Three Strategies to Develop Leaders

Daniela Proust from Siemens joins us to share how she created a program to develop leaders. Her plan is simple. She started with a blank slate and came up with three strategies that would be implemented over the next few years to create something new.

Daniela started with a platform-based learning ecosystem. Then add “My Growth Strategy” and finally reimagined the performance management side and created a playbook for employees around the world.

Join Tom and Daniela as they discuss why this program is so successful.

Talking Points:

{01:15} Introduction to Daniela

{02:25} How do you create change in a very large complex?

{11:25} How do you match an employee with the right path for their career

{17:12} How to build the business case internally to say you need an investment from the business.

{22:06} How your relationships with other executives and the way that they trust you contributed to the success of the business.

{32:44} A successful Evaluation process.

{40:00} What does sustainability look like

Resources/Links: ‍

Connect with Daniela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-proust/

Visit the podcast’s website: https://www.talentempowerment.com/

Follow Talent Empowerment on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talent-empowerment-media

Connect with Tom Finn @therealtomfinn

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/therealtomfinn/

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@therealtomfinn

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Welcome to the Talent Empowerment Podcast, where we share the stories of great humans so you can lift your organizations, your teams, and your community. I am your host, Tom Finn, and on the show today we have a highly experienced global strategy and learning development leader. Her name is Daniela Proust. Daniela, welcome to the show.

Hi Tom, it’s great to be with you today.

Oh, we are so thankful to have you on the show, and for those of you that have not had a chance to get introduced to Daniela just yet, let me introduce you to her.

Danielle is the SVP of Global Learning and Growth at Siemens. Now she's been with the company for 14 years. She has a demonstrated record of designing and implementing successful transformations and organizational development strategies. She has a natural ability to be customer-focused. She is capable of systems thinking, can solve complex problems, and is always looking for new ways to improve.

Now she's passionate about innovation and technologies that contribute to the sustainable development of society, which is exactly why we have her on the show, and we will get right into the great work that she's leading at Siemens.

But before we do that, let's get to it. Daniela is a new acquaintance. How did you come to be the SVP of global learning and growth at Siemens?

Well, that is not an easy question. I like to think of careers as auction rooms, and that's exactly how my own life and career have been. So, it's not at all linear. It has not been an arduous ladder to climb. If you don't mind, I have done many things in my career and my life.

I've run restaurants. I have been in consulting. I've been in key account management in sales. And at some point, as you mentioned, I also joined Siemens. I have had the opportunity to work in many different areas, from corporate strategy to sustainability.

And now I'm in the people space, leading the topic of learning and growth. So, it's quite exciting. Each topic along the way

And you have spent those 14 years sort of working your way throughout the organization, and now you're in this elevated, global role. You're looking at people and culture. And what exactly is the modern workplace? How do you do that? How do you create change in a very large complex?

That appears to be a simple question. It's a difficult answer, and probably there is not a single answer to it.

But let me take you a bit through the journey that I have been on. I was tasked with reimagining learning for Siemens over the last four years. That was indeed the task that I was given. So how do you start when you get a task like that that you are not an expert in the field?

At times, that even helps because you know you have no bias. You don't have any history. Is there anything in your backpack that is already framed in your mind? So, I looked at trends. I was looking at how digitalization is impacting work life. How can technology help our people have completely new experiences? Also, how is the shelf life of knowledge changing if we all hear there are no more jobs for life? What does that mean for a company?

These are big questions, and they were my starting point for thinking about moving away from a more traditional approach to learning that included more classroom training and, uh, a more elaborated approach. Assume there was a training catalog available at the time. Greenfield, think about what a large technology company would require in the digital age. That was the starting point.

So, we were thinking about reimagining learning. Then we were thinking, and I will share a bit later how that looks, how it has evolved, and how it comes to life for our people. The second thing was whether you would embark on change and want to change experiences or things radically or disruptively like that. That is something most people are used to. I would say, you have to take them along. You have to inspire them, nudge them, and make them try new things. not be afraid of things that appear to be very different from what they are used to. That is why we created an approach—or, let's say, a complete program initiative—that we call my growth second pillar. I will elaborate on this over the course of this call.

