Simon Heimlicher

.lazyload { display: none; } Simon Heimlicher

I am passionate about transforming organizations to get out of people's way to let them achieve more – together. While change is never easy, I enjoy addressing the issues that invariably arise when people bring all their energy to bear on a tough challenge.

Over the past years, I had the privilege to contribute to the digital transformation of

UBS AG, the largest wealth manager worldwide. I enjoyed a number of different perspectives at this journey the bank is still continuing to this day.

Some of the highlights were:

Introducing live chat on the public website as the first Swiss bank in June 2015,
Enabling prospects to open a banking package including credit cards entirely paperless in June 2017 based on the qualified electronic signature¹ as the first bank in Switzerland, and
Introducing WeChat and WhatsApp as new client communications channels in full compliance with regulatory requirements in Hong Kong and Singapore in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Along the way, I learnt, how crucial it is to constantly evolve the collaboration model to enable each member of the organization to thrive and bring to bear their passion for changing the way clients interact with UBS.

After shaping the launch of the Digital Factory of UBS Switzerland in 2017, I scaled up this agile collaboration model for the global program to bring WeChat and WhatsApp to our clients in 2018 and 2019.
In 2019, I adapted the Digital Factory model to improve the effectiveness of a global delivery organization comprising 120 people from business and IT.
From 2020, I have been developing and implementing a novel model that unites project management, product management and business service management to cover the entire lifecycle of customer journeys in an agile environment. This model optimizes for both time to market for new journeys as well as operational efficiency of the existing journey landscape.

Before I joined UBS, I followed my thirst for the unknown and completed a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich. I then spent three years abroad in industrial and academic research at institutions such as Technicolor in Paris. For more information, please refer to the research section.

You can reach me via email: s m n h i l c e . o \ / \ / AT \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ i o e m i h r c m

The only type of electronic signature that is legally equivalent to a handwritten signature in Switzerland ↩︎

Recent articles

OKRs vs. Performance Management

Mar 10, 2020 (Updated Oct 15, 2021)· 2 min read

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a methodology to align and keep an entire organization focused on its agreed upon goals. But do OKRs compete with or rather complement widely established performance review processes?

Powerful

Oct 15, 2021· 1 min read

Review of the book Powerful, a historical account of the Netflix culture from the perspective of then Chief Talent Officer, Patty McCord

Turn the Ship Around!

Jun 7, 2021· 1 min read

Intent-Based Leadership, a paradigm for turning followers into leaders – and this book lays out its application on a US submarine in an auto-biographic nature

Capitalization – my personal preferences

Jan 3, 2008 (Updated May 22, 2020)· 3 min read

Preferences for capitalization vary between organizations and countries around the world. In an attempt to remain consistent in my own writing, I have found the Microsoft Style Guides treatise of the topics to be quite helpful and would like to summarize it for the benefit of others in their quest for a universal set of rules

Time Machine: UUID of disk changed

Feb 18, 2011 (Updated Mar 11, 2019)· 3 min read

If you clone a volume that you backup with Time Machine, its UUID will change and Time Machine will no longer be able to back it up. Use the following script to change the UUID of the existing backups, leading Time Machine to backup as if the volume's UUID had never changed

Why Do We Need OKRs? – We Already Have Goals

Jan 10, 2019· 2 min read

Do you need Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to manage your company goals? There is the most popular reason for OKRs and the one that may matter most to you.