Gerold Nagel

Gerold Nagel's exhaustive experience as CIO in the logistics industry on different continents leads him to conclude that the only guarantee is the unexpected. As the SVP Global Infrastructure Services at DB Schenker, this means creating and providing an agile IT infrastructure that is ready to absorb the unexpected. Gerold's teams executed on a digital transformation vision. Switching more than 1400 branch offices in over 80+ countries to a cloud-first, zero trust strategy created server-free branches that made the shift to work-form-home seamless for more than 40,000 employees during the COVID-19.

Companies facing digital transformation challenges on a global scale will experience unexpected, even unprecedented, situations. To overcome these challenges they must immediately set up a task force, use effective collaboration tools (e.g., Teams) to ensure the same information level globally, and have daily status checkups to align everyone working together across teams, countries, and continents. It's important to be clear and diligent in your identification, assignment, and tracking of tasks. Communicate clearly, even around small things, such as, “Take home your laptops every night, as you may not be able to come back to the office tomorrow.” Share the lessons you learn to continuously improve your response process. This will help your IT team excel and minimize business disruption.