Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akil and joining me today is
Marcel the Frise Global Managing Director and CTO of CBM
Microsoft Solutions. There's many golden Nuggets this
episode all about leadership in tech.
Starting with a strong belief that leadership in tech should
be technical in the 1st place, we go into the leadership
qualities and skills that are there, that should be there, and
that you can cultivate yourself. Marcel shares what leadership
looks like when times are rough and he shares his hiring
process. No lead code, no system design,
but a 5 day assignment and it's actually working wonders for
him. Enjoy.
You really keep up today. That's something that I saw, I
mean, first on your LinkedIn, but also in our conversation
prior, you mentioned that technical leaders really need to
be technical. Like that's a strong belief of
yours. In practice, that's not always
what I've seen. No, no, not at all.
No, no, no. I think that that's where you
can XLS a leader is by staying current all the time.
So I I I get anxious when my official studio is 2 updates
behind for like Marcel, you've not been spending enough time
with code. That's also why I like the the,
the, the, the, the designation the people have CEO is, I think,
a coding executive officer, right?
Yeah, yeah. I love the hands on part.
Like for me, the strange part is in practice, I've seen people
that say then, OK, I've been people manager for let's say
1015 years, but before that I was developer.
And for me, that reference period of 10-15 years before
that, you're a developer. It's like, I mean, it might be
because I'm young, but it's like you're in a dinosaur basically.
It was a different age than 15 years ago versus the
technologies that we use nowadays.
And in some conversations, it's like, yeah, like there's no
common ground that we have on are not working, not anymore.
Like it's gone, It's deprecated. Now, that's why you see also
that I think in our industry, people have the tendency to say
the path is from you go from software developer to more like
perhaps software architectural lead software developer.
And then you go to like in a leadership role or a manager
role, which I think is quite different.
But, and then you see that people say, well, I don't need
to be technical anymore. I think that that's where you
missed the boat and where you probably become a manager.
And when you stay current and still can give perspectives that
others see differently, then all of a sudden you become a leader
because you give a different perspective, a different vision.
And people go, oh, wow, I, I can learn from this person or I, I
want to follow that person and that then you become a leader
when they want to follow you. Yeah.
Yeah, For my personal career, like I, I have a few options.
Let's say, first of all, I'm very curious, like innately as a
person, which also is very hard when I think about my career
because I want to try a lot of things.
Now I'm lucky that I'm at a consultancy at CBS.
So last year I've done my first year as product manager.
Coming from a software engineering background, that was
an option and I took it because it was always something I wanted
to try out and I really like it. And now I can see, let's say the
pros and the cons because I've been very hands off compared to
previous years. And that's something I, I
genuinely miss. And then I was thinking, OK, I
like the people aspect. Like I like the part of personal
development. I think I'm a good communicator.
Podcast helps with that. And it's like a continuous in
development there. So I was thinking of an
engineering manager, but then I also don't want to become a
middle manager. Like I don't want to lose that
technical aspect of the role. And that's sometimes what I see
in organizations is that it's so hierarchical that there's like
this layer of middle management and I don't want to be there.
So I wonder what a good, let's say, transition is from an
engineering background into a more leadership position.
Yeah. And and I think it's not about
the title, it's more about your behaviour.
Yeah, I think your behaviour will define if you become a
leader or if you can will become a middle management.
That has to do with the fact that you say I either going to
manage my team to adhere to rules, policy and how it should
be done and I going to scrutinize and based on the KP
is that I've been given. Or you say, well, what can I do
to accelerate this department or have a different perspective on
how we can build a better product.
And then you, you start becoming the person that people like.
Oh, I want to learn from him or I want to follow him or I want
to go with that perspective. And then all of a sudden you are
going to challenge the people that set the policies and that
set the guidelines and set the KPIs because you then become
actually the leader in in where you want to go.
And I think that a lot of people, when they say I want to
have a leadership role, don't have a clear perspective on what
that entails. And it it's often like, yeah,
now I'm the one that's going to tell people what to do.
But actually, I believe you should never tell people what to
do. You would ask them to follow you
where you want to go with them. And I think that's a profound
difference in in approach and also profound difference in
people wanting to work with you and for you.
I can see that. I'm very curious, how was that
for yourself? Because you started out with a
hands on role. Now you've been a leadership
position for a long, long time. But there was this transition
period where you, I don't even know if it was a natural growth
or it was something you like had an ambition for.
How's that transition for you? Well, I've, I've been in the
industry for quite a while, so I started as software developer.
Actually I'm an electrical engineer.
I never did anything with electrical engineering, but I
did a lot of maths and then I thought I'm fed up with that now
let's do coding. Started as software developer
and when I was in as a software developer, I got asked to become
a teacher, OK. And that already gave me a
different way and a different perspective on how to deal with
a lot of people, a lot of questions.
And then already you see that your students are following you
because you have a story to tell or you, you bring them along a
journey, you actually, yes, killing them up.
And you see that people like it and I want to follow you.
So then from that position as more like a trainer, I became an
architect. And in my architect role, I used
a lot of the traits that I learned as a trainer in
convincing people, because a lot of I, I mean, especially
technical people have one way to convince people.
It's like I give you the facts, the facts for for themselves.
And now you go do, well, that's not how people work.
You can bring a lot of facts, but that you can different
interpretations and different ways of looking at at things.
And it is very important to convey the context in which you
interpret the information to actually, yeah, set a path
forward. And I think that that's one of
the things that you learn as a teacher is bring people on a
learning path and then see what you see.
And then based on what you see, you can then bring them forward.
