From Tech Lead to CEO with Mahdi Fanidisfani

Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akio and I adore this conversation. It shows me that it's possible to go from software engineer all the way to CEO. Returning guest back from episode 20 is my friend Mahdi Fani Disfani who did exactly that. We cover his journey and everything that happened in between. Enjoy this episode. So what? What is like your main focus on

a day-to-day nowadays? Well, compared to two years ago when I was basically joining IKEA as an engineer manager. These days I'm the kind of the director of the company called Crusoe, the branch of the Netherlands because Crusoe is a bigger consultancy in the Nordics and and now they're expanding to to the rest of Europe. And the Netherlands is one of the the new markets that I'm going to be the the CEO of that and if I'm going to now compare

myself with the daily. Differences that they had compared to the past it's it's very kind of also kind of problem solving oriented on on the business side I would say because now as a consultancy it's it's very now important that you target the right problems in the market and also you are in the places that you should be. So that that's kind of creative research around you that of course it's including networking is including you be.

The top of the trends, what's happening in the market, what is the needs that maybe would raise in the coming months and just be prepared for that. So for example, to give an example, I mean how my day would look like basically of course after dropping and picking up my daughter between this time and someone said very nicely that of course. You can achieve a lot between drop off and pick up of course. And I'm trying to of course still to keep that balance

between family and work. Because when you come to this position, especially to the company that I am now going to direct me which is in a start up here, it's it can easily get lost the life part and you need to ensure that you get the energy from that. And of course you get the motivation mixture from the work, and together you can make magic when it comes to work, and so I keep that.

As much as I can balance when it comes to the work, it's usually starting of course with with the meetings and with some meetings regarding that, how we're going to approach perhaps some leads or clients we have or some projects we're going to go. And at the same time defining the directions in the first months for me is very important. What is the vision of this company, where we are heading to?

What are the really the services or the thing that they're going to provide to the to the clients or to people because? Let's be honest about that. I always hated consultancies. So I never liked consultancies because my whole life carrier life was in the product side. I was working for product companies, National and IKEA super before that and bytecode and all those companies. I always hired basically

consultants to work for me. And one of one of the things that I always missed was consultants are not basically maybe behaving or acting as. As to the expectation that they had Okay, it's not something wrong with them. They were like amazing people, amazing engineers. They were joining but there was a mismatch to delivery that the outcome that they expected and what was handed over to me. Okay. And he always felt like a piece of information is lost when the consultant is gone.

Yeah, the knowledge that they gained. Exactly. And then? You need to figure it out yourself because it was always in the scary day that the people say, OK, the consultant contract is over and you're always thinking what's happening day after. And of course you do your best to do all the documentation handovers, but there's still some of the information kind of stick to the people brain and

then be gone when they are gone. And and that was one of the main pains and sometimes working with some companies that better to not name them, but I mean I suffered working with them personally because the quality of work was so low and sometimes you feel that I'm going to save. Money to work with lower kind of rate consultancies, but at the end you pay double, yeah. You get what you pay for it, yeah. Exactly. So the quality of the work is very important when it comes to that market.

And I worked with consultancies that the quality was really overbeating the price that we were paying and that was basically the deal always liked and that's the value exactly. Yeah. So when this opportunity came along the way around a couple of months back and of course I fought for it and and got to this position.

Because it was my dream, as we discussed last time, I wanted to have this as startup and I was looking to find maybe the right time in the coming two years or something to make it happen. But then sometimes opportunity comes and you need to listen to them. So I tried to chase it and and now I'm here. But when it comes to them, and I

said, OK, this is consultancy, let's not be consultancy in, in the body of consultancy and I'm going to call ourselves as value delivery company or value delivery squad, yeah. What does it mean is we only be present and participating in the places and in the companies and projects that we are assured that we can deliver value and we deliver the value which we are assured that it's gonna have an impact on the client or on their customers and so on. Because I think it's the word is

full of the meaningless works. And and personally, I think this, this board needs more meaningful plus trendy things to happen and of course can kind of remove the fears from the technology, which sometimes you feel it yourself and you're on the product side and maybe you're limited by the, by the structure. Yeah. So, and one of the things that I'm now iterating over, it's the AI thing that came. Over the past year it's it's a boom. Some people got it as benefits.

Everyone is building things on top of that. Some people still are afraid of it, some people are still ignoring it. And until there's a mixture of feeling about this and if you are really a tech company and you have expertise. Personally myself, I've worked in several companies and I have that technical background.

And I brought people from product and agile and and those kind of aspects of job families together to build this company now as the as the foundation when you have them together perhaps you can overcome those fears and you can convert them to opportunities. And also sometimes you can confirm, yes, you should be afraid, yeah, that's gonna not mean good for you and your business. So a good driver sometimes. Exactly. So those are the things that I see as values to deliver so.

Some part of my day is focused on the values really they're going to deliver. So I think the first month, so the first two months is super PAC. Of course you have administration. I need to pay salaries. I need to ensure that the money is running and the company is running the office have enough, you know, accessories. I mean this is a start up vibe that they love as well. And the same time, these are overheads during your job that maybe you don't have in big

companies. In IKEA everything was set up for me and I just hire people and yeah, you have the team and you do the job, but now I need to ensure the environment is also set. Yeah, which is fun. At the same time, it's an extra work that you need to do. But when it comes to the really focused time and productivity, really my time with my team is a spend on on basically vision plan, how we can be useful for clients and how we can ensure that we are the right people for them.

So that's basically also covering a lot of my time during the day that we think and also I do research. And we do conversation with the team at the same time. We of course do networking and looking for basically finding the right spots for us to be present. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm, I'm listening to that and I'm thinking the skills that you

laid out and what your day-to-day is, is vastly different from kind of starting out in software engineering. And I just want to make a small bridge because, you know, I have very different kind of the career paths. You started out very much in product and I've been with CBL like I think back it's almost been five years. So I've done five years in consultancy and my career history is not that long. So it's vastly like the majority

part of what I've done. And The funny thing is I I'd like to think it's different than other consultancy companies. I was always taught that when you start an assignment you you start with the exit in mind because at some point you have to leave off and the company needs to go and and do the thing by itself, right.

