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Welcome to Beyond the Tech, a Bryan and Alex production. Beyond the Tech is a brand new podcast where we talk to some of the world's most inspirational tech leaders who are today helping shape and influence the future of business through both innovation and exceptional change leadership. Our hope is that through these talks we can learn some of their secrets while exploring their journey from their early beginnings and hearing some of the bold moves they made to become the prominent leaders they are today.
Bryan: [00:00:00] Welcome to Beyond the Tech, a Bryan and Alex production. I'm your host, Bryan MacDonald founder and CEO of the Digital Board. And today I'm with my co-host Alex Alexander, a former CTO and founder of XOOTS. Beyond the Tech is a brand new podcast where we talk to some of the world's most inspirational tech leaders who are today helping shape and influence the future of business through both innovation and exceptional change leadership. Our hope is that through these talks we can learn some of their secrets while exploring their journey from their early beginnings and hearing some of the bold moves they made to become the prominent leaders they are today.
At the end of the podcast, we will try and summarize five big takeaways to share with you to help you navigate some of your own big challenges. Okay, let's get started with our first guest. In this episode, we're gonna do something a [00:01:00] little bit different, as I'm going to interview my co-host Alex Alexander. For those of you who don't know Alex, he's been an accomplished CTO for over two decades, working for some of the world's most renowned brands, including Walmart, YOOX NET-A-PORTER, The Emirates Group, Sainsbury's, Barclays Bank and Egg. Not only has Alex been a highly successful CTO, but he's also an accomplished entrepreneur. He's now on his second venture, having recently launched a new business called XOOTS. XOOTS purpose is to help organizations improve the productivity of their teams while delivering digital products to market faster. They have developed an innovative approach, leveraging your business system's data, along with AI to create transparency throughout the value chain of systems delivery.
So let's kick off and explore a little bit of Alex's journey from CTO to CEO. I'll try [00:02:00] and keep this light and entertaining while asking some challenging questions around his time at some of those renowned brands.
Bryan: Alex, great to see you. We finally put this thing together.
Alex: Fantastic. I'm really excited. I have to say.
Bryan: So introductions. I'm Bryan McDonald. I'm the CEO and the founder of the digital board. And Alex, I think I already gave you quite a great plug at the beginning. So why don't we just dive in, get started with a couple of your stories around your leadership journey.
Alex: I think you highlighted sort of the big points in my career, but if I sort of just take a macro view of that, Bryan and actually say, what are they amongst all of these rules, what are the things that actually shaped me as a person I am today? I have to look to two critical points in my career.
First one was, Egg. an Internet, startup bank which really tried to transform banking by bringing banking online.[00:03:00] That was the most exciting time because actually this is the time that I got this obsession with e-commerce. It was the earliest stage of e-Commerce. I have to say it was a little bit intimidating knowing how close you are to the customer. Every launch, every product that we were doing at the fraction of the time that everybody else was bringing products to market, but I got this obsession and I loved it. I will also say about egg, It was the most empowering culture that I’ve ever experienced and it changed me to a better person.
Bryan: Now you described quite a significant transformation that Egg were leading in the sector. If we go back in time, telephone banking was just coming in. Internet banking was, well, really quite immature and then there's Egg. This new disruptor, redefining the customer experience in retail banking. You must have faced quite a bit of resistance and you must have really shocked some of the industry with your thinking and the thinking of your [00:04:00] colleagues around you.
Alex: Yeah, I think probably the best way to explain that is how Prudential who owned Egg, and that was obviously, a startup that they created, so we would turn up, and obviously our headquarters was in Derby, and we would turn up in London, in the Prudential building and we would turn up in jeans and trainers, having launched a online product in sort of record time. I remember, I launched a product for a straight through online banking in six weeks and of course, you know, six weeks was scary. It scared me as well, but we did it. And when Pru used to see us, they couldn't understand how these bunch of guys with jeans and trainers, and they would ask us, how do you do that? Something like that would take us two or three years to do and they used to think that we were a little bit crazy.
We were a little bit, you know, doing things that were against the norm and against what everybody had considered as the time that it would [00:05:00] take to launch a product, but we kept doing it, and I remember one of the key moments in my career, which, you know, I had read books about it, the first mover advantage, and of course, I knew the theory of that, but in one of our products, which was our credit card, the first mover advantage became a reality for us because we knew there were two or three other competitors of us that they were also launching a credit card. And effectively we worked day and night. and the whole company came behind that to make sure that we could launch it. And I think we launched it one day ahead of our second competitors and perhaps one week and then one month against the second, third and fourth, and of course a week later, nobody heard about the second, third and fourth because they just didn't have the customers that we had. So the first mover advantage was also something that I learned in real life. And I think these are the lessons that served me for the rest of my career.