And that's one of the things I use a lot as an architect is
well, if I look at this problem, there are multiple ways to
solving this. I always gave them also
different perspective. But then I say, well, given the
current context and where we want to go and some, some more
business goals, I think that this would be the direction to
go. And I've always been also on the
collaborative side. It's not like my way or the
highway. It's always been like, well, I'm
always open to other people's perspectives because I, I, I
don't think I'm a know it all. I, I'm, I'm rather a learner at
all. I, I want to learn more.
And I, I strongly believe in the collective.
And I also strongly believe is that as a leader, you need to
pick out the best traits in the people and make that shine
instead of constantly focusing on what they can do.
And that that really, yeah. Makes it that you can.
Yeah. Foster people and grow people in
your organization. And then I was an architect.
And then I, I finally got the phone call from from GBI to
start a business. And my dad always had this idea
that he wanted to have a business and run a business.
And he actually did it. And that was the reason we, we
moved to where I live nowadays. And he stopped doing that after
five years, but he always still had that urge to run his own
business. And what I learned over time is
that in my role as an architect, in my role in the, the, the past
organizations was that I was hitting that ceiling of, well,
this is where I think we should go with the business.
This is where we will, should go with where we will be in the
market. This is the the type of you have
work we want to do for our customers and this is where I
see that the future is going. Then the opportunity came to me
when I got the phone call from Zebia and they said, well,
Marcel, we would like to start a Microsoft business.
Would you be willing to spearhead that?
And then my first point was I have no idea how to run a
business. It's a big ass.
I have no freaking clue how to do it.
And that was one of the nice things within Zebia.
They have always fostered that. They was, well, you know, tech.
You lead the way with tech and then we will learn you how to
run a business. And that is by the way, as GB as
we, we throw you in the, in the, in the swimming pool and you
start to swim. And then we will say that you're
need to adjust your swimming a little bit.
And that's the way I learned how to build a business, run a
business, hire the right people and based on that actually try
to to build what we've built today with now 160 consultants
worldwide, quite, quite incredible if you see that in a
10 year trajectory. Yeah, absolutely.
I, I love that. Yeah.
I mean, one of the things that you highlighted also reels back
into the leadership behaviours, right?
That flexibility and perspective and kind of the communication
skills to have people buy into whatever you're selling.
Buying and selling might not be the best terminology, but from
an architecture standpoint, I've had conversations where people
first gave me a green light for something that was very simple
that we drew up. And then all of a sudden the
next conversation, that same person was there, their manager
was there, and they're all of a sudden like, we're not OK with
this because it needs to be more future proof for XY and Z.
And I, I was like, like, you completely lost me.
And I can really push back on that.
But it was like, yeah, it's a, it's a losing battle.
Like this organization too hierarchical.
They have too much power. So it's like, OK, we'll future
proof it a little bit more. We'll shave off some things here
and there. But I don't think that's a good
way of looking at it, right? Being able to put yourself in
the other person's shoes, having that empathy and that
flexibility, having a dialogue and let's say, a shared good
outcome. I think that's definitely a
quality that I want to see and the people that I work with,
regardless of their stature and position in the company.
Yeah. And, and I think where you
really hit the nail, I think on, on the hat is moving yourself
into the position of the other and then see it from their
perspective. Because also within Xibia, when
I started our business, we started small.
And I was always like, yeah, let's not grow too fast and not,
not too big. But on the other hand, I was
very ambitious. I I wanted to do more and bigger
and and greater, but it was all about do we do the right
assignments and the cool assignments and that's where we
want to go. But then I never took the
perspective of the founders of Xevia.
They said, Marshall, you really need to grow further before you
can have a stable business. But I was more like, yeah, now I
want to keep it small. 35 people is more than enough.
We want to keep it fun and family like, but the fact that
when you scale a little bit beyond these numbers and you see
them from their perspective, you feel like you create a more
stable business. There's it's less volatile.
You can incur more hits that come in from like a customer
that all of a sudden say, well, we don't need your services
anymore. And then not taking a real hit
all of a sudden while because of that you cannot pay bonuses or
something. So I learned over time that
moving to the position of the other perspective really helps
you then build also a narrative for where, where, what does it?
What does that mean for your leadership?
What does it mean for you to then set a new dotted line for
your team to follow you again, because you know, they they
shifted perspective, they changed the effective in which
you were doing something and now you need to take your team along
a ride again. It's like, OK, let's let's go
back to the drawing board. There are some new constraints
in the system. And based on the new
constraints, you can then see where the path should lead to
now. And then if you, yeah, show them
that first of all, there's a change in perspective because if
you, if you only communicate, we're going to do it
differently. Everybody goes like, why?
And that is all it has to do with change and change
processes, of course, is that you first need to make sure that
everybody understands why do we need to change?
Why do we need to do it differently?
And then from their take on the other trajectory, and yeah, I'm
not sure if you're familiar with the ad care model for example,
but that's very well described also in these these kind of
models where they say, well, this is one of the first steps
that you need to take to make everybody aware the need for the
change, otherwise nobody will change.
And those are very important things.
Yeah. I mean, I'm not as familiar with
the model, but for me, from a software engineering hat, that's
why I wanted to do product management because I was always
in the position of, OK, there's change and I know we can do a
lot of things, especially with a backlog that has millions of
items that never get picked up. I'm like, OK, why are we doing
this, right? Why does this have the most
value? Because probably deep down, I
have a different opinion or I have an opinion in the 1st place
and it might not be what we're doing.
So I want to understand from again that curiosity
perspective. And sometimes I wasn't always
happy with that dialogue, right? I, I was either lost, I didn't
really understand, but I was responsible for executing, which
is also not really a position that I like too much.