And even when I start assignments, I challenge if they actually need consultants because I think for a company to help them it's better if they have the people internal and if they can't then we can help them out. But if we if they can, then I I shouldn't be there. I'm not necessary there. So maybe that's a bit, maybe that's a bit controversial, but to kind of lead up to the point

where you are where you are now. Last time we spoke, we talked about kind of tech leadership and that was the the focus and the focal point. A few weeks after that, you move to kind of an engineering management position and even then you move to an head of engineering management position kind of briefly. Yeah. And now you're CEO like I feel like the position and it's fully in line with what you said back then, which is why I think this is beautiful. You step by step are getting new

responsibilities, right. They're more people based and now they're even more business based. And I think the tech part is still there, but I think those responsibilities are more so delegated and less on your plate as a main focus point that's not even on the plate that you mentioned now that is on your day-to-day.

Can you talk about the transition and let's start about from the position of being a tech lead to that engineering management position, kind of the differences there and then we can lead up to what you do now? Absolutely. And of course I want to 1st trade over what you said. Of course we had this conversation about Zebia and and some companies I didn't have the chance or maybe the luck to work

with some of them, yeah. And and the whole thing about the consultancy also business, we, I'm just going to say guys, we need to change this perception. Yeah. Because as a client that I was for years, I didn't have a good understanding of what really the the final benefit of having those people and at the same time not the people per SE, I mean the companies. Getting as kind of a teammate and at the same time don't just

see them as money seekers. They are there for delivering value and I think we aligned on that that our vision is to make us absolute on the client side and that's the plan. So we don't want to stay there the moment that we get in we want to get out as soon as possible when we are happy that the client is fully on board and and they are self-sufficient to do a stuff and that's that's very lovely that to be on us.

We are basically online and done and I think I also I need to be tried over the fact that to be honest we need friendships or partnerships over competition. I mean, competition can be healthy, but I mean the competition can come not really to to stealing clients or doing, but it comes to. Making better or maybe maybe different quality of works when it comes to different, yeah, names. So I think the partnership and the friendship would be my aim

when it comes to this business. Now moving on to to your

question, basically what happened last time I was basically a tech lead in NN and I moved to engineer manager role at IKEA, yeah, which was basically a bigger size company, a global company compared to National Adenom which is mainly present in Europe. Then one of the first projects that I have done apart from the big project that I was working on was basically also delivering our solar service in in US And it was very interesting because I was working in another

continent and and and and totally new market to 20 new customers and and that was very nicely actually being done as well and thanks to my team and and then that comes also to having a wider view of basically a customer. Experience, because then you when you go to that level, apart from the technical qualities that you try to bring the best of the breed to the market and so on and so forth, then you need to ensure that really the value is delivered for the right

problem. I mean the same when it comes to products and not only in one market. You can just say I've done a great job, then it's going to roll out everywhere. No. Then you need to learn that there is a difference between customer segment segmentation, So.

You have different Joe locations and you have different experiences and expectations and I I learned that during the transition as well and also played a lot and then you also got to learn of course getting closer to business when it comes to the genuine manager roles or those leaderships.

It's it's a very important aspects which is maybe sometimes coming first before the technical part because if the bridge between these two wards the IT and stakeholders and business are not properly settled. Then you cannot really achieve it much. I mean, I felt it myself. I was kind of balancing.

Did you still have technical responsibilities in the projects you did there? Yeah. Absolutely. In in IKEA, it's AI always say that IKEA, engineer, manager that IKEA, because every company has its own definition, is basically an solution architect, team lead, tech lead, people manager. And and basically you can say yeah and hands on coder in some ways. So this is combination of everything. That's all the hats.

Yeah. And and also one of The thing is you have a lot of meetings to attend, to be honest, because you need to sync a lot of parties, especially the team that I was energy services in IKEA, you you had several products and you have different stakeholders around it. As I said, IKEA is present in 33 countries. So if you multiply them, it's by itself becomes too many people

involved in projects. I need to find the reason to have the meetings at the same time over oversighting the technical part to ensure that the delivery of the quality of the technical part is to the to the certain quality and you are accountable for delivery of the technical part, so that should

be your main role. At the same time, you were counterparting a personal counterpart with the product manager, with my managers, Paul, with the UX leader to ensure that this basically we were calling them. Job families are very sync together. We can be a united by the business and together we deliver value for the customers because when it comes to stakeholders, there's always this kind of debate with them that they have the feeling something is good for the business and good for

the customers. Yeah, but then we know that for years we if you want to be successful in the business or product, you need to be data-driven. So translating that data-driven in the right way. And message it to business is very important. So if you miss out properly, explain that you miss out the opportunity to deliver something together.

And of course the great things that I love about IKEA, there's two things that was very nice, the sad and also the two values. One of them is togetherness, like you need we are together anyway, so that's very nice. And you the moment that you enter to the IKEA office, you feel it that you are together. Everyone's supportive and everyone is, is there to help. And the other thing is about basically lead by example.

I think these two are very critical, especially when it comes to the role of engineer manager or the leaders above. Yeah, and togetherness, you have to really define it when it comes to a stakeholder management as well and engineer manager has a role there. So at the beginning I was very focused in the first months, especially because I needed to do some migration and do some foundational work. I was very focused mainly on the technical solution, drafting

with my senior engineers. And also good to mention, when I joined IKEA I had zero engineers internally and I was working only. I guess it was 5 consultants. OK, that team over the two years. Let's mention that over the two years I hired around 20 people among which seven was internals. So my team grow from zero to 7 / a year plus. And it was amazing because that was one of the targets I needed to hit and we discussed it

internally. And so that big team has has been established along the the first months and at the same time I was building the foundation, drafting it basically on the high level and then detailing it out to be the senior engineers. And then it slowly I was more focused on the business side because I needed now to sell that solution and say, OK, we have this migration.

I need to draft the values out of it to buy time to at the same time not disappoint them and say OK we have this feature queue and now you need to deliver them a specific time but they said can we push it three months and then Y you need to have a good Y explanation about it and and that becomes basically more more to my plate of having meetings and and sinking the kind of the overarching roads and and at the same time that was the moment also I think after. I think 6-7 months.

