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Markus Diethelm: On Success

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Markus Diethelm 2021
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Elected as Co-Chair of the American Swiss Foundation in 2021, Markus U. Diethelm most recently served as General Counsel at Credit Suisse from June 2022 until the merger of UBS and CS. From 2021 until the end of April 2022, Markus Diethelm was Of Counsel to UBS and for the previous thirteen years, he served as the General Counsel of UBS Group AG (2014 to 2021) and UBS AG (since 2008). From April 1, 1998 through August 2008, Markus served as the Chief Legal Officer of Swiss Re Group.

How can we help everyone - and I mean everyone - live to their potential? Let us begin by putting an end to averagarian thinking - meaning that any organization composed of individuals of average ability, working in accordance with policies, plans and procedures discovered by analysis of fundamental facts of their situations, will in the long run prove more successful and stable than an organization of geniuses each led by inspiration. We have lost dignity for individuality by measuring a person’s uniqueness and value from his / her deviation from the average. Have universities and schools educated students to the same level, or only sorted them according to their innate level of talent? We all have been used to compare our compensation to the average compensation to assess how successful we are or we have judged our children‘s GPA to the average GPA to determine their academic success. Talent is always jagged, and we have probably developed blind spots in relying too much on hiring packets, developed by recruiters helping managers to make hiring decisions. Imagine we skip all resumés and ask three or four simple questions - allowing only for black or white answers (no nuance) - to determine certain basic skills and then tell a job applicant: we don‘t care what you have done or how you have learned your skill- we just want you to be good and excited to put your skills to work!

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