So then I thought, OK, having the responsibilities also within
an organization, I can at least do justice to the question of
why, right? Because I know we can do many
things and I know there's no hanging fruit.
I know there's a long term vision, but at the end of
product managers responsible for the product and also the
decisions on why we do things in order.
That's why I took up that mantle And I, I really have enjoyed it
kind of communicating and figuring things out from
scratch. Like you, I had never done this
before. There were many unknowns, but I
strongly believe that whenever you're in a leadership position,
and I feel like in this organization, product management
is also a type of leadership position, kind of the people in
your team also look up to you and their behaviour is also
going to reflect your behaviour, right?
If a failure happens and you look the other way, or you
discredit it, or you don't look at it and you don't explain it
or you hideaway from it, that's the behaviour you're going to
see also within that organization or within that
team. And, and one of the other things
where you can really lose people is that you still stay in your
old role while you have the new role.
So for example, you come from a technical background.
Now you become a product owner. Now are you going to say this is
where we would like to go and this is what the things that we
want to achieve or again going to say, well, this is the way
you need to code it. This is how we do it.
And and that is where some
people also need to make a real shift in, yeah, how how do you
move from? I'm now an engineer to now I'm
leading A-Team and I want a team to engineer the solution.
Yeah, well, you can still ask questions, but you should not
dictate all of a sudden the technical solution because
otherwise you're the engineer again, right?
And that's where people find it really hard to then detach from
the old role while they take a leadership.
Role, absolutely. I, I, I genuinely on the surface
level I understand what you mean and I'm like, I can do that.
But there was this one instance in refinement and we're talking
about database schema migrations.
And I have a strong opinion. And all of a sudden I was like,
but I, I don't have to have a strong opinion.
Like I can challenge, I can understand, but it's not my
decision to figure out how we do this.
It's the team's decision. And I trust the team to execute.
That's it. And that realization, I was
like, yeah, I'm either too deep in this technical conversation.
I was like, I'm sorry. I, I genuinely paused and said,
I'm sorry. I should not be having this
conversation. I'm curious and I have an
opinion. But in the end, it's your
decision. And I thought it was very
empowering at the end. Yeah, but it's very hard to do
from a surface level. Absolutely.
You will find yourself in those situations.
No, it's it's really hard. Yeah.
Have you ever find yourself in a circumstance like that?
Because you mentioned you were all of a sudden responsible for
growing an organization, genuinely building a business,
and you had a technical background, and you admitted
it's not something you've done before, right?
Yeah, no. And, and where I, I, I
misstepped many times. I mean, especially when you
start a consulting business, the first thing you do is you start
consulting. And I was one of the first
consultants that went out to customers.
But I was also like, OK, but I'm also the founder.
I'm also the CTO. How do you combine these things?
It's really hard sometimes. And then the first thing that I
learned and I, I really had help from some of the great people
in, in our team to, to make that happen is, well, the first
things that we learned is, well, let's hire the people that we
look up to. Again, where we can learn from,
because that gives you also, I think the trust that you can let
others do it. And that's why we created this
whole framework around how do we hire people?
And it's a 5 day assessment. And it's not you're, you're not
just hired by a few interviews. And that has to do with the fact
that we thought, well, it also when everybody passes that bar
gives others the perspective like, OK, they pass the bar so
they get an immediate trust relationship.
And those are the things that we learned over time that really
work well in creating a high performing team.
Now, of course, one of the things that I, I really misstep
myself in the past was hire for what you can afford instead of
hire for what you need. And that was one of the things
that you learn when you build a business is that, well, I, I, I
have this kind of a budget available.
I would like to do some marketing.
What can I afford? And then you go look for
somebody with a role that fits in the bucket of money that you
have. But actually I needed somebody
that was way more mature, way better at the, you know what,
what they can do in marketing. And I should have hired for
actually what we need as a company.
And that's where you then need to make investment calls,
actually say, well, this is an investment.
We really need to earn that back, but this is the way we
should do it. And yeah, because of that, yeah,
in the past I had some bad hires and I had some very hard
conversations with people after the fact where I think, and I
take it all on me, that it was not the right person for, for
what we needed. Because yeah, I I did wrong
hiring, I think with the wrong perspective and wrong starting
point. Yeah, hiring someone you can
look up to sounds like a very powerful phrase to me.
And it's, it's different. I I think it's more of a new age
thinking, right? Because traditionally if you're
really good at what you do, maybe even outside of tech, you
go into a leadership position, right?
And you get there by virtue of being better maybe in
communication or being better at a skill set than your
colleagues. That's how you rise to the
occasion. That's how you get that
leadership position. So then if you've risen to,
let's say, the top of the top, it's very difficult to then hire
someone that you can look up to, right?
Because otherwise, why would you be in that position of
leadership? Yeah.
And and I think that that's one of the things also over time
that I learned is fear is the worst way of judging.
So if you fear for your job because you hire people that are
better than you, then there's something profoundly different
in what you're doing. And I think that when I find
somebody that can do my job in a much better way, I need to step
aside because it's better for the greater good.
And I can find a job any day, anywhere, where I want, I think.
And if you don't have that confidence, then then you also
have an issue, I think, if you are part of a leadership team.
So building up that confidence, yeah, also, well, I, I, I think
the strategy in hiring constant people that you look up to and
think, well, they, they, they bring something that I don't
have. And that's where I can then make
a a better organization and a better group also gives you more
confidence in your own position. Absolutely.
