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Hotline to ambidexterity The world is changing. Deutsche Telekom got ahead of the curve, write Liz Mellon and Marieluise Maiwald
Do you recall the YouTube video – a company advertisement – launched nine years ago, of a plane being built in the air, while in flight and full of passengers? It’s still out there if you look for it (‘airplane’). If anything, change has only accelerated since then, leaving us with the breathless feeling that we are simultaneously building and changing business, two opposing ideas that are hard to reconcile. This challenge was keenly felt by Deutsche Telekom AG (DT), which is facing severe challenges from digital disruption in the market. The company offers telecommunications services; a full range of fixed-line telephone services, mobile communications services, internet access, and combined information technology and telecommunications services for businesses. It needs to adapt quickly to new technology or risk becoming obsolete. For DT, the answer lies in ambidexterity; the capability to balance exploiting current business (blue) with exploring new opportunities and business models (green). The success of blue business models is measured through indicators, such as efficiency and provides money for investment in new green business areas. Green opportunities are run with different performance indicators, such as the number of ideas generated.
Be the change you wish to see in the world
Actually, Gandhi said something more akin to, if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change, but the sentiment is clear. The HR function in DT decided that it needed to establish more effective ways of dealing with complexity and ambiguity. As Christina Schulte-Kutsch, VP leadership
development and culture at DT, says: “Current business models change dramatically. We at DT want to shape digitization and the business world of the future. Our leaders are in the driving seat of shaping our digital future and we want to support them in building the leadership capabilities needed.” Hence, LevelUP! was born. The LevelUP! programme has three streams delivered over ten months. The first stream is Educate, the mandatory component. Delivered virtually, it takes one day per term (four days total) to complete and is the programme foundation. It is primarily designed to inform participants about ambidexterity and to make the concept come alive through current and ongoing industry case studies or future scenarios. The second stream is Inspire, intended to foster innovative thinking and can be delivered virtually or faceto-face, using mechanisms such as ‘Leaders in Cars’, interviews with DT leaders while on the move (based on the ‘Carpool Karaoke’ YouTube videos). The third stream is Transfer, again with a variety of different delivery mechanisms and intended to enable the learning to transfer to daily practice at work. As we all know, this is the critical and most challenging phase in the learning cycle – importing new ideas and practices into the workplace. The transfer stage deploys a variety of methods, including reverse mentoring, design-thinking workshops and team consulting on ambidexterity.
How is LevelUP! different?
The first difference is that no-one was nominated to, or sent on, the programme – it was advertised internally to the top 2,500 executives in the
Dialogue Q1 2018
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