Bryan: Alex, I'm really curious to know more about the culture back then. [00:06:00] Sounds creative, experimental. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Alex: everybody was experimenting with internet and we were executing with internet. And of course we were learning, huge amounts, we were making mistakes and we were learning and moving forward. But again, because it was new and sometimes we were taking really bold steps to launch a product, then we would make mistakes, but it was empowering and nobody got blamed for mistakes, but everybody got praised for taking that step forward for the customer.
Bryan: I love that summary, Alex. Culture would have played a significant part but it really required leadership and also alignment. And I'm sure that alignment was with multiple stakeholders. Can you walk us through just a little bit more of your experience of gaining alignment, gaining trust, and then maybe explain a little bit about the leadership qualities that were [00:07:00] required at that time, and those that you saw around you?
Alex: They were all from a banking background and they had worked together before But the moment I walked in, for the interview, I knew this was a special place. I knew this was a place that I wanted to be. Everybody had this desire to do something transformational for the customer, and they had this notion of dancing with the customer.
We used to have this induction, and you really had this immersion into what is it like to really delight the customer. When you have these inductions, you go back to your day job and it is something completely different, but at Egg, it was actually the same. Everybody had gone through that induction. Everybody wanted to do something different for the customer. And that's why, it was the most exciting part of my career, just because it was new, it was bold, it was fast paced. And we were so close to the customers.
Bryan: Alex, you have come from a [00:08:00] consulting background prior to that, so you would not have been seen as the deep techie. My guess is you would have a much clearer sense of what the business ambition was and, of course, how to align technology towards that. I'm just curious how you got your engineering teams aligned. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Alex: I think, what we did, and I think this was quite common in egg is that we worked as teams. So we had to learn together, we had to experiment together and we did lots of experiments together. But then once we decided that this was the right thing for the customer, we would embark on it, we would do user journeys, we would not only look at happy scenarios, we would also look at, you know, edge cases and we would work through all business processes. Well, at the same time, we were actually building those processes in terms of the technology that was underpinning it. And one of the things that, you know, you can never predict in any startup is that what's the response from customers. And, of course, in [00:09:00] every product that we launched the response was just, it was incredible.
Bryan: And was that one of your defining moments? Do you think that said, okay, I mean, you talked to at the beginning, the culture was like no other you'd experienced and no other that you've gone on to experience, so it clearly from that perspective was a defining moment. But from a leadership perspective, was that the, was that the beginning of your journey of, of being bold, being different?
Alex: Absolutely. I think it made me fearless. And I think the culture of egg because it was zero blame, it was very empowering meant that you became fearless, that as experienced leaders, you knew which corners you could cut, but also you knew which corners you had to protect and you could not cut those corners. And I think balancing all of that was a constant balance that we had to do in order to launch products at pace, but at the same time, you know, making sure that the product was right for the customer. So it was a defining [00:10:00] moment for me. And I think it's something that obviously made shape me as a person that I am.
Bryan: So that's such a great story, Alex. How do you follow that?
Alex: A second moment for me, that was a defining moment was as the Walmart times because I was recruited by the US so my office space was San Francisco, but I was assigned to the UK market, of course, ASDA and ASDA was like a startup, it was just the most amazing organization and empowering, fast paced. In some ways it reminded me of egg, it was almost like going back to the egg time because it just felt that you could do anything, you could launch anything. And it was that fearless culture that I mentioned that we had developed at egg. I felt it had the backing of the everybody, and we would launch products again, at most incredible pace.
But I think the contrast for me between California that was bringing lots of innovation that they can do mindset, rolling your sleeves [00:11:00] up in a traditional retailer that we had in Leeds was the most amazing contrast for me as well because amazing people that I enjoyed working with them, but also that contrast was important.
One big lesson that I learned, because one of my jobs was to bring the innovation from California to ASDA, was that any innovation had to be grounded in the realities of the UK market. What I mean by that, that it had to resonate with, you know, someone's grandma doing an online shopping from north of England. So it had to be relevant to that person. So that was another big lesson for me from those amazing period in my life, which again, it was empowering.
Bryan: Okay, let's put this into context. Alex, if I understand you correctly, on one level you are working for the mothership in California, but... representing the local business, in this case, ASDA Walmart, which has its own identity, its own culture, it's own [00:12:00] complexity, and of course, its own strategy, its ambition to, to outperform its competitors.
On another level, you've got to get alignment with Mothership, Walmart. Walmart, as you've described, have created this fantastic capability in Walmart Labs. And that's all about bringing into, to focus innovation into the different business units that it runs around the world. And there's you, sitting in between those two distinct parties.