And the third one is if you want to change learning and career development and inspire people. It is also an opportunity to change how you do performance management for people. What does it mean if a person is good at his or her job? How can you then evaluate people and maybe get rid of stringent systems that always force you to cross out certain fields and make a flag here or there? These were a bit like the paradigm shift that we were looking at.

So let me make sure I understand completely and the audience does as well because that was a lot of depth.

So, we started with a blank slate and came up with three strategies that we will be implementing over the next few years to create something new. Culture for a technology company that is digital in nature and meets the needs of people all over the world.

So those three strategies are fairly straightforward, but I can imagine the depth of work involved here. There is a lot to consider.

But let's go over those again so we have a platform-based learning ecosystem. We've got my growth strategy as #2 and then, as you said, reimagining the performance management side and creating a playbook for employees around the world. As a result, platform-based learning has been critical to my development and reimagining.

Starting at the top, this performance management component helps us understand platform-based learning. What do you change there? How do you apply that to them? hundreds of thousands of employees

Thank you for the gateway because Siemens is a large company. We have more than 300,000 people across the world, so that is a huge employee base. And when you take a look at the markets and the businesses that our company is active in, they vary a lot.

So, you're talking about building trains, building digital factories to connecting smart buildings with grid infrastructure, there's a lot in between. As a result, the scope is quite broad. If you look That we are active in so many different businesses and technology fields, and in almost all markets on this planet, means that the needs of our people and the jobs that they have are very different.

That means the skill and competency requirements for their roles are very different and heterogeneous, and we need to cover a very broad range of them to support them along their career journeys. Let us call them functional topics and the people who work in finance, supply chain, and sales are some examples. Then you'll need technology topics that are pertinent to the businesses or markets in which you operate. You need specific regional context or country-specific topics because you're based in a country where certain things are important.

And then you also need to understand the businesses that you are in and the products and services that your company is bringing as value to our customers and all of that in breadth and at different skill levels. So that was the challenge when I took over. How can we reach all our people according to their individual learning needs on their career journeys and help them to continuously learn and grow? It sounds easy.  It is not, but technology can help, so here's the good news.

How to use what you described as a platform-based learning ecosystem. That's what we have built over time, so we said we needed to disruptively reimagine learning and bring all our people through one single point of entry to a universe of learning opportunities that they could tailor to their needs. So, think of it as a mixture of Netflix, maybe Facebook, and Spotify for learning.

Yeah, that's well said. I think we can all get behind Netflix, Facebook, and Spotify for learning. So that means we've got some video components. We've got some social interaction where we can share our own stories and our thoughts. And it also means we've got some audio that we can listen to and download. Some self-paced learning along the way.

I'm watching you nod, but if you're listening to the podcast, you won't be able to hear her nod. She is nodding. So, all of this creates this ecosystem, but how do you do this in all of these languages and at all of these depths? I mean this. This category must be huge.

It is, so please provide some better examples and perhaps some data to help capture the topic and story.

So, our "my learning world platform" is our learning platform, which we brought to life for all our people across the world. It enables us, first and foremost, to achieve our primary goal of reaching all employees worldwide via technology.

Then you need a broad base of learning opportunities to cover what I just mentioned the broad range of topics and different skills and competency levels that you need to somehow cater to, and that means on the platform.

In the meantime, we have more than 115,000 learning opportunities. And yes, you're right. It's a broad range of formats. Programs can be quite lengthy, such as a learning path with certification test approvals that can take a year or two to complete. That could be on the very right side of the spectrum, and you could have a 5-minute video and a lot in between, so there are different formats. It comes in various lengths, skill and competency levels, and topics, and it is made possible by technology.

Because the thing is, you can easily overwhelm people with way too much information, and they can't find their way through and don't know what to do next or the right thing for me to choose, so you must provide a lot of guidance and orientation and assist people in finding what is relevant to them.

