Dominique Leroy, CEO Belgacom, on Leadership & Women in ICT

I think the number one challenge in ICT for the coming years is how do you get ICT closer to business because I think we have probably in the past very much seen ICT as a standalone, a lot of people working behind their screens in a very factual environment. I think ICT should evolve from a product much more to a service and really to something that can enhance business to make a difference, and that's for me really the key challenge: really bring ICT out of their computer environment but bring them really as a service to the business and as something that can really drive competitive advantage for the business. I think what we will have in our countries in Europe and in Belgium is much more how can ICT really be a driver with business to create better customer understanding, to create smoother processes, to make companies more agile, to make sure that companies can differentiate themselves by understanding better the needs of the customers and providing the better products and the better services. So for me it's a key enabler for the success of companies. So it's much more taking the people out of their computer environment and bringing them more to the wider understanding of the problems of the society, the companies, and translate that into systems that can bring value. So a lot of challenges and probably also a lot of challenges for the universities where people are probably very literate in the computer languages, things like that. I think a big challenge will also be for universities to give some trainings also in leadership, in business understanding, so that people from the ICT department, people from sales, marketing, strategy can really find the same language. Very often you realize that people do not understand each other because the language they talk is different, and probably because they have not learned the same languages. So more and more you see in business schools you get more and more ICT and computer skills that are taught. I think you need the same within the ICT environment to teach people much more a sense of leadership and more sense of marketing so that those bridges can really become more robust and people can understand each other and really create added value for the business. I think women can bring anyhow the value they have today. The balance leadership is very important, and I think balance leadership is important at the top of the company in the management but also in departments. Today if you look at ICT, there are very little number of women that graduate from ICT school, so already at the start the pool of women being knowledgeable in ICTs is very small, and then of course when they enter companies, when they have only men, it's very hard to come through. I mean, I think in leadership it was the case a few years ago. I think today it's become a bit more normal that you have more balanced management teams. I think in the ICT world it's still very hard, so we need some courageous women that can really try to break those rules and be the first one, lead by example, entering those ICT departments and proving that by their competencies, that different style, probably more collaborative style, more network working style, they can really make a difference by just bridging indeed the ICT department with the business needs and therefore really bringing different values and different competencies to the ICT department. So I think we need to attract more women by indeed telling that ICT is not only a product but it's much more an enabler for driving business. I think we also, if we can have within the universities as I said some more courses that are a bit more balanced between ICT but also some more leadership, marketing, and other type of courses, you could attract potentially more women. And I think you as well play a big role there by bringing more visibility about what is ICT, how can you make the difference, how can women do the difference there. But I really think that ICT has a real strong future because everything is linked with ICT also in our daily lives. I mean, if you look, telecommunications, smartphones, tablets, all these things, perhaps you don't see them as ICT but these are also all ICT related things. So more and more ICT is present on a day-to-day basis in our lives through all the mobile environment we have. In companies the same, more and more data are available, you need to treat those data. The question is how can you make value insights out of those data. This is also a lot of ICT needs there, and for me it is really a key enabler of the success of companies, and that should I hope motivate people to enter the ICT branch.