#4 - Severin Moser - What leaders can learn from athletes

Nisha Pillai 00:00:06

Wherever we look, our world is facing a huge range of unprecedented challenges. So if you a leader right now, how do you navigate your way through this? How do you make decisions in the teeth of so much uncertainty? How are you going to reconnect your people and rebuild your team so that they're fit to face the future? And what does that even mean to be a leader in such an increasingly challenging world?

These and other questions I've been putting to top business leaders from across Europe, and I've had some surprisingly candid responses. So why don't you join me, Nisha Pillai, for the latest episode brought to you by Sherpany of The Agenda.

My guest today was a successful Olympic athlete whose climbed to the top of the insurance industry. He believes there's a great deal that the discipline of elite sports can teach business leaders. His name is Severin Moser. He is CEO of Allianz in Switzerland and previously he ran the property and casualty unit of the giant Allianz Insurance Company in Germany.

Welcome, Severin. It's very good to have you with us on The Agenda.

Severin Moser 00:01:23

Thank you for having me.

Nisha Pillai 00:01:26

When we last met Severin, you said that years and years of training as a world class athlete, which took you to the Seoul Olympics in 1988, taught you a huge amount about how to lead a business. Why did you say that? What does it mean?

Severin Moser 00:01:43

As an athlete, normally or most of the athletes, they, I think about, or first think about what they want to achieve in their sport, you know, sport life. So they might decide to compete on a local, regional, national, international level. They might do that in this discipline, in other disciplines, etc..

So in a way, before starting with the training, they think about what are the goals for the next training period. And this, in a way, is very similar to what we do in business. So we also have on a yearly basis, you know, a planning session. We have to mid-term strategic cycle where we think about what do we want to achieve until, let's say, a certain period, a certain point in time.

Nisha Pillai 00:02:38

OK, so it makes you very goal oriented, creating realistic goals and plans.

Severin Moser 00:02:44

Yeah.

Nisha Pillai 00:02:44

That's interesting. So how did you learn as an athlete to refine those goals, to deliver on those goals? Because presumably as a young athlete, it wasn't so obvious. It wasn't so easy.

Severin Moser 00:02:57

Right. As a young athlete, you're not that experienced. But that's probably similar to a young business professional. You're not that experienced and in delivering on the results, so you have setbacks, etc. That's part of the game in sport. That's probably also part of the game in many of what we do in business. So, you know, once you have defined your goals, what you want to achieve, then you obviously need to start about how you get there.

So, what do I need to undertake in order to achieve the goals I have defined for I wish to achieve as an athlete. And normally you do not do that only by yourself, but you do that with your team. So you might have coaches as a decathlete. That was my sport.

I had multiple coaches in different disciplines. So we were talking about should I invest more into sprint? Should I invest more into, you know, the throws? Should I do more in pole vaulting? Should I do with more endurance or weights, etc.? So you think about what is missing in order to achieve the goals you have set for yourself.

Nisha Pillai 00:04:14

Did that come easily for you, prioritising those different areas, deciding that this is where you've got to put your effort into in the next year, which obviously didn't come easily for you?

Severin Moser 00:04:25

No, that's not easy, no. I mean, some of your strengths and weaknesses that are obvious because decathlon is measurable. So you know exactly how you compare to your benchmark colleagues.

But the other areas are not that easy because you might want to invest more into your strengths and less into your weaknesses, because at the end it gives you a higher score in the total of the decathlon where you then add up all the different points and in the disciplines.

And this is very similar in business. So we know, for example, how we perform with regard to turnover, with profitability, with customer satisfaction, etc, so we have lots of benchmarks as well in business.

But at the end then to decide where you want to invest your resources, which are normally limited, is you know the kind of the result of a lengthy discussion you have with your management team re-discuss, or with your shareholder, where you discuss what do we want to do first, what do we do next, etc.. So that's in a way similar to how you prepare yourself as an athlete.

Nisha Pillai 00:05:47

And is it possible to ask you this question, are you the sort of person who tends to focus on your strengths or to focus on your weaknesses?

Severin Moser 00:05:58

In business I tend to focus on my strengths. It's clear that you have to achieve a certain level in all disciplines in a way. But then it's, in my view, clear that the company should focus on the areas where the company is strong, where you are better than the competition, where you are more likely to convince customers to come to you and to do business with you.

I think that's important in a way, because there you were excellent. Everyone knows that you're excellent. So you have a good reputation in that area and then it's easier to kind of accelerate on those strong points.

Nisha Pillai 00:06:45

To the flip side of that, Severin, presumably, is that you also have to accept your limits in some areas and maybe walk away from certain areas. You can't do that as a decathlete, but you can do that as a business leader, can't you?