Yeah. And, and there's also one of the
things that I think people that want to become part of
leadership think that they need to know everything or they need
to be able to do everything. And that's absolutely not true.
The the only thing that you actually need to be good at is
leading the group and hiring the right people to do the specific
tasks that need to be done. And.
It is nice if you know what they're doing, but if you're
constantly micromanaging and micro checking what they're
doing, then something is wrong because probably you don't have
the trust relationship with the people that you hire.
That's why trust is really the foundational part of this.
And there's also the trust in your own role, the trust in and
the faith that you have in what you want to build.
Yeah, From what I've seen in leadership positions, I, I think
we've been very fortunate that COVID happened.
It had a lot of downsides, but from a trust and remote working
perspective, like it increased a lot of flexibility.
I've gone to many cities abroad, worked from there for a month,
actually lived my life living somewhere else and I didn't have
to quit my job. I had the flexibility to do
everything. And I want to be able to do
that, the flexibility, but it's not what I've seen.
Bigger companies are going back to the office.
Minimum mandatory 3 day policies are now back.
And I think it has a lot to do with control, it has a lot to do
with trust. And I'm not sure if it's a
leadership failure, but it is definitely a pattern that I've
seen. Well, there, there are a couple
of things there. If you look at, for example,
going back to the office, there are two approaches you can take.
And what you see is a manager will take the approach you need
to go to the office at least two days a week.
You you set a policy. You set a rule period, Yeah.
What we have done is we never set that rule, but what we do is
we say, well, let's work based on the fact of FOMO, the fear of
missing out. Make it that people want to be
in the office because there's something you get from being in
the office. And then you need to have a look
at why are we in the office? We are not in the office to do
Teams calls. We're not in the office to write
a document. We're in the office to
collaborate, to learn from each other, to share knowledge, to
make decisions together. So it should be about the social
aspect when you are at the office and not about creating
more phone booths for people to take teams calls.
So one of the things that we really try to do is say, well,
let's create the fear of FOMO. And now people want to come and
you see that our, our office is always busy.
People want to be there because when people want to be there,
they want to exchange information, they want to
exchange ideas. You can just say, hey, can you
help me out here? And, and, and just have a
whiteboard session with each other.
Well, with teams, there's still the barrier of, oh, I need to
call him and is he available? And we often we don't dare to
call and just get a decline of the call.
No, we are, we're first going to fiddle with the agenda.
Is he available? Yes or no?
Or is she available? Yes or no?
It's like, yeah, there there seems to be a barrier to do the
call while somebody sitting next to you is hi, can you help me
out? That is, that is so much easier
and and much, yeah, easier in the in the social interaction.
So I see that organizations where you see a policy of we
need to be in the office at least two days a week because
that's now become a metric. That's where you have managers
in charge. And I think that there are other
ways to, yeah, make people use the office for the better good.
And if everybody agrees that we really don't have a need to have
an office, then heaven forbid, get rid of the office.
I mean, it's not, it's not a goal to be at the office, right?
That's often what you see. As well as that we the, the,
the, the, the, the things that we have become all of a sudden a
goal. It's like, no, it's not a goal
to be agile. It's not a goal to do micro
services, it's a goal to get somewhere and we use means to
that and an office can be a mean to actually collaborate in a
better environment with each other.
Yeah, I love that you highlight. It's a means to an end.
Yeah, I like, I've heard many stories where people say I come
to the office and it's it's the only social interaction we have
actually don't do any work when I go to the office.
But like they, they have new inspirational energy.
And I think that's a very important fact.
It doesn't have to be a forced fact.
Like it can be natural and it can be from the ground up rather
from top down. And I've seen different
Companies Act differently, right?
So one of the companies that I, I'm also a Pluralsight author.
So go to Pluralsight sometimes and they, they call it like
energy hubs, OK. And, and, and you see that
people go to the office to, to tank new energy of the social
interactions. And, and yeah, you see the
different organizations have different perspectives on why
you should use the office and what I've done with the
organization. The Microsoft service line
within ZBIS, our USA team is completely remote, but our Dutch
team is a lot in the office here in Hilverson, while our German
team is completely remote again. So we have different models and
and there are complete different ways to actually make that work,
which is is is sometimes quite hard, I can tell you.
Yeah, I can imagine that. I, I was thinking back to kind
of this topic that we have of leadership in tech, specifically
how people can grow towards leadership positions, right?
Not necessarily from a title perspective, but I do think that
even when leadership qualities are distributed within a teams,
maybe you don't need as many middle managers.
You still need people at the end that are going to make the
decisions, right, that people are going to look up to.
And at the end of the day, trust in that decision making part of
the business. I would say as well, how can you
grow to a role like that? Because for me, if I look
towards my experience, I don't think I'm ever going to be
comfortable jumping in a position like that.
There will never be a point where I say now's the time.
Yet I do feel like it's something I I would like to do.
I I think there are two perspectives here.
So the one perspective is the organizational perspective.
Can I get into a role where I have officially the title of
manager or leader? But there's always the route you
can take no matter what to take. Lead in your personal
development and be your own personal leader.
Lead yourself. Know where you want to go.
Set some goals for yourself. Move to those goals.
Have your aspirations and yeah, wonder about your aspirations
and also reset them sometimes and, and really move yourself to
these goal posts that you set yourself.
I, I recently had somebody ask me like, yeah, I, I really would
like to become a leader in, in the company.
It's like, OK, that's cool. Can you tell me what it entails?
What is it that you would like to do?
And the answer is, I have no idea.