Yeah, that's a great point with 150,000 learning experiences. And I'm just one person who comes to the platform. How do you match me with the right learning experience because that's a lot of hoops for me to jump through as an employee?

So how do you match me up with the right path for my career in my language for where I am located?

Yes, and we have learned a lot along the way. I can tell you that it has been a priority for the last three years to significantly improve our employees' experiences with this.

So, there are various methods, one of which is when you visit the My Learning World platform; it recognizes who you are and thus recognizes your name, your business, your region, your job, your family, or your role already help to set the context for the system. And, like a recommendation engine, it can then match existing content like Amazon. Now I pick another example, it can already match per algorithm relevant learning opportunities are based simply on your master data about a person.

But then you are asked what topics you are interested in, so you can list your interests. You can follow topics; you can follow people. And it also analyzes your user behavior over time. So, if you have certain topics that you search for, then these topics will also be matched into the recommendations that are automatically given to you. That's the algorithm side of things.

The second one, which is at least equally important, is that we have more than 700 people throughout the events. Wonderful people assist us in curating relevant learning content for their region and community. Let me give you an example. I may be a salesperson in a specific business, and I know exactly what is now hot in sales. It's worth selling but leave it alone. I'm not familiar with virtual reality. Whatever it is, whether it is selling or negotiating excellence, you know your audience. You know your community well enough to curate and bring relevant learning opportunities in the format of a channel, similar to Netflix. Let's say documentaries. And you can say I am now opening one for sales. And I find relevant things for my colleagues. This gives a lot of orientation because it's handpicked. Its quality is assured by people who know their field best. And this is what people value a lot. At least the feedback I get from all employees around the world, people appreciate this.

I love that, so we're using our own. Employees who are on the ground, who are successful, and who are working through the model internally and delivering for our customers. We're using those people to drive this innovation.

So, how do you go about it? You probably have thousands of salespeople in your example. Uh, and we've got hundreds of them who are top performers. I would imagine: How do you pick the right person to deliver on this strategy?

Yeah, I think we created a movement. I called it at the beginning. It's a movement disguised as a project. And you start with the willingness, in the beginning, you have people who are passionate about that topic. We have a lot of people who are leaders in their field, like a guru in AI, for instance.

You know we have technology experts, and they love to share with their community. It's super important for them to be connected to have an exchange in their community, and they like to contribute. As a result, there is already an incentive for them to be a part of and contribute to the community and potentially also to be seen as one of those leading experts in the field.

Yeah, beautifully said.

I think building community within the organization is so important. It has so many ripple effects. Community in an organization can be led to higher retention, higher performance in terms of productivity, and higher levels of well-being. For those in leadership roles, it can also lead to lower medical costs. around your organization, right? There are positives everywhere.

And then you sort of layer in the fact that you're so diverse within your organization in so many different countries and languages that being able to put this into one package is impressive. So, congratulations to you and the entire team and the 700 employees that are working in this area to develop something unique for sailors.

It's great, and I said it's a project or a movement disguised as a project.

In the beginning, we had to win over every single one on an individual basis. I had to come to you and say, "Tom, look!" "You are so great at doing podcasts. Can't you please share with people who are interested in podcasts? How does this work? How do you do it best? How you can learn from this:

Then you suddenly have a critical mass of people contributing. It's a bit like when you think about ecosystems and platforms; we call it "network effects." The more people you convince to contribute, the better the offering becomes and the more relevant it becomes. The more relevant the offering, the more users are attracted, engage with it, and return. So, you get a higher engagement rate and more people coming over and over again.

If that holds, it's great for the contributors because they reach their audiences. That's their number one goal, and if they notice, this is a platform and ecosystem that helps them reach their group, their community, and their people. It's also fantastic, so it's a win for all sides.

I have a question playing around in my mind, and I know other people are thinking about it. People are thinking. Well, I'm not Daniela; I can't figure this all out, and I don't have the budget to pull this off, nor do I have four years of a patient leadership team to go and build this. How do you build the business case internally to say you need an investment from the business? I have a plan that's going to be multi-year, and the outcomes are going to look like this: How do you do that?

