Oliver Gygax reflects on his progression through treasury roles and the challenge of setting new goals after years of success. He shares how to keep moving forward in a treasury career when you've already achieved what you set out to do.
It was just like with growing in a job, you want to grow as well. You have yourself established and you think there is a part you want to learn or which is helpful for you, then I think you must find where you can do that. Because the career as such is your individual story. It's not a company's task to give you the career. That's why, I mean, for me then, as said, it was running a team or running a department, having this chance to go back. I mean, my boss I had before, he was still there and he became my boss again, but he was not involved in treasury anymore. My focus was on the job and on the job description. And what can I learn from me? I mean, I mentioned I had an apprenticeship and so step by step, I was filling my backpack with experience. And so the industry as such was secondary for me. First, I wanted to leave the bank, so I went to the online bank. Then I wanted to leave the banking as such, I went to the corporate side. So then I wanted to lead the Treasury Department. I went to the Arduino Group. And then leaving the Arduino Group, I got the chance to have the responsibility for the treasury within Swarovski, because it was a new established position within Swarovski. We've done a lot during that time. At the end, it was nine years in total. I was working 14 years for Swarovski. At the end, I was lacking of ideas. How can we further improve? It was really running well. I had a wonderful team and we implemented systems, we could improve processes. It became more and more business partnering. But for me personally, it was very difficult to define new targets. So I just felt it's time to move on.