Severin Moser 00:06:58

Absolutely. I think, you know, in every business strategy and at the same time, you have to define the areas you do not want to be active in. This is sometimes much harder than defining the ones you want to be in, because many people tend to kind of try to be everywhere. But I think a good strategy is also characterised by setting priorities and defining where you want to compete and where you do not want to compete.

Nisha Pillai 00:07:33

So setting strategy, having goals, clear thinking on that seems to be one of your strengths Severin that you've brought a lot from sport. What about actually the implementation of the strategy? That's also a very important part of being a leader. How do you take your team and deliver on the strategies? What are your insights on that?

Severin Moser 00:07:55

You know, in my view, it's important that you develop this strategy. You do not, you should not do that by yourself or just in a very small circle. I think you have to take your company with you on the journey of defining your strategy. And by doing that, you also then create a buy in by your people because they are involved in the process if, in the process of thinking through what might be the right strategy for us as a company.

And once you have your people on board in that strategic process, it's much, much easier to then decide on the strategy and also to deliver on the strategy because the people have, you know, have worked on it as well.

It's also helping you not to lose focus as you start delivering against that strategic goal sometimes because of, you know, whatever happens in the market, etc., you you risk to lose your focus in that strategy.

And once you have developed that together, everyone knows what the overall goal of the company is. And so if even if something goes slightly different and they know where to go instead of they know what to do.

Nisha Pillai 00:09:24

You were telling us earlier that as a decathlete, you had a number of coaches, obviously, who worked with you in the different disciplines. And coaches can sometimes be extremely honest and brutal company and getting an athlete to raise his or her game.

So who operates in that way for you? Who provides you with that kind of really honest, sometimes brutal feedback, Severin?

Severin Moser 00:09:48

You know, there is some, not everyone, but a good part of my management team has, we have a very open kind of discussion culture so they tell their opinions on different things. So some of them, they are, they act as a person who gives you input, even if it's difficult.

Then secondly, you have your board of directors there, at least here in Allianz Switzerland, we have a mixture of people from Allianz internal, but also from the outside. And I think the outside people, because they are not involved in the, you know, the daily routine work, etc., the daily targets, etc., they give you a very open feedback when they believe something goes well or if something goes wrong.

Most of them or all of them, are not insurance people, but they are people from other industries, so they have other experiences and some of them are customers of ours. So they even experience, you know, the way we treat them as a customer. And by doing that, you get really honest feedback from, you know, from that party or that side as well.

Nisha Pillai 00:11:14

So what does it feel like, Severin, when you're in this position where you think you know what you're doing, you're the leader, but you get challenged by somebody at a, either at board level or within your team.

How do you respond to that as an individual? Because it's not the most comfortable situation to be in, is it?

Severin Moser 00:11:32

Well, you know, I think it depends. If you get challenged, it's the question on how you get challenged and by whom you get challenged. I think if you get challenged out of good reason, then obviously it's an enrichment for me as a CEO to get challenged because I do not know everything. I'm not aware of everything which goes on in my company.

So if a customer, or if a broker tells me, listen, I made this and this experience with your company, then I have to take that honest and to see how we can improve on this, because otherwise we are not further developing as a company. If I would not accept being challenged, how could we then develop as a company? I think that's in a way natural. Someone who doesn't do that, I think over time loses ground.

Nisha Pillai 00:12:30

So, Severin, how do you handle failure as a sportsperson? You have to learn to deal with it and as a business person too, I guess.

Severin Moser 00:12:41

Yes, absolutely. You know, part of delivering on this strategy always includes successes, but also areas where you're not that successful. And I think most important is that you allow those failures, that you accept failure as part of a normal business life. And I think it's also important that you identify and name those failures.

Nisha Pillai 00:13:14

That's not easy to do. And can you give us an example of when you've actually done this? You had a policy, you had your name on it, it didn't go well, and then you owned up to it, to the whole organisation.

Severin Moser 00:13:25

Yeah. And I'm just preparing a town hall for, you know, next week, I believe. And we're looking at our customer satisfaction scores and we are very well off on this course we get from our direct customers, but we got not that pleasant feedback from our intermediaries, our brokers.

So we lost in the ranking to positions. We're now in number six and this obviously is not what we want it to be and it's also not good for our business in that the distribution channel. So I'm clearly addressing this to the employees because it's not just one employee who can help us improving on this. It needs the whole organisation. It needs people to make sure that we have our systems in place which support the brokers.

We need our salespeople looking after the brokers and we need our underwriters, you know, writing to business from those brokers, which means that I have to address this very openly, very clear, in order to have the organisation, you know, working on this.

If I would not do that, then why should they change anything? I mean, then everything would be fine. So therefore, I believe that you really, especially internally, you have to address those areas. We are not which are not working well. And that might not be an individual failure. That might be a failure of the of the system of the company as a whole. And then we have to work on this.

