{"id":7716,"date":"2019-09-26T17:23:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T10:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trueblog.info\/blog\/?p=2920"},"modified":"2024-01-10T11:52:18","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T04:52:18","slug":"dtac-ceo-alexandra-reich-sees-a-future-where-creativity-will-matter-more-than-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/en\/dtac-ceo-alexandra-reich-sees-a-future-where-creativity-will-matter-more-than-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"dtac CEO Alexandra Reich sees a future where creativity will matter more than productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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dtac CEO Alexandra spoke at the Super Productive Talk on Sunday, Sep 22nd<\/sup>, making the case for a future that rewards creativity, willingness to fail and a mindset to never stop growing. Here is a transcript of her speech :<\/strong><\/p>


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“Sawadee ka.<\/p>


<\/p>\n

I\u2019m amazed you felt the need to come today. You clearly are already the most Super Productive people in Bangkok. Tickets to this talk sold out in 10 minutes and yet you managed to get one. That\u2019s impressive!<\/p>


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Before we start, I\u2019d like to be very honest with you. Frankly speaking, I\u2019m very cautious when using the word \u2018productive\u2019. I don\u2019t believe productivity is the metric you should be striving for. My belief\u2014and I share this with a lot of people who are much smarter than I am\u2014is that creativity and social skills is what will make you fit for an AI-driven future.<\/p>\n

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In my life, there are two young men who deeply influenced my thoughts on what we should all strive for. And before we get inspired by stories of Super Productivity, I want to tell you about their lives. One ended tragically despite a string of successes. Another went from a mountain in Nepal to graduating from university in Finland.<\/p>


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The first young man was my mentee while I was working at Sunrise Communications in Switzerland. He was fresh grad from a top university. He was very handsome. He excelled at everything he reached for. One day, he applied for a company that I can\u2019t name. And he was rejected. A few days later he took his own life while staying in his room at his parents\u2019 home.<\/p>


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I think I\u2019ve forgiven myself by now for failing to see this coming. But it took a long time. It was such a tragic loss. And I just couldn\u2019t imagine how someone so successful would consider himself a failure after one single rejection.<\/p>


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Eventually I realized this young man was driven by a need to tick all the right boxes as society defines them. He got the education that others would consider the most impressive, internships seen as the most prestigious, and applied for what he thought was the greatest job on earth. That\u2019s when a single rejection sent his entire self-image crashing down.<\/p>


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\"\"<\/p>\n


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The other young man I want to tell you about is Chhimi. Here\u2019s a recent picture of him. Chhimi was a 14-year-old boy from Kathmandu when we first welcomed him to our family as an exchange student. Today, I consider him my adopted son.<\/p>


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Chhimi grew up in a very remote mountain area of Nepal, at an altitude of 4,500 meters. It\u2019s an area so poor that families there eagerly seek opportunities to send their children to boarding schools in Kathmandu to offer them a better future. As a tradeoff, they often never see their child again until he or she graduates from high school.<\/p>


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When I met Chhimi, he couldn\u2019t speak English and even the most common things in our lives were alien to him, from the refrigerator to slicing bread. It was a real challenge for him to move in with us. He wasn\u2019t confident at first. I\u2019m a very tactile person and I\u2019d try to hug him. Chhimi would just look at me, seemingly thinking, \u201cWhat is this strange woman doing?\u201d And that was tough on me too.<\/p>


<\/p>\n

What Chhimi did have going for him is humility, a readiness to experiment, to fail, to be bad at something before you\u2019re good at it. Last month, I was in the new car he bought for himself in Helsinki. He told me, \u201cMom, I\u2019m a terrible driver. You drive.\u201d And when I refused, he asked me for tips on how to be a better driver.<\/p>


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Thanks to his openness and humility, Chhimi will never stop to learn. He\u2019ll never stop to grow. And his enthusiasm is infectious. He\u2019s grown up into such loving, charismatic person. He\u2019s surrounded by friends and has built an incredible community around him in Finland. When I gave him money as a graduation gift, he asked to spend it on rebuilding his Nepalese parents\u2019 house which had been damaged by the 2015 earthquake.<\/p>