And then my response, my natural response, and probably not
always the most nicest response, is then how can you to ask for
moving into a leadership position if you have no idea
what that means because you have not taken leadership in your own
thought process and not even thought about where you want to
go yourself? What does it entail?
Is it about then higher pay? Another title?
Because that is the wrong driver to want to go to a leadership
position. I, I think you will be burned
out with it within no time. I, I sometimes say to people
that one of my biggest job is being the shit umbrella for
everybody because there's a lot of stuff you need to deal with
that you need to be willing to do in order to yeah, lead a
group. And and that is not always also
great that I can make a decision because when COVID struck, I
mean, on on Friday evening, we heard that COVID meant that
everybody was in a lockdown. Oh, yeah.
How do you deal with that? You have no information
whatsoever. And you see and you know that
the customers on Monday are calling you.
Yeah. You're getting like, what was
it? I think back in the days, we
were around 30 people and we got 15 people back in one day for a
consulting business that is that's like hell.
That's like devastating. You have no idea what are the
data points that you can navigate on.
You have no clue what's going to happen Now you're in the role
and you make and make decisions. Yeah.
Are you going to fire people? Are you going to?
Yeah. What are the things that you are
going to make make happen in order to pay salaries and ensure
that you have, Yeah, a long levity of the company And that's
also the moment you need to make tough decisions.
People that were on the verge of, for example, starting
saying, yeah, sorry, it's your probation time, but.
It's not a good time. It's.
Not a good time to start. Yeah, but I just finished my 15
year job role and you really asked me to become part of this
company. Yeah, but tough times.
We now need to make another decision and tough luck.
And that is what people often don't see when you're in a
leadership position, that's also where you need to take action
and then need to take the call and then don't go and say, like,
yeah, I had to do it because of and then come with all kinds of
reasons. No, you just had to make a tough
call. And yes, you made a decision.
And that, that that decision that you made might be
devastating for that person, but for the greater good of the
company, it was something that needed to be done.
And that's often the perspective people don't see when they ask
for a leadership position or they want to become a manager.
It's like, yeah, that that's also part of that work.
And you really need to have something, I would say, in your
DNA of the willingness of people following you.
Like naturally, then it will come naturally also to make
tough decisions. Sometimes it will be hard the
first time and it will grow on you eventually, but I think that
that is one of the first things you need to get in check with
yourself. Do you really want to lead or do
you want to hire, pay another title or whatever, which is also
good. But then probably you're better
off finding a an individual contributor role in an
organization and not leading others because that will be very
tough on the people that you lead.
Yeah, I think it's incredibly important to highlight that
illicit really matters where times are tough, right, When
everything is fine and dandy. So it looks like a beautiful
role. It's a beautiful role.
Smooth operation. Yes.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the situation you described
is not something you can simulate or train for.
And it's people's lives, their livelihoods, and it's indeed
the. It's a common interest, the
greater good. And you have to make those
decisions. Like, how do you do that?
Do you decide, reflect, evaluate, trust your people
around you? Do you have a strong gut
feeling? Well, first of all, even in so
people that I had to let go of, which is the nice way of firing,
right? I had to let go of people.
That's I learned that in the US. That's the way you sugarcoat
things. It's like, yeah.
We didn't have to let you go, but actually you need to fire
people. It's like even some of the
people are still my best friends.
Well. And it has to do with the fact
that on a personal level, you still can make the Kinect and
take people along your decision making process.
And then also detaching the fact that as a person, I still love
you. As a person, I would really love
to work with you, but given the business context and all the
other variables that are in play, this is the decision that
I needed to make. That is not because you are a
bad person or you didn't perform well or, but the rule was all of
a sudden obsolete. And I cannot make it more
beautiful than that. Yeah, and then facing those
brutal facts and don't come up with all kinds of bullshit on
why you need to let go or, or place the decision making.
Do I had to make a decision because of somebody else?
No, it's you made a decision. It's your call.
And owning up to that.
And I think crucial in, in in leadership, owning up to your
decisions, but also owning up to your mistakes.
If you make mistakes, own, own up to it, man.
I mean, you made a mistake and and you need to either fix it or
just, yeah, come clean with this.
Like, yeah, I, I, I made my decision based on these things
and I did not make the right decision.
But yeah, better a decision than no decision.
Yeah, absolutely this. This honesty and integrity,
it's, it's something you have. I think it's something you can
probably try and fix and try and get better at.
But it's also definitely something how what you have,
something the way you were raised, the fundamentals that
your parents or your environment instilled in you.
It's something you have and the people that you still are
friends with, probably they can see it from a logical
perspective, right? Absolutely.
Because these are the facts, right?
Situation happens, environments change, new reality and
decisions have to be made. People that get a bit more
emotional, that's probably where it gets more tough.
But that's also the human side, right?
There are a lot of emotions at play when it comes to people's
lives. Yeah, no, absolutely.
And that's and one of the things I really like about leading a
company is that leading based on trust.
That's what what I'm yeah, that's one of the things that I
would hold to my my way of leadership is I really trust
people a lot. And I hate to only governed by
data because what I what I often see is, yeah, we are data-driven
company and and I go like, yeah, so how do we get to the data?
Yeah, we need that make people register everything in systems.
Like, OK, so now we're back into an environment where everybody
needs to register everything and we need to measure everything.
But what you measure is what you get.
So actually you're making up your own data and making
decisions made on the made-up data that comes out of those
systems because what you steer on is what you get in the data.
So, yeah, that's what I sometimes really have a hard
time on, especially when companies are growing.
It's more about, yeah, let's have a look at the data and
then, oh, but we didn't measure that.
Let's start measuring that. And then people are not stupid.
