Every ambitious person should invest time for career planning, expertise development and networking, but also helping others to grow
In an exclusive interview for D&C magazine, we spoke with Mr. Borislav Tadić, whose responsibilities at Deutsche Telekom include digitization, transformation, customer experience, efficiencies, international shared services and future of human resources, about career development, digital transformation, customer experience as well as about the challenges he faced in 2020 and plans for 2021. He is a passionate traveler, a speaker at major events in the domain of innovation, digitization and strategy. He is also a member of several non-profit, academic and professional organizations, such as Tesla Center, Graz Center of Excellence, Trust-b, IEEE, PMI, ISACA, or ISC2, and holder of numerous awards and certifications.
Could you tell us more about what your role is and how it`s difficult today to work on career growth and development?
Deutsche Telekom is currently driving one of the biggest high-speed network rollouts on the continent. In the role of Senior Vice President within DT Technik, together with thousands of my motivated experts in Germany, I’m bringing fiber optics to the households, public and business sites and millions of citizens in the northern states. Only in the last 10 years, I had a privilege to work in different management roles such as strategy, IT, security, network or digital transformation on four continents thanks to possibility of cross-functional and international moves in DT.
I also had a pleasure to participate in an Artificial Intelligence program at Stanford and obtain various professional certifications. We offer this to every engaged employee – one can choose to take on a project in Asia or course on Scrum using our learning apps. Every ambitious person should invest time for career planning, expertise development and networking, but also helping others to grow.
What digital transformation of Deutsche Telekom has enabled when we speak about customer experience and technological advancements?
Digital transformation improves our customer experience, boosts our growth and accelerates our internal processes. Our T-Mobile, which successfully merged with Sprint in 2020, is covering over 8.300 cities and towns in the USA with 5G, more than twice the coverage area of Verizon or AT&T. At the same time in 2020, 70% of German population got already covered by our 5G and 575.000km of high-speed fiber optical network. In the domain of the high-speed networks, automation deeply entered the spheres of data entry, planning, maintenance and documentation.
Digital transformation also helps us to reduce our CO2 emissions and obtain 100% of the electricity from renewable energy sources as early as this year. We strengthened our presence in CEE through, for example, 40% of the 5G population coverage by Magenta in Austria, investments of Hrvatski, Crnogorski and Makedonski Telekom, and partnering in the Digital WestBalkans6+ initiative, shaping the political and economic landscape.
A transformation of any kind breeds challenge, what are some of the challenges you are facing today, especially in the era of pandemic?
In the beginning of the pandemic, our priority was to ensure the safety of our employees and resilience of our operations. In Germany, our network experienced up to 40% more traffic when many organizations switched to “home office” and consumers fully “embraced” streaming, online shopping and gaming. We were also very engaged keeping the vulnerable parts of the society, such as schools, hospitals and senior homes, connected.
“Personally, I am looking forward to more human interaction in this year, because video chat cannot replace all activities with family, friends and partners”
Together with SAP we developed Corona Warn-App, which is well accepted among citizens. Now we have a unique chance to define the “new normal” with all affected parties, to embrace change of the office landscape, digital tools and remote work, and to help the commercial sector to recover faster. As a passionate traveler, I am looking forward to seeing how “digital nomad” community and related incentives promoted by the employers and the countries will develop. We also need to actively manage the demographic change within the company, which is reflecting the general trends within aging European population. Measures we applied in the organization, such as coaching, reskilling and digital learning, proved that people can successfully adopt automation, quality assurance and lean management on a major scale in all life phases.
What are the plans for 2021, personally and in company, how will you continue to grow and transform?
In 2021 we are rolling out more than one million FTTH connections in Germany, and DT will further enlarge 5G, IoT, cloud gaming and cybersecurity footprint. In my region, we already doubled our FTTH production last year and this year we are going to double it again. We will also continue digital transformation and investments into our people and the environment. Personally, I am looking forward to more human interaction in this year, because video chat cannot replace all activities with family, friends and partners. I hope to continue travelling and meeting new people, discovering their culture and history. I also plan to increase my humanitarian contribution, enjoy opera again and run a marathon in 2021.