I was also doing acting head of engineering for several months and that add up to my meetings because I was playing two roles over head of Engineering and engineer managers. So together was a bit like a bit of stretch for me. However, I loved it because it was a challenging. And actually experience which I needed to learn a lot of things.

What is the the main difference there? Do you oversee multiple teams from that head of engineering perspective? Yeah, When it comes to Head of Engineering basically some kind of companies I mean IKEA called it Product Engineer Manager which is translated as head of Engineering. In some companies they call it Senior Engineer manager. It's it's the moment exactly you're handling couple of engineer managers under you and kind of product teams and and products.

And and it comes also to more strategical decisions. It's also you get the the budget on top and you need to divide it based on the focus and initiatives coming over the year. You're responsible a lot on the budgeting, especially at IKEA. You need to be very cautious about costs because we believe they're that any cost coming on the IT. Even if it's not included directly on the product making like of course IKEA make

furniture, right? So if I don't know the cost of wood go up, it means that we need perhaps to increase our cost to our price when it comes to the product selling but. There is no direct connection. If you waste two hours of an engineering time in a meeting, how that impacts the customer, yeah, because it's not the main thing. Exactly. That's why in IKEA is very important. You always be cautious about the spendings and you always be cautious on how you spend things

and also forecasting. So that's a very critical things you need to do. Always cost consciousness is a value. We need to always be OK certain that when we're spending things is not going to negatively impact the business, which basically implicitly impacts the customer. Yeah. And that was very interesting because it was the moment that all the war and things happen. I think everything was happening

at the same time. Yeah, basically I got the acting, then the war happened and because all the companies that start laying off, it was a really a crazy heat to the market, right? And financial crisis sort of started back then. And and then I'm now in the row and all this limitation comes and I still we we don't at a key of course we are proud of that we didn't lay off any people

during that hard time. But it still for the pressure on the head of engineering's to have a a new budget plan how to react on those limitation that was coming unexpected to the

plate. Yeah. And that's one of the thing and another thing is now in that role I was responsible to ensure that we are sync in the domain level with other head of engineering to ensure that for example we have a unified engineering basis that OK, we we defined it kind of the the baselines and everyone adhere to that and we start reusing components from each other. So we kind of prevent redundant works to save time and at the

same time to save money. Because that's the way it go forward, right, the modular implementation. So you become a bit more responsible on the strategic decision also to the technical solution and also involve other parties maybe from other teams to come and maybe knowledge here or the other way around. And now you found this kind of spotlight for your team and go and present your work to others that you've maybe found it interesting for them and you want to share the knowledge on that.

So that becomes a bit kind of overarching role. And at the same time, you also define basically sort of with the business, you define the coming initiatives, priorities and maybe, yeah, maybe the impact of them. Because in IKEA we always plan like three years, two years ahead at least. And you are now responsible to city the business in the very, very primary steps to define the initiatives coming here and also to define priorities and budgeted for the IT was very interesting, I was.

Forecasting for two years ahead and it was the first time I was doing that. And these are the things that I I got to learn when I was kind of bumped to that role for a temporary time. And that's. That's really cool. I can imagine that at that

level, did you do any hands on coding at that point? Because you already said it was challenging finding space to do technical hands on work. You were still responsible in that engineering management position. But more markets, more aligning with people, different responsibilities and different disciplines requires meetings and time to align on that. And then you move over one step higher and you oversee multiple teams.

You're now budget holder. So you were first advocating for your team and your priorities, and now you own the budget. So you have to give that away and align with other people what the budget can be and what the priority should be. Was there any space for any technical work there? Of course no. Of course. Yes. I was like man, no. When I was still maybe very very much loving coding that's why.

Maybe some night and some I was doing still some line of course or maybe practice or something with with AI stuff to just because I'm a kind of a nerd of AI this. I mean, I'm just looking for opportunities also for my personal life to see how we can add it and we also do a stuff around it. Yeah. And but at the same time, really my work fix increased to 60

hours. I mean either in eight hours I was doing 10 hours work or I was a bit over stretching my day because it was too much of things and it was really critical period. We needed to deliver a lot of stuff. Yeah, And for me, to be honest, I always try to be a servant leader. I don't say I am one, but I tried to learn from the good leaders in the market and also I tried to be one of them. Yeah, for me it was very important that my team is

healthy, everyone is happy. And not to not to forget that I'm there for them first of all and then for the for the company and then for the client. Yeah, so, so that's why people Call Me Maybe people oriented manager or something, but I don't like also the manager name by the way.

And the main thing for me in that time was I ensured that every week I have some time still I keep up my my final ones with my team and also ensure that the overall team is happy, which is not only engineering but also the UX, the mixture of these team that's working together. There's a good momentum because I think that's the fun part of life of work life and and that's the the thing that take people to work in the morning and I don't want to steal that because

I'm super busy. I'm taking two roles and then they are getting backfired by that. So that was my focus. At the same time I still did to be honest some pull request reviews per week. So I still sometimes my intuitive and expected and I was opening it out and then going oh this is I start commenting and then they were saying what are you doing, yeah you were expecting to not do that but yeah they're like it. Anyway because I also missed it. At least I said I can do some

reviews and and also a bit pull request. Reviews is amazing to be honest. Apart from coding you learn and you also you still get close why not coding but you still get close to what's happening in the team. And then also you can sometimes maybe find some rabbit holes but and also that also give the feeling that that gave the feeling to my engineers. Even if I'm not hands hands on coding of which I was doing much more in NN than IKEA.

I did IKEA. I think I did nothing compared to NN. Still the but I'm very close to them and that was real because I really read their documentation. I asked them to write design documents when there was a decision. I always ensure that there is a proper layer of the delegations. I mean that delegation isn't really is a strong word and delegation becomes much much more critical and important if you go up, up, up you.

You should just have the time to think about things forward and delegate things as much as possible to to other people, and just keep only some few decisions to make by you did. You have any issues with that that? I'm delegating when it comes to the delegation. At the same time, one of the thing that I always triggered me, which was critical and always double think about it, is also how much you need to delegate to a single person.