They know, absolutely. They know that if you start
registering certain data points, like, oh, it's probably an
important part, yeah. And I better register the data
in my favor. And then all of a sudden your
data is skewed because you didn't know that measuring the
system is already influencing the system.
So yeah, that's, that's some of the things that I, that's why I
like to build on trust. And I, and if you read books
like Letoni and NDF about the, the, the triangle that starts
with trust is the foundation. And you can build great teams
based on on trust. I have never seen high performer
team triangles based on data. There's always been a trust in
and that's where you meet as humans and then from there on
build a culture within the company and then really become
high performed with each other. Yeah, it's, it's funny because
when we talked about remote working, one of the arguments
that I've seen online is like, OK, people that work remote, you
have no clue what they're doing, if they're even being
productive, if they're in the office, at least you can see
that, right? So micromanaging behaviour.
That's why when I asked, I thought it was noteworthy that
you didn't even consider the difference in way of working.
Because you have a trust that whatever this person that you've
hired, you trust them wherever they work, they're going to
work, right? They're going to be as
productive or in a different way, differently productive.
Maybe they go out for a walk more when they're home.
Who cares? As long as you have that trust
in them, they're there to execute.
That's the relationship. And The thing is, and, and
especially in engineering, I think that a lot of when people
go out for a walk with their dog because then they are probably
very mentally productive. Oh yeah.
And that is something you cannot measure in any way, shape or
form. The only thing that I am big at
is like, what are the outcomes? You promise me something, then
you get to the outcome. I, I don't care if you go walk
the dog or go out to a restaurant and eat with your
wife or whatever while at work, but then don't come to me like I
didn't finish what I promised you.
And sometimes you probably need to make some additional hours to
finish the work that you promised.
But what you promise is what you deliver.
So it's always about, yeah, say what you do and do what you say.
And that is the, the, the foundational trust level that
you need to have with everybody. And I think that your hiring
process is really, really instrumental to to make that.
Successful. What are some of the learnings
that you can share from that hiring process to make sure that
it's actually key and it's benefiting you the way you want
it to? Well, I, I, I can share for
example. Well, well, let me start with
our assessment process is five days.
So you get 5 days, you get an assignment.
It's a very open-ended assignment which we give people
which? On purpose?
Yeah, on purpose. Because it confuses the hell out
of people. And what we asked them to do is
behave as you would behave when you work with a customer.
So we are your customer. Ask questions.
So the assessment starts the moment they receive the
document. And 1st, of course, we asked,
well, can you let us know if you received the document and are
there any questions? And normally there are no
questions. OK, Why?
Because people hate to ask questions the moment they get
the document. Well, I need to read it again
and again and again and again and again.
It's like, I have no idea what to do.
It's like, yeah, that's correct, you need to ask questions.
And that's where we already sift out certain behaviors.
Are you going to? Yeah.
Circle around, circle around, circle around.
Never ask questions and then come up with your own ideas.
Yeah, assumptions. All the assumptions which you
then build on and then, and then after five days and, and you
don't need to spend 5 days, it's, it's about 15 hours or so
that you need to spend and you should be good.
But then at the assessment day itself, what we ask you to do is
first pitch to us who you are. But we're not asking about your
resume. Who are you?
It's a very different question that we ask because we know your
resume, we know your LinkedIn profile, we know what you've
done. But who are you as a person?
What? What is it that you will bring
to our group? And then we ask you to pitch to
the customer, your solution. And we are then the customer
again, they'll pitch it to us and then see if you, yeah, made
us happy with your solution. And The funny thing is that if
people don't ask any questions during the process, for example,
they make the assumption we're doing Microsoft, so we're going
to use Azure. And then we go, oh, yeah.
But we just made an investment of three and a half million in
our data centre. We're not going to the cloud.
Our CEO is really not into the cloud.
We're not going to do it. And people go like.
Yeah, oops. Now and then and then there's
not a good thing or a bad thing, but it's more about how do you.
Respond to it. It's the thing.
Is it like owning up to your mistakes?
Like I made assumptions and then so so there's so much you can
learn from there on people behaviour.
And this is where we then actually make the the most of
the decision making about would we like to work with somebody is
on that personal behaviour, owning up to what your decisions
were that you made, saying that you.
Well, to be honest, I have no idea.
Let's figure it out together. And and then we're also really
like playful. I was like, Oh yeah, let's let's
figure it out together. Let's Google it.
Let's see what comes out of that.
But then we also see your skills in getting to the right answer
or to an answer that that would satisfy us.
And, and the things that we learned is especially when
there's more pressure on the system that we need to hire
faster or we need to have more people because we'll, yeah, we
just have two amazing customers. We really need to have people
for them. And normally by the way, we hire
for talent and not for, for assignments, but we have an
assignment. We really need to have that
position filled and then you see that you become sloppy in the
decision making process because you have this great deal.
And that's where I, if I look back to, well, the 160 people
that we now hired, of course we also made some bad decisions
here and there. And what I've seen is that
especially when the pressure was on, on we really need to fulfil
that position, then mistakes were made.
Well, when you have to also, yeah, the, the, the comfort of
saying, well, I'm already hiring for talent.
And then, yeah, the, the, the assignments will follow and we
will find the right assignments for those people.
And we have enough cash in the bank to still pay the people
when they're not an assignment. That was when we did the best
hiring. We got the best talent in and
also talented people that are not full of themselves.
Like one of those things you see often is that when people
accomplish things in, in, in our community, great, you wrote a
great blog or you created a great open source component.
But then all of a sudden we could become cocky about it.
