Kaisu Christies is EIB's new Group Chief Digital Officer. She has over 20 years of experience in a variety of industries from start-ups to multinational organizations where she has lead and delivered multiple business, digital, and tech transformations. She brought back a few takeaways from this year's edition of Gartner's Symposium held in Barcelona from November 7 to 10.

"In a midst of hundreds of small ideas, a couple of things that were said during this Symposium really resonated with me."

"Firstly, I got confirmation of what I already sensed. In a world of constant change, organizational agility, dialogue and collaboration within the enterprise, while continuing to leverage technology, are key. In this manner, organizational fabric can be our key strategic asset and 'superpower', not necessarily the service we provide."

"I also noted that organizations whose portfolio of change initiatives is managed flexibly and focusing on client value - in the broad sense of the word client -  are twice more likely to succeed in executing their strategy and get tangible results. How to move in this direction is a significant challenge, I must admit." 

"Then, being part of a community is extremely valuable. By exchanging ideas, learning from others’ wins and warts, connecting on human level, ideas collide and grow. This all helps to reflect and look from different viewpoints into our own organization and it’s challenges, and question our own thinking and self. All this applies to large gathering of IT professionals like Gartner's Symposium. But being new in this country, I also discovered during this trip that the Luxembourg tech community is a wonderful place for exchanging ideas, experience, and best practices, made up of open-minded, warm-hearted, and willing to share people."

"And last but not least, whatever change you undertake, remember to be patient as in order for transformational change to succeed, the whole organization is required to be onboard and part of it"

Interview by Michaël Renotte