Because sometimes you just feel I am overstretched and now I'm going to delegate to kind of a bit and get it scoped.

But then you also I'm afraid that I'm too much delegating maybe to people that I'm overstretching them because engineers when it comes to senior engineers they are Also there is this yes personality because challenges are nice and people would like to get more but at the same time that's my responsibility to ensure that I give the right amount of work to ensure that they still have a good life work balance. Because some of my engineers they were crazy and I I always

had this conversation with them. Guys I don't want you to work after 6:00 PM or five PMI don't care if the business is going downfall. No care go sit watch Netflix. I don't care don't sit at. I mean some of them were like sleeping at 4:00 AM because they were so connected to the topic. There was no really urgency on the deadline, but they were so connected. They wanted to really get out

out of it something. And then the day after presented and and the second day after, they were like, we'll have sleep and so what's happening 4:00 AM, I've done it finally. And I said yes, I don't like that. I mean. But it's you talked about lead

by example, right? And it's some of the challenges I've seen also in practice that leadership sometimes stretches themselves because you were wearing multiple hats. So you were like, I have to, these are my responsibilities. You go the extra mile. But then to your people, you're like, no, no, no. But you don't do that like you're supposed to like. Work within the hours there, that's that's hard to balance. That's a yeah, that's a very,

very nice one you spotted. To be honest, I also always tell them is I'm not good luck into ambitious because I always make them more ambitious. Yeah, I mean that's I'm ambitious and by nature I just push them. If you talk to them, I just push them. Yeah, I hope that is inspirational. But sometimes they don't feel that I'm annoying, but I'm, I'm pushing them to get out of the comfort zone because the beauty is sitting out of the comfort zone.

I mean if you're if you're doing the same as you're doing over the years or over the last months, what is the difference between you and AI and something that does only task and check the boxes. I didn't think any. There's anything. It's repetitive. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then it's going to get and you're going to get annoyed anyway, even if you feel very good with the current payment and your current job.

But I as a manager or leader, that's your responsibility to ensure that you you put the step that way ahead that they're always going to get some spikes in their carriers that they are always surprised but oh, there's nice challenge. And then so that that ambitious I always injected to their mind. At the same time, I say there is a balance. If I work for example 10 hours, but I do my dream, I do take

care of my family, I have fun. Maybe I do 2 extra hours before my sleep or something, but ensure that I have enough sleep. So those critical things you need to take. And then of course if your loved ones are asleep and then you have a loan and then you are awake and maybe you can spend some more time and then on your private time.

However, I just mentioned if the work is properly scoped. If you have proper focused during the working days, the 40 days you can achieve, some people achieve in 100 hours. Sorry, in the 40 hours you can achieve what people achieve in 100 hours and that too. Factors are the responsibility of the leaders of course, the engineering or the engineers or the other the the coworkers. They have also their own agenda. They need to check their calendar and so on.

But just consider one fact that it's our responsibility to ensure that they are secure about the context changes they have during the week or during the day. And that's my responsibility. If I'm gonna let their agenda to be open and let everyone to fill in my the agenda of my team, I cannot expect they can focus something out of it. I mean some people always mentioned in a lot of posts that no engineers can achieve anything 30 minutes between two

meetings. Yeah. So my my basically base base kind of rules was we need to ensure that there is 3, three hours gap between meetings. So in three hours at least two hours can be focused on and people can be productive if it comes to delivery.

So these things are basically the main thing that I'm mentioning don't work over the night and and at the same time if you feel the pressure of the deadline that you've and you're a committed person and you own things and you feel that you need to work more, that's again my bad. As your leader, I shouldn't put the deadline the way that is not comfortable or I should do it the way that either I scope the work down and I still ensure that you can secure it in 40

hours. So that comes to my jobs to ensure that what I'm feeding you is 40 hours feeding. But if you want to do magic things, or crazy things, or want to experience things, and you want to spend another 10 hours per week or 20 hours per week that you'll call, you want to wake up in the morning, 5:00 AM, two hours coding on something new in the market for yourself or reading articles, That's your call for me. It's important and I'm not causing that extra works outside the working hours.

Yeah, I love, I love the ownership that you take in there, right? Because it is what you do has impact on the people that work with you, right? And from a leadership position that just multiplies by the amount of people that you're leading in that way. So having that example role and making sure they're focused. 40 hours is as effective as possible just by virtue of allowing their agenda for breathing room and focus time and not being managed by other people.

I love that. And then also when they do go the extra mile, obviously it's allowed. Everyone has their own kind of free time and how they spend it. But the emphasis on recovery is how it how they are resilient, right? How it's sustainable, how they can do it for a longer period and you're not the driver. There they are. And I think that's the best aspect, right? It comes from within.

And I think that is that goes hand in hand with kind of ambitious people, people that are driven, they want to go the extra mile, so they should also be allowed to do so. And you can't control that anyway as long as it's healthy. That's the important part exactly.

And also I always mentioned them I said you have 40 I'm I'm I have to basically ensure that you have proper 40 hours planned. Yeah of your week. But if you are amazing performer and you finish it in three days I ever that don't ever feed more for the extra two days that you did you did better. You have the freedom no use that two days as your benefit that's your bonus.

So you over achieved what was expected in the 24 hours instead of 40 hours then you get that reward to spend that on your personal growth and maybe try something new. So I always, I always say, which is also one of my ideas when it comes to to the budgeting, all the companies are complaining about budgets. But I was asking when I'm in the companies and and I see people complaining, I already can see

million leakages. So did you ever optimize and kind of cover the kind of maybe cover those leakages to see really you don't have money and I call it the empty pocket metaphor that they always complain about empty pockets. But did you check what you have bought in over the past three days? You bought candy there, you bought 2 waffle there and maybe if you save that money you can already buy a mobile phone. I don't know something like

that. So when it comes also to people, did we, the first question I asked myself, did I optimize their working hours, Do they take the most out of it all the time? The answer is no. You can still make things better to give them more focused time that they deliver more. So that's the my main issue if we'd really we can say anyone dare to say that yes, we optimize 40 hours of our employees. If you get that then maybe you can ask for some extra mileage.