Like, oh, but I'm this great open source guru or whatever,
then we already see that there will never be a fit in our team
because we have so many amazing talented people.
But if I would ask the question who has impostor syndrome in our
team, I would say 80 or 90%, Yeah.
Because we all think like, there's so much more to know.
We don't know everything. So who am I to know this right?
And, and yeah, saying no to I, I really don't know.
Let's figure it out together. It's it's a much better trait.
Then going and give me all kinds of bogus answers that are not
leading to something and sifting that out is really crucial in
creating the trust triangle. I can see that like that hiring
process how you described it. It's different from the
traditional lead code system design and then a one-on-one
conversation team fit because it actually tests your leadership
skills, right? If you own up to a mistake or
you make a few assumptions, see how you react, and there's no
good or wrong. It's not black and white.
It's just the thing that happened and will happen in the
future. So we see how you react to that.
It's a way of working, right? You get a problem which is
completely unknown. And it's funny that it's unknown
on purpose, but how do you react to that?
How do you manage having a conversation or who are you in
the 1st place, right? Because we need to connect on a
personal level before we can excel on a business level.
And I need consultants that are very curious and start asking
questions and like oh but this is the perspective I have now.
Is that correct or did I miss something?
And and The funny thing is that if people ask to write some of
the good questions, I would say they get a lot out of us.
And they go like, oh, but the problem is not a tech problem at
all. It's it's more about this or
that. It's like, yeah, figuring that
out is is really for us, sifting out the amazing consultants, the
good consultants, and then we have the people that don't make
the cut. I wonder how how it would work
in other organisations, let's say in in product companies,
because I've also seen people that excel at Lee Code excel at
system design, but it's just an asshole to work with.
And sometimes in companies it can be seen as a necessary evil.
Like I have an opinion on that, but it's just the thing that has
happened and I don't think that would work in a consultancy as
well as it works in a product company necessarily.
So then. Would this?
Approach work there as well. Well, first of all, this
approach is very expensive, yeah.
So not there's no appetite whatsoever of companies doing it
and I get a lot of ask from our own CEO if I can do it more
efficient because. Time is money.
Marcel, this is costing a lot of money, I know, but it gives me a
very good group to work with. We have consulted that companies
where we helped him move to a different model where it was a
governmental environment where we really wanted to have a
different hiring process in place.
But what you see is that the way the recruitment business works,
how HR works, these these processes that are, I would say,
common knowledge, don't foster this approach at all.
And actually, you get asked anytime when you want to do
something like this, like Marcel, it's going to cost a way
too much time. And probably you will never find
a person that you're looking for because you're so, so critical
about all these points. Like, yeah, I know, but I rather
not higher than miss hire because miss hiring throws a
monkey rent in your whole system, in your whole ecosystem,
in your whole culture of the of the company that you built.
And making that change is really hard.
And you need to have some people in leadership that are in the
same mindset and think that is also a good idea.
And you'd rather grow slow or fulfill the position slowly with
high quality. Then you go like bang, bang,
bang, bang. I need to have these people in
the higher fire, higher fire, higher fire.
What you see often in a lot of companies is like people stay
there for a year and they are gone two years.
And it's also good to see in the resumes of certain people's
like, oh, you stay there every time a year, year and a half,
two years. Like you, you have a hard I you
have difficulty on on attaching somewhere and and finding a a
good spot. Yeah, exactly.
Don't stick. Yeah, It's interesting to me
that like there's this angle of costs, right?
And maybe it's because it's the Netherlands, but I've heard to
this term before indeed, that a miss hire is going to be one of
the most expensive things, right?
Because one rotten apple is going to infect the other like
it's going to impact the team atmosphere.
Yeah. But monetary, you cannot express
it that that easily. So what what you see is that
from a monetary perspective, it's very easy to say, well,
hire fire is much, much deeper. But what is happening on your
culture and your group behaviour?
Yeah, it's, it's very hard to make it tangible, but you can
see it, you can see it, you can feel it.
And like you say, you have some of the assholes calling the
shots. That is very hard to work with.
And, and we are also, well, we actually in, in, in our journey
of more than 10 years that we even had a couple of customers
that we fired because there they had just people that were so
difficult to work with because, yeah, they were the know it all.
They it was all like they say it should be done, but you hired us
as a consultant to give you guidance and now it needs to be
done like this. Then then you hired the wrong
company. So, so then find somebody that
is, is doing staff OC and and not consulting, right.
And then we had a conversation with customers like, yeah,
that's not going to work. Yeah, I can see that.
I was also wondering because this hiring process kind of
defines and at least shows the leadership qualities that you
look for if it's going to be more common practice in the
future. Because with AI, more common
knowledge, stuff like lead code, exercises, system design, people
can train for more and more easily, right?
That's going to become common knowledge at some point, but you
will always have this interpersonal communication.
You will always work with other people.
So then the leadership qualities, your flexibility of
mindset, empathy is going to be more and more important.
I'm I'm wondering if we will, even though it's going to be
more cost efficient to do it another way, if we need to hire
based on those interpersonal skills in the first place.
Well, I, I think that interpersonal becomes I, I would
say the new currency of us humans because a lot of the work
will be taken over by AIII think, especially in our
industry. In my perspective, we'll be
coding in English in, in, in about 5 to 10 years.
And there's no C# in Java and anything more would just, yeah,
specify applications. So there will be a huge change
in that aspect. And then also what you say is
like all those exercises that you need to do, what you
probably will get is that it's more stricter.
You're not allowed to use AI, you're not allowed to or
whatever. But I think it's a stupid idea
because actually in real life, you work with that stuff because
it makes you more productive and it, it just works for you.
