In the build up to the Study of Enterprise Agility Conference (SEACON) in November, I caught up with Christian Metzner, CIO of Volkswagen Financial Services UK, and asked him a few questions.
At SEACON, Christian will be delivering an outcome focussed case study on the main stage
Here's what he had to say...
Tell me a little bit about yourself and what your role involves?
My name is Christian, I’m 39 years old and I've worked since 2005 in various roles and countries for Volkswagen Financial Services, my greatest highlight so far was the 3 years work as Head of IT in China, since September 2018 I’m the CIO of VW FS UK and I really enjoy being here in the UK. I like the culture, the people and our current challenges.
What will you be talking about at SEACON?
I will talk about how we as a foreign subsidiary within a global company have adopted agile, it's fair to say we're in an early stage, but I’d like share my view on leadership, culture and how to make the breakthrough including our biggest failures and learnings.
Volkswagen Financial Services are embracing many new ways of working. What has inspired you to do that?
There two sides of the coin, on the one hand I see IT is more important than ever before for a Financial Services company, I want to overcome the stereotype that IT is slow and expensive. On the other side I’m fascinated too by the drive and the positive atmosphere you can built with true agility.
When I came to Milton Keynes recently to observe your quarterly planning, I was really impressed to see how motivated everyone was. What Harry Potter style spell did you cast to achieve this?
Good shout but I prefer to be me, I have to admit I have never seen Harry Potter! I’m trying to have a servant leadership style and I like using quotes from Barry O’Reilly like “choose curiosity over uncertainty” and explain the why.
Finally, who are you most looking forward to seeing talk at SEACON this year?
I’m very much interested in expanding my network and learning from others, especially from other industries. I would say we learned most from other companies, for example Rob Negus from ARM. I hope we see more of such stories and we also can contribute back to the community and share some cool things we did when it comes to culture.
Find out more about SEACON by visiting www.seaconuk.com
Buy tickets from Eventbrite with Christian's £50 discount code by clicking on this link.
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