But I I don't ever think anyone can get to the 100%. So this is basically the first aspect of optimizing what you're doing, rather putting more in their plate because some people have this mindset the more we put that's kind of mental pressure on them. But I said no, the the urgency feeling that you want to give to your team to deliver something, it doesn't come from there as as long as you're more close to them. That's my approach.

When it comes to critical moments, I'm closer than ever to my engineers say I'm sitting next to you. You need to deliver this One. You can deliver this. No worries. Maybe I will start coding together. Actually, one is that sentence is a magic because the day after I say they are done, they just felt you're not alone, you're supported and nothing going to fall to their plate. I always say we've been together, we learn together, Yeah, it's no individual, so

don't worry. How do you make sure that they don't see that as pressure, right? Because there's something unique about you that when you say that let's do this together, they don't see it as, Oh my God, my manager sitting next to me there. They're looking over my shoulder and blah, blah, blah. No, they see it as a benefit, right? We're in this together. But something you do makes them feel that. Yeah, because the only thing is, I'm not close to them. Only in that times.

I'm always close to them. Yeah. So when I'm doing that, I'm not being a strange in the world. That's. What? There's nothing new sitting close. No, I'm always close to them. Yeah. Either I'm close to them to say what's happening with them or I'm close to them to see what what they want to do next or I'm close to them to to deliver something together as a team.

So the problem when it comes to some leaders, I think you spotted an amazing problem in the in this industry is the leader sometimes feels yes, we need to be just present there on the sad moment or the critical moment and in the happy moments, and then everything is going well. No one is really looking for engineers. Where are those people? Somewhere in the in the office.

They are coding, but that's the mistake, because if you are not, they don't feel they are close to them or you're in their team. Your vote means nothing to me. You're an outsider. Exactly, Yeah. That's how they will feel it. So I try not fake it, but really later because I'm really concerned that it's not really because of my my payments or my rose. And no, as a friend or I, I got to learn this new term as a professional football club. We need to be together to win. Yeah, and.

And I need to be in frontline with them. Maybe I don't do the code, but I can provide them the environment, right. And providing the environment is as equal as they're doing because the main thing engineer wants is focus a calm, safe environment to deliver things and to make mistakes. Yeah, so the first thing I let them do mistakes and I also do mistakes.

To say you see nothing happens of course do mistakes and and I think that's the maybe the trick that when I'm talking to my teams when it comes to critical moment, I said guys this is really that serious. We need to cut it down and then we need to finish it. Tell me what should be out if you need to do that, tell me what is the risk that we need to mitigate now or tell me how confident I should be that we can deliver it then. Really those answers are the

best answers I always get. And with that I create. I translate them to the conversation to stakeholders or to my peers in the product and together we create a message and talk to the stakeholders and it amazingly work at IKEA which lead to deliver amazing projects and and we I'm super proud of the team and and I'm super proud of my team and what we have achieved and all the kudos to Dom.

I think we as the leaders there just watched and and celebrate with them and that was a very happy moment. I love that. I love that. I think you're when I look back to our previous conversation,

one of the things that stuck with me is just the ambition and drive that you have. I think it's electrifying and probably within that team people look at you and that's also what drives and kind of fuels their own ambition. Yet still I think and maybe hiring has a has a component there, there will be people that just want to coast more. So maybe coast is a wrong term, but they just want to be fed with the work, they want to do the work.

They don't want to put emphasis on those relationships, maybe not want to build on the team aspect as much or understand the business problems that much. They just want to do the technical problems and get really good at that. How do you kind of fuel that ambition from that side or do you take the stance off, That's all right and we we handle it up differently. Let's convert that to a context

of a football club. Consider you have a team that everyone would like to do pass and and one of the score together. Yeah. And one of them comes and said no. Not me. I'm completely with you to win the game. However, I'm doing though my own way and I'm gonna. I'm more into dribbling. So you have 11 people in the field, One is dribbling, 10 is watching. Yeah, how that feels. Yeah, it sucks exactly how how you as a coach will lead in the team. I mean, you can say Patrick, OK,

did you dribble it? But they got the score. Maybe you'll score it as well. Maybe you will score, but how many people are gonna come really celebrate the score with you after the US scored a goal? Yeah, zero. It's not a team effort. There will come maybe club and say OK, amazing and then we win the game and then but after one or two games if you do that then people said such a yeah, yeah, right. So they I think that's exactly coming to the context of work as well.

Maybe you achieve and you deliver one project together, 2 projects together. But as when you're not a team player, this system kind of see you as I think you call it outside the OR maybe kind of it's silo. I mean and especially when a silo is a single person, it's very hard to manage that as I mean I don't want to be that person being that silo, right. And I think as a manager as you mentioned, hiring for sure has an aspect today.

So one of the aspects that I'm checking, that we were checking all the time is about hiring people. That matches the culture of the team and matches the value of the team and the company. So that could translate to being a team player. Because as long as you feel that you are belonged, you belong to the team and you belong to this kind of club, you will really contribute and you will do it in

any way to make it successful. But as long as you feel no, I'm just there because my value means something. I'm the best coder in the world for sure, there's no doubt, but I think there's a mismatch for for my teams as it comes to those players. And you put more emphasis on

that team feeling, because I've also been in situations where the people that dribble by themselves, they're really good at that, and they score over and over and over again. They might be the best coder that I've worked with. Yet the team aspect is lacking, probably because they're really good at delivering. They don't feel like they have

to put that emphasis on there. And I've been in environments where people say that behaviour is not OK or this guy's an exception and that behaviour is OK. To be honest, of course I don't think there was a good or bad answer to it. You cannot say this is a good, this is a good way of accepting it or this is the bad way if you accepted it. I think it's a really compromise based on what you're gonna get out of that.

Maybe sometimes there is AI don't know, $1,000,000 project and you need someone to just deliver. Who cares? They're gonna he's gonna talk. No, I just need someone to deliver in a month because I'm gonna get a million out of it. Yeah, yes, maybe I would say yes. I will find in my network the best one and say put it there. Deliberate. OK thanks. Handshake.