And let's be honest, it's not a goal to write code.
It's a goal to get an application.
And again, a goal versus where you need to go and, and and and
yeah, what you're doing it, it should not never be reversed.
And always keep the goal in mind.
And then based on the goal you can change your yeah means to to
to get there. I can see that it's similar to
how I would now do an exercise and not be able to use Google at
all, even though in in like that's what we do with AII think
it's going to be similar, right And that's.
What we do in the, in a, in a, in our assessment as well is
like people go like, Oh yeah, yeah, I do.
I don't know. So what, what?
What you do normally, Yeah, I would Google it so, well, Google
it and then see what the answer is, right.
And and of course in the Microsoft service line, we say,
well, Bingle it or, but, but yeah, no, it is, it's, it's it's
just interesting to see. I, I and I, I see at the at the
moment also in our educational system that we actually have the
wrong behaviour to the change. I mean, my, my kids, they love
AI and when they need to write their thesis, then yeah, why not
use AI to make it perfectly Dutch?
Because who? Yeah, in my perspective, then
who gives a a rat's ass? If you can spell correct.
It's about the message you want to convey.
So also texts is for me a means to a goal.
I want to convey a message. And to be honest, I, I don't
care how the letters are on paper, as long as you understand
what I'm trying to convey as a message.
And then it's awesome that you can use AI and it, it's really
helpful also for a lot of people like me, I'm dislect to actually
get something on paper that people can understand.
So I can see that, yeah, yeah, I, I didn't even think of text
being kind of a means to an end as well, right.
If you're trying to convey any information, thesis is also just
a means of an end, more a scientific approach, I would
say, or a standardized way scientifically.
But in the end, it's about the essence of what you've done,
right? Your research, your conclusions,
follow up research. That's all the essence.
It's funny that we do try and distill it and put it all the
way up top in an abstract. But in the end, yeah, that's the
essence. That's what people are looking
for. So focus on that.
Yeah. So it's, it's interesting to see
and there's a lot of change coming to us, I think especially
in the AI space. And I see a lot of, yeah, I
would call it turkeys for Christmas that are saying, yeah,
but AI is not good enough. It's not generating good enough
code and those kind of things. And like, yeah, well, one of the
question I ask a lot to my audience, like, OK, when did you
last check your compiler on the assembly that I generate?
And they go like, probably not never, no, there you go.
So I, I think you have the answer there already in terms
of, yeah, AI will just generate a lot of code for us.
And that means that in our industry, we are in for a treat
at the moment. We, there's a lot of change
coming and yeah, you're better take the lead in that and make
every developer AI assisted and and that's the way we approach
it in the Microsoft search line. Yeah, I'm, I'm right there with
you. I think it's incredibly, an
incredibly exciting time. I don't think it's going to be
many more in the future similar to what we have now, right.
So like the beginning of the Internet is like everything is
open. Specifically you can do a lot of
things. It's just a rat race and I feel
like a lot of companies are in this rat race trying to find the
gold and I'm curious to see how it plays out.
I think a lot will change. And one of the funny things for
me is that I have lived through some of those episodes, right?
I'm, I'm old enough to say, well, when I went to school and
when I, I got my bachelor's degree, there was no Internet.
So I got it from books. And I needed to program Pascal
from a book that had the APIs and I need to type them over.
There was no IDE. I can't imagine that.
No, but, but that's where I started.
And then you got like the PC on every desk and we, I mean, I
started even before the PCs on every desk, right.
And then also you've got standardization there and you
got things like Windows, which I first thought was a virus, but
actually became a mainstream operating system.
And, and from there you see these progressions, but, but
they're really inflection points in our industry.
I mean, if you look at where we were in our industry, what is it
20 years ago or 25 years ago? And now it's it's it's not
comparable. And we constantly have been able
to adapt to those change. So why wouldn't we be able to
adopt this time? But it is of course important
that you as a person say, OK, what does that imply for me?
And then take your personal leadership again and say, OK,
how am I going to be relevant in the next five years in my job
role? Because yeah, probably being the
best C# developer of this world will not cut it anymore.
Yeah, if things are going to change and I feel like you
either indeed are afraid of change or you embrace change.
I recently had an episode with specifically about AI and
product management and I had my fellow guest was bond on and he
said in product, specifically in customer service, he sees a big
role for AI, right? Because customer problem, look
into XYZ system, see what's delayed, why is an order not
shipped? Maybe solve it, resolve it.
It's all things that can be automated, which means that if
you're in a position and you're doing customer support, you can
be fearful for your job or you can embrace it.
And all of a sudden you're the person that looks at the data,
sees what actually happened, brings it to the organization,
sees common patterns or faults with the systems, and that's
then your role. It changed from being a person
that executes, and you're now an orchestrator, an observer,
exactly, and you make impact in that way.
And that's why I love love that. And that's why I love the name
copilot in some of these products.
Genius. It's genius.
Yeah, it is literally your copilot.
And yeah, you take some information from your copilot,
but you still make the decisions yourself.
And and that will change eventually, but, but at the
moment that's where we are, I think in our in our industry.
For sure. That's cool.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Marcel, this was a blast in kind of the leadership topics that we
talked about with AI at the end as well.
Is there anything you missed that you still want to share?
No, no thank you. It was a very nice conversation.
Thanks for having me and I really enjoyed it.
Thank you again. Then.
Thanks again for listening as well.
If you're still here, let us know in the comments section
what you think of this episode, like if you liked it and
otherwise we'll see you on the next one.