Nisha Pillai 00:15:04

And you've also worked outside of Switzerland. I know you've worked in the UK. You worked in Germany for a long time. How easy is it to shift the culture of different parts of a large international organisation? Because they seem to reflect kind of deeply set national behaviours?

Severin Moser 00:15:22

I think this is difficult, to really change culture, you know, in a sustainable manner. So I think you can, you can as a person, you can kind of trigger a certain development with regard to culture and if you are very long in that company, you can do that even more.  But I think you need also to do that together with your colleagues.

You cannot do that just by yourself. It takes time and you have to have multiple areas in the organisation which help you to do that. But I'm convinced that you can change culture. But it's tough. It takes years and it's not sure that this is sustainable.

Nisha Pillai 00:16:14

I want to ask you a personal question, Severin. What is it like to be the leader of an organisation, to be the top person, the main decision maker, ultimately in the face of huge uncertainty, having to make long term decisions?

Severin Moser 00:16:31

You know what I mean? First of all, I think it's one role within the company. Obviously, it's an important role, but I think, you know, I do my job as others do their job, as well. So from that point of view, one should not think that one has a more important role in a way than others.

So my business is to lead the company and others to treat customers in the case of acclaim, etc.. So now, obviously, when you ask about the responsibility, that's different. You know, I'm fully aware that I'm responsible for a company of three thousand and five hundred employees.

So if we do something wrong or if we have a, you know, a compliance issue which triggers questions on the reputation of the company, etc., it's not just me, who is kind of hampered, it's the whole company.

And so therefore, I think to come back to what I said earlier, it's important if you decide to do something important for the company, that this is well thought through, that it is also grounded and shared with your colleagues, developed with your colleagues, that it's not just your personal opinion or point of view which triggers this action, but that it is well balanced and discussed and decided upon before you do it.

Nisha Pillai 00:18:09

Have you ever had sleepless nights because of this responsibility?

Severin Moser 00:18:14

Yes, to be honest, I had that not very often, but I had that. And the last couple of sleepless nights were at the beginning of the Covid crisis where you had to care about our employees.

So there was, you know, the Swiss government who decided from one day to the other that everyone has to work from home. So that was, I mean, it was unknown whether that would be working well for us.

It was unknown on whether we could deliver on promises to our customers. It was unknown on whether our IT would really work. And then there was this virus, which was at that point also not that well known. So that triggered a few nights with very few hours of sleep, to be honest.

Nisha Pillai 00:19:10

And where we are right now, there's still a lot of unknowns out there. What is the world's work going to be like as we begin to come out of the pandemic? What is your role as a leader in setting those decisions about hybrid working, working from home?

There are so many options, whereas at the beginning of the pandemic, there were no options. How do you see your leadership?

Severin Moser 00:19:32

Well, you know, I believe that pre-Covid or maybe previously we had kind of certain rules on how our employees could work so they could work for X hours from home. That was kind of a book of regulations, how we performed our work etc.

Now, after this year and a half of pandemic development, with all the ups and downs, etc., we came to the conclusion that the new working away won't be based on rules. That doesn't work.

We developed principles from the point of view of the company and principles from the point of view of the employee. And these are eight principles each and along those principles, it's every team member together with his team who decides on how they work. You know what is best for that specific team in order to perform their work.

So there is no regulation, no rule for the whole company. So there are only these principles and based on these principles, every manager decides for himself plus for his team and that's how we want to tackle the next period.

And we'll find out whether that works or not. If it's not working, then we might have to change again. But we're convinced at this point in time that this is the best way to do it because that allows us to give flexibility to the ground, to the managers and to employees, and I believe they will do the best for the company by doing that.

Nisha Pillai 00:21:23

Fascinating. So our series, this podcast series is all about leaders musing on leadership. Do you have a final thought that you would like to leave our listeners with?

Severin Moser 00:21:35

Well, maybe one thing and I'm often asked, you know, is there a recipe or anything like this to be a manager? I think there isn't really. But there's one thing probably all future managers should keep in mind, and this is, and I always say that, to be yourself and stay yourself.

Whether you are a manager on the team level, on a larger level, whether you're a CEO, etc., just stay yourself. Do not change your behaviour, your kind of attitude, your, you know, your personality just because you're a CEO or just because you're a high ranked manager, that's normally not natural and people detect that relatively quickly.

So therefore, you know, stay the way you are with all your strengths, with all your weaknesses, work on the weaknesses, but work on your strengths as well and I think that, you know, then you're best off to perform on management tasks.

Nisha Pillai 00:22:47

Severin Moser, thank you so much for joining us with all your plain speaking on The Agenda. It's been a pleasure.

Severin Moser 00:22:52

Thank you Nisha. Thanks again.