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There you have it. Two young men. Two very different paths. One could only accept himself if he achieved external symbols of success. One is just in it for the journey, the process and the growth. One couldn\u2019t accept failure. One appreciates the learnings that come from stumbling.<\/p>


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The real meaning of working<\/h4>

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These two young men taught me important lessons about the importance of enjoying your own development. It\u2019s not just about achieving your goal, but also being happy with the work you do, the way you get there. They taught me how important it is to listen to your own voice, and not let other people\u2019s voices become louder than your own.<\/p>


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Try to question your goals. Ask yourself if it is really something you want. Or is it what others expect out of you?<\/p>


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I too asked myself, \u201cWhy did I move to a foreign country at the age of 54? Is being a CEO my goal?\u201d The answer is no. My actual goal is to be in a position where I can create impact.<\/p>


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\"\"<\/p>\n


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When I joined dtac, it wasn\u2019t exactly the easiest time. After many years of uncertainty, people at dtac felt a bit desperate. We were even threatened with having to shut down our services at one point. But I could sense the hope and belief in the eyes of my colleagues. That gave me the feeling I could make a difference for them.<\/p>


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I didn\u2019t fight to win the 900 MHz spectrum license for dtac just for the sake of my career or for shareholders. It was for the people working at dtac and the community they belong to. Having an impact, to me, is to be able to look into my colleagues\u2019 eyes and see they trust in their work, that they can love what they do again, and that they believe they too can create value. That\u2019s the real impact I work for.<\/p>


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I was also lucky to come to dtac knowing that victories are best shared. I used to play golf on Austria\u2019s National Team. When I finally won an international golf championship, it just so happened that it was a tournament where I was playing alone. I went to get my trophy and there was no one to share it with. It struck me how there had been so many smaller wins with my teammates that had felt much better than this solitary glory. Looking back, the highest point of my athletic career was a bit of a letdown.<\/p>


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All these stories\u2014my own, my mentee\u2019s, Chhimi\u2019s, and the incredible willpower of the people at dtac\u2014have taught me that the real meaning of work is to learn, stumble and win together\u2014and to enjoy the process of doing it no matter what comes your way.<\/p>


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Love and empathy: the only human capability in<\/h4>

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the age of machine<\/h4>

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I started by mentioning much smarter people than I also believe the meaning of productivity is on the verge of a dramatic change. One of those people is Jack Ma, who founded one of the greatest startups ever, and yet never wrote a line of code in his entire life.<\/p>


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In a debate with Elon Musk, Jack Ma recently said we will only work 12 hours per week in the future due to the increasingly smart machines doing much of our work for us. With a 12-hour work week on the horizon, I have to ask you all: What\u2019s the point in cramming more into your day?<\/p>


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I have no doubt you\u2019re all ambitious and that you\u2019re determined to strive for the goals you have in mind. That\u2019s why you\u2019re here to get inspired. But even machines can be very productive. In fact, they already outsmart us on memory and repetitive skills. What they can\u2019t do is love and empathize. As jack Ma said, \u201cComputers only have chips, men have the heart. It\u2019s the heart where the wisdom comes from.”<\/p>


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Don\u2019t fall into a wrong definition of productivity by working so hard that you have no time to free your mind enough to think of what you really want to do. Having ambition is a good beginning. But more importantly, be happy about what you\u2019re doing, be happy about what you\u2019ve achieved and stay humble. Sharing a great journey with others should be the most fun part of your experience\u2014not reaching your destination.<\/p>


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Before we even begin the journey, just take a moment to listen to your voice, the one inside, the one that sometimes gets crowded by colleagues, friends and parents. What is it telling you? What do you really want?<\/p>\n

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dtac CEO Alexandra spoke at the Super Productive Talk on Sunday, Sep 22nd, making the case for a future that rewards creativity, willingness to fail and a mindset to never stop growing. Here is a transcript of her speech : “Sawadee ka. I\u2019m amazed you felt the need to come today. You clearly are already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":17546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[304,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dtac-en","category-releases-en"],"acf":[],"author_data":{"id":7,"name":"SFW","avatar":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/logo-sfw-1.png"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7716"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17555,"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions\/17555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.true.th\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}