Oostende - Wednesday June 12 - Top CIOs from across Europe gathered in the “Venetian Galeries” the night before the North Sea Regatta to explore the question: What does effective digital leadership look like in complex, data-saturated environments? After hearing the compelling story of Dirk Ramhorst, former CIO of leading German corporations, the evening concluded with a live interview featuring Dirk Deridder, CIO/CTO of Smals, the organisation that is the IT engine behind many of Belgium’s critical health care and social security organisations.
In a conversation moderated live on stage, Dirk challenged the audience to rethink the limits of dashboards, the role of gut feeling, and the paradoxes of optimisation in leadership. Below is a condensed and edited version of that interview, reflecting the key takeaways of that thought-provoking dialogue.
"Early on," Dirk explained, "we recognised the need for observability within our organisation. Too much was happening inside the heads of a few key people, about governance, progress, or operational status. Dashboards helped raise awareness and objectify what used to live in intuition."
But the enthusiasm came with a cost. “Dashboards multiply. And soon you’re flooding your board with real-time metrics that are each meaningful in isolation, but confusing as a whole. A screen full of flashing KPIs looks impressive, but does it help you decide?”
Dirk described a useful model: dashboards should serve three time horizons: the now (real-time operations), the past (historical patterns), and the future (strategic alignment). “The danger,” Dirk warned, “is flattening these views together. A dashboard meant for reliability engineers will be meaningless for board members. And executive dashboards often gloss over critical details.”
Even worse is aggregating inconsistent metrics: “You end up mixing apples and pears. Without proper normalisation, you risk creating false facts, and that’s dangerous at the leadership level.”
Dirk offered a provocative analogy: “As CIOs, we should act like sailors : taking action using insights from the past, the present, and the future, but always with a twist of gut feeling. The real singularity isn’t AI. It’s the CIO.”
Asked about what makes an effective feedback loop, Dirk was clear: “First, check if a loop even exists. Many organisations are flatter in theory than in practice. Messages from the executive level often get distorted or ignored on the way down.”
The solution? “Actively connect all key players. Translate strategic goals into language that resonates at the operational level. But also: participate in the loop. Visit teams. Speak their language. Don’t just say, ‘We want to maximise domain knowledge as a competitive advantage.’ Say what that means. Brainstorm together.” “Once you do that,” he added, “feedback starts flowing naturally.”
When asked whether he considers himself ‘data-driven’, Dirk replied: “I’m surrounded by data: dashboards, alerts, vendor reports, internet wisdom. But they’re not in the driver’s seat.”
“Data should objectify, highlight patterns, raise questions. But it doesn’t replace judgment. Some of the best dashboards are the ones people don’t agree on, because that’s when the real conversation starts.”
Under pressure, Dirk argued, instinct is often more reliable than cold metrics: “You build shared understanding when the waters are calm. So when the storm hits, you can trust your gut, and your team’s. We’ve had operational systems where early warning signals came not from the dashboard, but from practitioners. That kind of human feedback? It’s gold.”
“If your weather app says sunny but you smell the storm, don’t sail into it.”
Dirk offered a cautionary tale: “The optimisation paradox is when local improvements damage the system as a whole. You see this everywhere.”
In infrastructure: “Data centres optimise by scaling vertically; bigger machines. But software teams often want horizontal scaling; many small components. These collide. Vendors exploit that with licensing changes: from sockets to cores. What looked optimised now costs you.”
In support teams: “You try to improve throughput. You start measuring tickets per person, resolution time. Soon, people split complex tickets to game the metric. Backlogs shrink, numbers look great but you’ve just increased noise.”
His message was clear: “Optimising a part without understanding the system often leads to the opposite of what you wanted.”
“Intent doesn’t move the needle, translation does,” Dirk said. “Strategy often gets distorted as it travels down the organisation. Each team interprets it their own way.”
What’s needed? “Ongoing dialogue. Not just a broadcast. Strategic messages should be reinterpreted, refined, and co-created at every level. Include operational people early. Let them challenge, clarify, and shape the rollout. Otherwise, strategy is theatre.”
He added, “CIOs must act as translators. You’re the convergence point — where abstract ambition meets real-world execution.”
In the public sector, Dirk noted, change can take years. “We’re not a speedboat. With procurement rules and legacy processes, turning takes time.”
So how do you stay relevant? “Build a feedback loop into the strategy itself. Don’t wait until the end to adapt. Adjust course as you go.”
He referenced Smals’ own history: “We were founded in 1939. Starting a company on the eve of WWII, imagine that. We didn’t survive by doing the same thing for 80 years. We’ve evolved constantly, especially during crises. That’s when your ability to lead matters most.”
And his final reminder: “Be ready to change. And to change yourself. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow.”
Dirk Deridder brought the audience back to a powerful truth: dashboards don’t drive transformation, leaders do. And those leaders must navigate between clarity and complexity, data and instinct, control and trust.
Thank you, Dirk, for reminding us that real digital leadership is not found in KPIs or software, but in the people interpreting them, and the courage to act when they fall short.
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