Piet Van Petegem

I am constantly looking for a good mix of ‘comfort zone’ and ‘stretched zone’ within an employee’s working areas.

As CTIO at the National Lottery, Piet Van Petegem is proud of the fact that, thanks to its employees, his organisation succeeds in returning 100% of the profits to society. The sophisticated IT solutions set up by his department help make this possible. Piet’s guiding principle is his “genuine interest in novelties and lifelong learning”. Take it from this award candidate who has not years, but rather decades of experience in the Belgian ICT sector.

What does inspirational and coaching leadership mean to Piet Van Petegem?

“If you don’t have clear goals, ambition or purpose , then your organization is like a ship floating around on the high seas without a captain. As a leader, I make sure that every individual and every team knows and understands the vision of the organization. When everyone has an overview of where we stand, we can then set clear and concrete goals. This ensures that everyone enthusiastically shows up for work every day.”

“Throughout my career, I met a lot of people with their own field of interest or certain professional background. I noticed that you achieve collective goals better and faster if you respond to people’s intrinsic motivations and skills. Then they are often happier to go the extra mile for a project. Especially if there is also room for initiative: ‘controlled trial and error’, I call it.”

“In addition, as a coach, I am constantly looking for a good mix of ‘comfort zone’ and ‘stretched zone’ within an employee’s working areas. In this way, they learn step by step and I can help that employee and the team to grow. That gives me a lot of satisfaction.”

Which personal achievements is Piet most proud of?

“After a complete digital transformation, the National Lottery now has a state-of-the-art digitised IT platform. This simultaneously provides a secure and responsible playing environment for our customers and a convenient digital working environment for our points of sale and internal departments. Thanks to a phenomenal commitment from each of our employees, our complex IT architecture has been transformed into a ‘smartphone first’ and ‘cloud first’ approach.”

“We achieved this by adopting agile principles and an improved operating model, which encouraged a sustainable and growing involvement among all employees. As a result, within the international lottery world we are setting the tone within the field of digital IT transformation.”

“Lifelong learning and relentless investment in quality training for our employees are crucial to remain successful. Time does not stand still, changes continue at an ever-increasing pace. My challenge is to keep our employees surfing every new wave, so that we can continue to innovate.”