Yeah, I guess what I was challenged by was that. And of course, I have to deliver on a huge business case. And I would say it's an investment case, so learning is an investment, and it's a very deliberate decision to invest in competency development so that people continue to learn and grow to stay resilient and relevant, and therefore that they can contribute to making the company successful.

So, at the end of the day, if we don't do that, then we do something very wrong, and we will be out of business. So, investing, particularly in the topics that we did, has been a very positive business case, even financially, because technology enables a lot of productivity gains at the same time that you can reach more people through different formats with almost mass customization kind of approach that we hear from other industrial pockets, but it's kind of the same philosophy.

You know that through technology, you have a vast array of opportunities, but you can tailor, cut, slice, and dice it for the individual. and that is highly efficient. It is much more efficient than one classroom training a year where people have to fly, have travel costs, and all of that.

And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. You need that tool, but we need so much more than that in the meantime. I got them convinced.

Yes, you did, and well done. It's not easy to do for an employer with hundreds of thousands of employees. To say I'm going to streamline learning, development, and growth is to say I'm going to have a global impact on the business. It's not an easy conversation to have at the table because I think most leaders would say, "Oh, come on." How are you going to do that? How are you going to take us? all on one platform and in one location? We're in countries all over the world. We have 300,000 employees. There's got to be somebody. At the table, that was said.

Yes, and that is why it was at first, I think we did it smartly in a way; I wouldn't say it was a submarine, but it was more flagged like an experiment, so we are investing in a new approach. Let's start and see how it goes. The investment was not so great then. And then let's see how it can scale.

And, of course, Corona had a tremendous acceleration effect and I can tell you I am so happy that we were ready because our platform had only recently been created. It was available after a soft launch. We already had learning opportunities there, and all of a sudden everybody was at home, so we could reach all our people.

I know many of my peers at other companies. They were struggling because they could not switch so quickly from having an intercept before a traditional approach to learning with classroom training is that you plan and book a year in advance, and all of a sudden you have to completely shift to a very different mode.

And by having that ready, people tried it out. I would say It could have been a little compelling, and then they felt, "Oh, it doesn't hurt. It’s fun, and there are a lot of cool things, and I can decide on my own what is interesting for me. I can put it on my agenda in my calendar when it suits me, so it's much more tailored and by my requirements as a person”.

And then the perception shifted from critical to positive. Or do they simply want everything digital and to have everything at their fingertips on my own terms?

Yeah, I love the way you said that, and I wonder as I think about this process. I wonder what your leadership shadow assisted you in getting a yes.

So, what exactly do I mean? When you spend time with Daniela, you immediately begin to trust her, and I believe trust is also important in organizations. Certainly, large organizations are a big component of getting things done. Do you think that your relationships with other executives and the way that they trusted you contributed to the success?

Absolutely, and it's something that will develop over time. The people who know me say I'm a very honest person. I don't shy away from topics that might be difficult. I just name them and say, "Look. Here's a challenge” We have to look each other in the eye. Is it something that we want to address or not? Do we want to park it? Do we want to approach it, and then, if you make a conscious decision, you can take different strategies, right? But I'm a person who's very open and transparent about these things, and that helped me very much along the way. If you just make everything sound like it's been sugar-coated in a pink bubble, people will become skeptical. It is why we were very cautious with that, in the beginning, we said, "Look, we think that there are major trends that we have to anticipate and that we have to find an answer to; we believe that we have a North Star that makes sense. to develop a completely new approach. And let's try it out and adjust along the way depending on what we learn.”

Yeah, so if you're thinking through, "How do I get this done, number one, I love the submarine example, where you sort of come in with an experiment if you will, and a pilot. We use that term all the time in corporate roles. So, we're having an experiment. We're having a pilot, and you go in with a very well-developed plan.

But being able to point out where some of the holes might be or where some of the strengths might be and have a frank discussion It sounds like all of that contributed to getting the first budget approved, which then contributed to some success, which ultimately sort of snowballed into the organization getting behind your vision.