Bye. Yeah but if you want to go long and you want to repeat the same success that was the that's the moment that you will get to problems having those players in the team. Yeah. I mean that's a very interesting things also to mention again and I was a from to the to the football it's always hard it's always interesting to have one star in a football club. You can have Cristiano Ronaldo like now in in Saudi Arabia he's a he's a superstar of the league right.

And now of course, more people coming, but you can be a superstar, but then you're alone. I mean you can score and people can celebrate and people be happy that you own, they own them. But how far you can go with that, You know, the team of superstars is what I'm looking for. What I'm building also with in Crusoe is I called it best of the breed or the performance team, Performance squad. That's what I want to do, like bringing the best of the breed

together. It doesn't mean that it's the same personality, no these people that we did my team, when we sit around the table, we a lot disagree and I love it and I say yes, challenge more, challenge more. But the moment in we make a decision, we make a decision together. Maybe it's a compromise, maybe know someone reasoning is much more stronger than the other and then we get that. But when we leave the room, everyone is happy and we said yeah score.

So that team, team, player feeling is basically giving me also as the leader or the owner of that business alongside of success because those people also can get bored easily. I mean if you're not, as you mentioned, I'm a best coder and I want to just do work. I don't care about anything else, just leave me alone, give me the work, give me the tickets, I burn the tickets. Like you're going to get bored in some point. Yeah, right.

Yeah, so I need to. And that's this basically the 2nd aspect of that what we are evaluating. So how are the skills? Soft skills? If you miss one of those, you need to go to a different ladder in your career to fix it, basically. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. How do you put or what do you

look for in those hiring conversations? Because you, you built up the team at IKEA and now you switch to crusade and you're building up a team there as well, right? Hiring is such a big aspect of that when it comes to who's sitting in front of me, who do I, who do I want to have next to me within this team? Who do I want to pass the ball to? Who do I want to win this cup

with? And it requires trust, and especially if it's people that you haven't worked with before in the stack environment, it's very hard to gauge that from an interview perspective. How do you do that or what you put emphasis on? I think I learned this question from a smart person which was about actually this question to yourself. After the interview, will you sit needs next to this person for 8 hours flight?

Yeah, I think it says a lot. And it's it's coming not only to the hard disk because one of the thing that as you mentioned, I hired a lot of people when I was in IKEA and also before and now it's basically repeating the cycle again, maybe in different context when it comes to to hiring over this team that I'm super proud of them. They are now an amazing strong club together. Yeah, without me.

I was basically the aim for me also as a leader was always to be redundant to get to the point that I'm I'm feeling that I'm redundant and that's the best feeling that I can get because the team is autonomous enough that they don't need me. And in IKEA I'm happy. When I left was the moment that really I felt that I'm I get to reach to that point. It doesn't mean. I mean don't either be afraid of OK, we are redundant so they're going to fire us.

No. When you're redundant that shows that you have a good quality to lead other initiatives and then you can spend your time on other things because this part is this micro service is running by itself. Just focus on another micro service maybe or the connection between micro services and that's basically that hiring was critical question that I usually ask about how to handle conflict. How do you see conflict in

general? And I always ask of course conflict doesn't mean that we're going to just get neck to neck and then have a conversation. No, also conflict on a pull request. Consider you have a code and I start writing a comment which is totally against what you wrote. What is your reaction And a lot of good insights coming from that question. Sometimes people are also surprised. Well, I never had conflict in my life and it's a can we review it again?

Can we review it again? And then when you go, as I consider the pull request, consider a meeting that if you're sitting around, you have an opinion two ways. You have an opinion that there is person or the rest is kind of against that or the others have something and you're against that. How you'll be behaving that. And of course, when it comes also to person to person conflict, that's another level of conflict. So I asked how they react and really I rejected some people

easily with that question. OK. Yeah, for example, one of them I remember sad. Yeah, the moment I have conflict, I'm going to just to talk manager and tell. You push the problem away to someone else. Yeah, that's you. It's very nice talking to you. Yeah. Good luck with the carrier. I mean I'm I'm that's maybe my kind of a deal breaker question at the same time at least of

questions came together over that. But one of the things about also how they react when it comes to to new technologies like OK, apart from what is, I mean sometimes maybe you cannot evaluate this case because I was doing the the hiring manager part, right. So the technical assessment was after me so my senior engineers were doing assignments with a candidate.

Yeah. So I was kind of high level focusing on tech but mainly on the personalities and and also asking when you have a new technology how you will implement that new technology. What will be your criteria to evaluate that technology? When you're gonna bring it in what are the aspects you consider about it or if you have a month of which technologies are you gonna use to deliver something. And and it's very interesting

simple question. I give you one month and I ask you to deliver it with any technology that you think it suits the case. What what technologies you're gonna choose or what tools you're gonna choose. And some people directly start answering the question. I will pick React. I will pick node for the back end And then I said, but I just need a static web page And then OK, yeah, tell me your comment. And that's a break deal breaker

for a senior engineer. OK, then I would write some notes about it. Yeah. So this sort of question when it comes to behaviors maybe sometimes connected to text, sometimes to personal behavior in the in the conversation. Those are for me our main detailed things that I get from the answers and I think the people that passed those processes not only me. After us there are amazing talents and people that we had

to interview people together. We came up to the decision to hire someone, yeah, but I think the filter was very nice because now that team is really binded together. Different personalities, different qualities, but together they are just one strong arm and I love that. I love that. I love hearing that.

I think those are some great examples as well. And it makes me even more curious because those are very much from a technical perspective, right? And you have the most experienced career wise in the technical domain. Now you've gone into a position where you're building kind of your own startup. You have to hire people with skills that are you might know some stuff about marketing or sales, but it's not your core,

right? Your core is still the technical side, yet you have to hire these people and you have to trust them that. They value the same values that you do as a company, and you have to trust that they then hire the same people as well down the line because you're not going to do their hiring process. No, absolutely. This is like make or break to find the right core team. I feel like, yeah, how do you do that? Because that I feel like is

different. First of all, I don't think I'm the the most experienced and the carrier. I still learn need to learn a lot in that. But thank you for that compliment there. The main thing about this of course, moving on to Cruise. So for years, to be honest, I had a golden squad and I said when I'm opening a company, I'm gonna just start with those. You're 18 people, yeah? Yes, My A-Team. And these three people now, two or four people now are kind of

friends that we made over work. And of course one of them is Anuk Tatiana and more to come. Anuk is is an amazing she's she's our transformation director.

