconventional options for solving problems.
Learning from each other and sharing this newly acquired knowledge is central for us. That's why we've decided to regularly report our experiences. We look forward to hearing what you think.