Yes, absolutely.

And I must say I see a great development not only for me personally but also for Siemens and for the whole people space that our leadership team is managing. It's all about people’s development and taking care of their well-being me personally but also for Siemens and for the whole people space that our leadership team is managing. It's all about people's development and taking care of their well-being. The professional development of our people is a huge priority.

That, of course, helps me because this is a mindset thing. If you believe that your company's success is based on its people, then that is also how you treat people, and that is then also how you can develop approaches and experiences for people.

Yeah, very well said, and I think we've gone through how people interact with the learning ecosystem. We've gone through a little bit of my growth, and we understand some of this to be a little bit of Netflix, a little bit of Facebook, and possibly a little bit of Spotify. It is all curated at the individual level.

So the third pillar was this idea of objectives and performance management. What's your take, and what did you build that's different in this space?

Yes, let's focus on this one. I would also like to get back to my growth because I was mainly touching base. Now, on the learning side of things, my growth goes way beyond just the learning part, but on the performance management and objectives side, I would say that we dared to be courageous and a bit disruptive.

We tried it out to see how it worked, and I think we are still seeing how it works out, so we shifted it from there. I would say a normal, traditional approach to performance management processes, which everyone knows. So, you set goals for a person for a year, and then you have meetings with your manager. You go over objectives and target accomplishments, and then, at the end of the year, you get an evaluation and are placed in certain categories, often based on metrics you know about your potential and performance, and this is then given as feedback on how you're doing.

So, I find this very intriguing. Everyone does the traditional thing. Knowing this, we've had that too for a long time, and we feel it's not helpful at all because what we get as feedback is… It causes a lot of frustration.

Why? Because people and jobs are unique, sometimes their roles are comparable, but not always. Then, if you raid people, you must normalize the whole curve. And then move the curve that you now have over your team or organ. And because you have rated them a bit too well and you have a limited value that you have to achieve, the whole curve needs to be shifted to the left, and then everybody gets a slightly worse rating than they expected. And then everybody is frustrated. So, we felt what's helpful about this.

Yeah, Danielle, this is my favorite—or least favorite, to be quite honest-- Part of the corporate role in this evaluation process, typically on a 5-point scale, is one of them… Oh, goodness, we probably don't want them in the organization. Two is doing some things well, but you missed a few targets, but we know that you're going to work through them.

You've done it.

Three people in the company did a good job. Four is when you've really exceeded expectations, and I always used to say, "You know, five is a unicorn." We've read about it in books and know it exists somewhere in the ethos, so it's a mythical creature. But we have never seen one, and I have always struggled with that because you have these talented people that you're right about; you shift the whole scale down, and all of a sudden, four becomes a three. And they say, "Why?" And the answer is that we had to normalize the curve.

See what I mean?

and I'm with you. It just baffles the mind when you think about how that impacts a person's performance and how it impacts their relationship. Most importantly, the company is profitable. conflict and I don't think that we spend a lot of time thinking about that except that you've taken a different approach.

So, help us understand this pivot into a new way of thinking.

Yes, because we're still on our journey there.

So, everybody agrees that this is a difficult component. This evaluation bit sounds funny. We decided to roll out the process of removing processes. That may sound strange, but that is exactly what we did, and it is what we call our approach to growth talks.

That is why we emphasize the importance of meaningful conversations between the manager, the leader, you as a team member, and the team. What are you up to? Where are you going as a team? What is your objective? How can you, as a person, then contribute to that and have a continuous dialogue? The evaluation portion at the end of the year is one thing.

The other thing is that objectives now change much more often, so a once-a-year target is not helpful in many instances either. So, performance management as a whole becomes a tool when you have targets that you review every six months and that don't hold. Any further delay is also kind of pointless.

So, we had various triggers where we felt it was no longer appropriate or helpful. What we ultimately want to achieve is a continuous dialogue between the manager and the employee to decide and agree on clear objectives that can be adjusted and monitored regularly. How can the leader help? Also, the individual must be at their best, which can vary depending on the individual.