She has done big projects in government and you know so in commerce companies to do digital transformation at the same time do agile leading and also of course all this and she's very hands on even you say OK hostel retro she doesn't the best retro ever I would say And then she has that quality debt pillar about basically governance people processes and then we have found a product that you know with years of expense in big companies like booking and she is fantastic.

And so those people I had in mind and when this opportunity came the first thing is I just called them and said guys such an opportunity to come. It's not still yes or no we don't know. But I'm gonna do homeworks and I wanna do assignments and I wanna basically fight for for getting a chance to get in. They all said sure OK we resign tomorrow. Really. And I said this is it's beyond. Yeah yeah what I expect.

And I love them they know it. So I'm super lucky to have that squad and we over the past the years we talked about it when we were the moment we get together again and all of us, it was very interesting because all of us diverged and then now converging and we get also to a new harmony because now we have different experiences different point of views and now it's still being the same people. So the first is called the core team is build up like this which I'm lucky that it's done and I

trust them to to my basically blood and I if they said this person is right without question I accepted it. That's why because we know each other quite well and we know the culture we're going to build that we are going to just do

hand picking people. I mean for Crusoe I don't want to have massive hiring from all over the world because I want to compete with the price and know are people going to be expensive, are our quality going to be top notch Because I'm going to handpick people and just do the top things on a faster way and the envy will be perhaps cheaper because these people that I'm bringing they are really on the top ten, top

three in their own business. And if something takes people like 2 years to deliver they can deliver in two months. They are that efficient and and I've worked with them and we also already delivered some projects in cruise even if you are alive for two months but we delivered project and that show the quality So that's my luck. At the same time one of The thing is still you need to define the the values and you

need to define a vision. Yeah and for me the values for this company are called it FTT which is inclusiveness, fairness, fun, transparency and trust. So these are the five values that we are gonna that which are basically my personal values and at the same time my team, initial team also they believe in those five they added one of them and and I think with those values which I found them the foundation of a of a professional team.

Yeah, I think we would perhaps have a criteria when we hire people. And at the same time, this is as I said, our aim is to do an effective, efficient fun work for a problem connected to a company, to a human, to whatever, just doing positive for the for the planet and for

for people. That's why one of the project also we recently started is about sustain creating the most sustainable upsides in the Netherlands For Vanicare, which is an NGO, they are doing NGO work for for animals in Indonesia and they are, they're doing fantastic, Germany are doing fantastic thing, even if that really from the budget perspective of money, transparently there is nothing

there. But I think we feel it as a mission for us. We said we promised to deliver value and nothing can bring more value to maybe to planet contributing to such projects, which for me are very heart warming. At the same time, I hope it's gonna just expand our kind of positive impact in this world. Yeah, that's amazing. I love that you say you had the

luck that you found those relationships, but it's it's a testament to the relationships that you built up doing like over time, right. It and luck might be a factor probably right time, right place was a component of that. But the fact that they said yes and they joined you kind of kind of fairly immediately. Says a lot about you as a person, the trust that you've built up and the stream team

that you put together. I feel like it is kind of a cheat code because you don't start with a blank slate. But yeah, like that's that's the history that you've built up, right? You take that with you. People always say don't burn any bridges. And this is what happens when you don't burn any bridges, right? If you value those relationships, if you are the people person that I think you are, that's what happens. That's the result of that. Yeah. That's very nice of you to be

honest. Over the years that I learned and I learned about people. I got a lot of friends over work and in the sport. Yeah, I think my contact list is personal. Phone contact list is around 809 hundred people that I know when I work or that's crazy. Yeah, I was in a football club with them for years. I mean every name I check I said I I couldn't remember memories about them. So that network that I had I have seen every person has a talent.

Every person can be delivering more than what they're doing today. And I think in crucial what I'm looking for handpicking doesn't mean that I'm going to just pick maybe the top people know the people that can bring a specific values to the maybe to this word.

Maybe we have a project that I know someone is enthusiastic about that topic and maybe doesn't have the quality of a senior engineer, but he's that enthusiastic, can get to that level to deliver the best value for that project or for that work. I think that's what I'm calling hand picking to put the right people for the right projects.

And of course those when you put people to things that they love to do, they go to the extreme productivity and if they deliver, I didn't know, maybe I don't burn tickets, burn 10 points per week. They're going to burn 100 points per week because they love to see the end of it, because they love the top subject. So and at the same time of course I'm going to bring the top qualities because I want to remember names. I don't want to go big like some

big names in the consultancy. I don't want to name anyone but those one are massive and they are millionaires and billionaires. But I think I'm going to scope it to to limited people that I can remember names as the maybe the director of that company that I can have a personal chat with them and of course having one of one. But they still when we see them, I don't look a stranger to them or not them to me. So that's the I think the club

that I would like to build. And of course if you're gonna scale and of course we will scale it, but I have, we have I have a different plan how to scale it up to maybe even thousand of people. But for me it's very important that that club is it's not just a name but it's when people go home, they want to come back tomorrow to work. Yeah. And one thing that I also mentioned about all these things that we are now doing about qualities and staff also over the past the years I learned

that one of the things that we miss when it comes to any level from the engineering to leaders, it's an economic view to things because now the economy is really putting pressure on everyone. It's about companies, people, the groceries already the 40% expensive.