Yeah, I think the term "meaningful conversation" is not utilized enough around the world. I mean, we have to have human conversations about how people are doing, and that does include, in today's modern business environment, how you're doing outside of work. It's not just you, your performance is X or Y. You're a two or a five.

How are things going, exactly? And I always think about the person who asked for a raise, Danny. and they go into theirs. You're their boss, and they say, "You know, I need a raise." I need more money, and of course, you know, our natural reaction is, "Why?" or "For what?" Or I don't have the budget for leadership roles, right?

We start to come up with the answer, but if you simply asked, "You know, is there something going on in your personal life?" Is there something going on outside of the business that we're not aware of? Are you feeling like you're underpaid based on some data that you saw? Try to understand how people are feeling and what's going on in their lives, or if they have a sick parent. Or, my goodness, a sick child.

Right?

or some other circumstance. That's putting stress on them, and maybe that changes the conversation and makes it a little bit more human. So, I just want to underline, highlight, circle, and star your comments on meaningful conversations because those are human conversations. are so important in everything we do as leaders.

They are, and what we see is context is key, and often money is important, but often there are other factors at play.

You know it's so much about, as you said, your situation in life. For some, it might be helpful if we can help with access to a good kindergarten by taking them for some months, part-time. I don't know why it is then that you can park your car in the garage underneath the headquarters because you have to pick up your kid every day at three, and otherwise it becomes stressful.

So, there are so many things that can make sense for the individual to enable that person to be his or her successful

Yeah, well, well.

So how do you keep it? There must be some structure to these meaningful conversations, so there must be an evaluation process in place. You can't have 300,000 employees just having conversations. We're going to need some kind of data analytics—something to tie everything together.

Yeah, that brings me to another quite disruptive thing we did. In addition, we got rid of leadership frameworks.

It's another interesting topic. And because we feel that there is certain core—I would call them principles and values—that are super important to us as a company, the leadership style that makes sense is highly individual. Once again, what makes sense in which business, context, and function can it be different? The message is that there is no such thing as a perfect leader.

When you combine that with the approach of growth talks, you get a lot of accountability and responsibility on the leadership side. So, we must prepare our leaders to have these continuous conversations, and of course, to always talk about performance, but not in a negative way. Not in a 3 by 3 metrics are important, but more importantly, what do you hope to achieve with your team and role?

And what do you need to make that happen?

One issue that we are facing and that is a bit culturally different, I would say across the world, is the wish for or need for some structured documentation support. We deliberately decided not to do that but to share best practices of what some leaders or functions are doing, because otherwise you're back to implementing a process with documentation, and then you go back to an approach that we wanted to consciously get rid of.

So let me make sure I understand this. This is a significant sea change in what you're doing. You have removed documentation from the performance management component except for sharing best practices.

So, there is a toolbox for close talks that helps the individual prepare for those discussions. It helps you to think about and reflect on who you are, what you're good at, what your ambition is, where you want to go, and what you might need to be at your best, as well as maybe as a preparation for the next career step.

And there is the other lens that is also there and available for the leaders. In a tool, how can you best guide your team through this type of non-rigid process?

Yeah, so you're giving everybody the tools to be successful. And as an organization, your kind of getting in the way, and saying your relationship with your manager is so important. We want you to have these growth talks. We want you to have meaningful conversations, and your manager is going to help decide where this goes for you; is that the message?

Yes

So, what's the other side of the coin? OK, so on the other side of the coin, I'm not performing. I'm below par. I'm not doing a great job for the organization. I'm distracted. Maybe I'm abrasive; maybe, uh, you know. I come to work with a lot of baggage, and I'm not delivering. How do you handle that situation? Individuals who may need to find another position within or outside of the organization

I would argue that traditional performance management doesn't help you here either. It's a management task. So, as you can see, a certain person is in a certain situation. That's all it is. If it's not the right role, not the right home, or that person needs to, you know, develop into a different role, you have to manage it very actively, whether you have a 3 x 3 evaluation sheet or not.

No, I don't think that it is a different reality. So, we all have to manage teams, and we all have to see what we have to do to enable the people to be at their best. And sometimes the best is reserved for the person and the team. It is also important to progress and find the next appropriate role.

Yeah, what you're saying is that the score is 1,2,3,4,5, and the piece of paper still doesn't have any relevance to what's going on in the team dynamics and the individual dynamics.

Yeah, we have to actively manage it anyway.

Yeah, you still need to have growth talk, and you still need to actively manage it, and that all happens outside of a piece of paper.

Now you want to go back to my growth, and I want to give you a second to touch on my growth before we wrap up. Help us understand what that looks like. in terms of infrastructure, behavior, or mindset.

So, my development is in our approach to reaching our employees' hearts and minds through certain experiences and very inspiring communication. It is almost like a cultural transformation approach. It appears to be very deliberate. It's human-centered, playful, and has its design. We were allowed to have our design as part of the company design. It is very human-centric in the way we approach and talk to people. It's not a corporate form talk, it's more like, "Hey, Tom, have you already tried this one out?" Do you know how strong you are because of things like this? nudging you a little bit.

Yeah

And we have built it up quite consciously over the last three years. Beginning with the awareness phase (nudging people), That learning, and career path are individual, and it starts with you. It's your responsibility. The company can help. You can have a lot of tools, training, development, and support. But you also need to know who you are, where you stand, what you're good at, and what you want. And then these instruments can be used in a meaningful way.

We sometimes say it "puts the ownership back to the people," while of course taking them along and providing them with relevant instruments.

I am so behind this message.

I call it pointing the thumb, not the finger, and holding. Right, and you can just visualize that you point the thumb at yourself and you're accountable. Holding yourself accountable for your growth, development, and path. You know, treating employees as fully developed adults who can handle it.

Before I let you go, I've got to ask you about sustainability. You're big and long-lasting. It's important to you. What does sustainability look like for you?

First of all, I'm happy that sustainability is now known. There is a lot on the agenda. Everywhere I worked in the field of sustainability 10 years ago, that was not yet the case. So, this is good news, but what it means for me is to think in systems. To give more than you take, think through the impact that you are having on the environment, on the overall closed loop of resources, and also on the people dimension.

So, for me, it's not just an environmental topic. Yes, we only have this one beautiful planet, and that is the core, but it is a vision to ensure that. All people can live well within the limits of the planet.

Yeah, beautifully said and stated. Thank you for your work on sustainability, and thank you for your work at Siemens, which has an impact on hundreds of thousands of lives around the world. or those of you, as you have said and stated. Thank you for the work that you're doing from a sustainability standpoint and thank you for the work that you're doing at Siemens, impacting hundreds of thousands of lives around the globe.

For those of you who want a quick wrap-up. We have discussed three topics in the context of the platform-based learning ecosystem up to this point. My growth, which doesn't allow for corporate talk but gets into open and honest conversations. And then getting rid of the performance management playbook and starting over. With real leadership at the local level drives the organizational culture forward.

These are unique strategies. They're global in nature, and I think the way that you've laid this out, Daniela, is so beautifully done that we can take these ideas and do this in our own company.

Whether you're a global organization or a local firm with less than 100 employees, you can take on these tactics and build for the future. So, thank you very much for being on the show. I'm so grateful to have you on. I've had so much fun learning from you today, and I know everybody else has too. If we wanted to reach out, where would we do that?

But it's a joke. I'd say you'd find me on the mountainside, taking my dog for a walk.

In profession. That context might not be the right one, so you can find me on LinkedIn.

Yes, nicely wrapped up there, and if you want to find Daniela, please don't go look for her to walk her dog. Find her on LinkedIn. That is a public service announcement. But thank you all for joining the Town Empowerment Podcast, where we share the stories of great humans like Daniela so you can lift your organizations, your teams, and your community

Thank you for being on the show, and we will see you next time. Let's skip back to people and culture together.

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