So everyone feel the the crisis and it's not the first time in the history it happens and of course it has ups and downs we know that but let's make it more sustainable But by giving especially in crucial I want to give everyone and myself to take an economic view on things when it comes to delivering qualities and we need to ensure why I'm saying economy because it has a direct impact on people live and and it can bring when you have

when you take an economy in mind you can also be more efficient in your working. So for me it's very important, apart from having a team, the best of the breed teams together is also giving them that view that they do the most efficient work for themselves, for the companies and for the clients. Love that. One of the final questions I

still have has to do with kind of this vision that you're talking about, right? Because I also love that you admit that it's not perfect and you still make mistakes. I think that's that's a great mindset to always have. But it is there, right? You're able to vocalize it, you have a vision there. You already have ideas for the future, those you've probably built up throughout your career, but now you you get the opportunity to execute on that.

Like how, how have you honed this vision of yours? Is it by having a dialogue with people that have done it before by doing your own research? How can you do that? And how's it still growing in that way as well? Yeah. So when it comes to to this region which I mentioned our our region is to make us obsolete. It's that we we need to empower people that's coming from that learning I had over the over the years. Maybe myself and I love to have that empowerment myself.

So empowerment can be translated to basically I'm empowering my engineers, I'm empowering my employees or I'm empowering my client. What if my client gets empowered that everyone will be happy at the end of the day and of course from the business wise, it's going to still pay back more than just stay there for the sake of the money.

So that empowerment is something that I had it for years personally, which I guess everyone has something to be empowered and to be loved by. And and I hope with this position that I have now, which is also I need to mention about the pitfalls of these positions. When you are started, when you're a CEO, I'm, I'm just feeling it after two months maybe I don't have the authority to judge it a lot.

I need to still explore. But I think that's the feeling that every morning you wake up you can really jump from branches to branches. But you should again remind yourself I am basically the the head of this of this car and I need to ensure that I don't really go a lot because I can confuse myself and I can confuse others and maybe I have the privilege that is based due to exploring. However it needs to be connected to each other.

So and if you make a kind of tremendous opposite decision there should be a very good reasoning and and the good thing about this initial team that I have which are as I mentioned my locks and the carrier, it's also what I do with them.

I just said this is what I'm thinking what do you think And I get very good echoes on the on the idea and together we change it. For example, this idea of we make ourself obsolete and that's the plan I just came with the idea that I said consultancy to redundancy and we I just said guys I'm just thinking about consultancy to redundancy and they say yeah, redundancy is very negative and and it you what do you mean and explain yeah what it means that to

empower the client and so on. And then they come up with this nice actually vision. So I think the vision for me at the end would be the empower people at the end don't just focus on the traditional things or the things that already

worked out. For example, as a company we see this service that we are doing is working out and the earning from that and you're running but at the same time also be ahead of the market and be on the trends to explore before people hitting that to have a good answer for people.

Because one of the thing that I guess it's also would help if if you are ahead of the trend you can help and maybe kind of push the the conversion of those on adaptation of the technologies, new technologies on the right way because anything can be bad and and positive. So that's that's come to the vision of empowering people, empowering technologies and mix them together. And I believe in magic. And I think if you do that, that can happen perhaps. Amazing. I think that's, for me, that's

awesome, right? Because people talk about having a shared vision or creating a shared vision. And I think just by virtue of having it laid out like that, someone starts with an idea, people emphasize on it, people give critique and people hone it. And then it becomes ownership of a team, right, A core team. And then it translates into a shared vision. I think that's that's very important. Division is not one person vision.

Yeah. And and of course when I'm that's why when I'm sometimes I also shoot some ideas and they completely against you that I just forget about it and say OK so we need to be aligned and then not only the the five of us

or the four of us now it should be the company And I'm already thinking about how to ensure that if we have a lot of people in. I ensure everyone has a share in that conversation and has a voice to even get be against that. You guys you said the vision is there but your daily work doesn't reflect it. Yeah. If my schedule as a leader doesn't reflect the vision of the company or the strategy of the company, then this is just on paper.

Exactly. And that's what you see in companies that usually division basically division is the destination, right, sort of and the strategy is the way to get to that destination. And usually people talk about it especially on the high level and then it's top down coming to everyone and you need to follow it.

And at the same time you said OK, wow, let's accept it and go for it. But then you see the the top level even don't adhere to that and then they jump in and then they their decision doesn't match with that or match with the values of the company. So then it comes to very less credibility of those values and visions and becomes none none less nonsense. And then you you leave it or maybe you say you just accept it because you signed the code of contract of the country of the company.

So for me, it's very important that I have ideas about companies and how to run that and so on. But I need to put it to the blend to see what comes out. Because when we put something there, everyone should really feel it with all themselves and they fight for it. Because if I'm gonna do that, then it will create a hierarchy that someone dictated that and I hate to be that person.

Yeah, same. Here, yeah, I I love the build up. I think it makes a lot of sense kind of the relationships you've built up, the trust and the environment that you create. And to do it at the highest level, right with your football team at the World Cup, let's say. I think that's really cool and

some one of the smart things. And last thing about that that I love to heard it from a vice person that was my friend and I'm stealing it from her and I told her I'm gonna steal it from you and and I never thought about it but this mindset means what we are doing here because she's also similar like me and whatever she when she talks I'm just feeling I'm talking but I'm just a lady and it's very very aligned in the line of thinking

when it comes to leadership and she had really a similar carrier growth as I have She said you know what what I have done is when I'm presenting in the onboarding we have the the flip chart from the CEO coming down right. She said. I just turned it back, said These are the the heroes, these are the people, just the servants, and the the, the, the most servant is me at the bottom. Yeah, carrying it. I think this is amazing. That's genius.

Just flip the chart, Yeah. And that's basically what I'm talking about. Yeah, I think that makes total sense. Man. This was, this was a blast. Like, I I can't believe first of all that it was two years ago when we had this conversation, like episode 20 and and time flew. But I love. How we did kind of a check in and I think I'm, I'm very excited to see what the future holds. I think it should be shorter than two years when we do this again. But yeah, I really enjoyed it, man.

Thank you so much for coming on of course the same year. I'd I'd love to be again on this stage together and again seeing you and I really appreciate your time and also having me over. Thank you very much. Same man. Thanks. Then I'm gonna round it off here. I'm gonna put all Marty's socials in the description below, check them out, let them know you came from our show. And with that being said, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.