You've got to get close to your business stakeholders, understand what is the differentiation that they're looking for what they're trying to create in their marketplace. And what can change that? And then there's all the manoeuvring and navigation. in those conversations and the courage to, to convince people that this is a bet worth going for.
Alex: It's a really great point. And I think this was a major part of my role, because I had to bring the right technology [00:13:00] innovation to UK, but also at the same time, when it came to grocery online, UK was ahead as it was ahead of the US. So actually had to take that, knowhow and technology to the US as well, but it was always a balancing act because I had to gain the trust of ASDA leadership for them to believe that some of these technology wasn't just a hype, it was actually real and it could actually help. At the same time, I had to get the backing and support of the US leadership, in particular in San Francisco, where most of this innovation was being done, to say, no, no, let's invest in the UK and let's divert our attention and our resources to that. And I remember, one particular moment that I heard an opportunity for us to be ahead of the queue for one of the big products that we were developing, which was, you know, Order Management System, I felt that there was an opportunity, and I got the backing of UK that evening to say, what if you could do this? What if you could [00:14:00] bring that expertise and the knowhow and the product to UK? And I got sort of a reasonable response with lots of ifs and buts, but it was enough for me to jump on a flight the next day and go straight to San Francisco and actually get that support and that became a reality literally a couple of weeks later that we reprioritise other markets. We brought that expertise to the UK and it was, one of the most incredible moments in my career.
Bryan: Alex, I think your positivity is quite infectious. I'm sensing that you bring a lot of energy to the mission, not just in aligning your stakeholders, giving them confidence and building trust with them, but it's really about you as a leader of people, how you bring those teams with you, how you create this, yes, we can attitude. Yes, we will do this attitude. We're going to do this [00:15:00] attitude. Is that fair?
Alex: I think it's fair. And also, it's connecting the dots. I had to connect lots of dots to make that connection happen. And then obviously I had to influence, maybe a group of leaders that they didn't have to work so closely together, and I was sort of bringing that energy and exactly, as you said, the can-do mindset that we could do this, put that energy into everybody to say, it is possible we could do this. And then figuring out, of course, at the time I didn't know how to do it, but obviously figuring out together how that could be done.
Bryan: Because, I mean, even then tech was maturing to a point where more people were getting confidence that the tech could do what you ask it to do, but not perfect. Today, even better as you go along, but the change management attached to that, the stakeholder engagement, the buy-in, the credibility, the trust that you have to build.
Not just with your stakeholder group in ASDA [00:16:00] locally who will be nervous because, you know, retailers like predictability, they like differentiation. Of course, we like predictability, but you've got also stakeholders in California who might have that earmark for something else, whatever, it is. But change is hard. How did you begin to convince? the leadership of ASDA at the time, that this would differentiate them?
Alex: it wasn't easy. I would say different cultures and it needed energy and it needed some risks. And I was taking risks because I didn't have a definite yes from UK to say yes, we will do it. So, there was some reservations. And of course, I didn't have a definite yes from San Francisco to say yes, we're going to divert resources.
We're going to reprioritize. We weren't going to do this other market where we're going to focus on as there. So, I had to really, in some ways, I put myself in the middle of this and just trying to influence and [00:17:00] convince. But when I look back, one of the skills that I had to develop and hone was, storytelling. You know, being able to influence at that level and of course you can't just say trust me, I'm a technologist this would be fine on the day I had to be really open and honest because, you know, ASDA leadership and the US leadership, they wanted to get down to the level of detail to say, well, how would that work?
So, I really had to explain that in a way that how would, how would work and what commitment was required from either party to make that happen. That was the glue and of course, you know, if it had not happened, it would have been a very short career for me because, we wouldn't be doing this podcast. So, I had to put my reputation and trust me because we will make it work. And it wasn't easy because, you know, like any change of this nature, which is of global nature, there's always resistance to change there's always, even I remember, [00:18:00] on my side, on my tech side, the teams were coming through three different time zones and English was not spoken across all of the teams. In week one we had a major setback because they weren't talking to each other and I was really worried whether this was the beginning of the end, and I made, you know, an immediate decision to say we stop talking on the call. We all come to the US, San Francisco, we all meet there, and we spend one week in workshops. And nobody leaves until we figure out how to do this so that we are on the same page and probably that was the pivotal decision that I made to say, okay, we don't all speak the same language and even if we spoke the same language, we didn't understand each other because of the different context. Everybody on the plane, we all meet in one place for one week and we will figure it out, and I think that was the pivotal moment because then everybody got aligned and we just realized that [00:19:00] actually, no matter which tech team you were from, at the end of the day, we all had the same purpose. So we wanted to make this a success, so by having a period together, socialising together, having a beer together, we actually built a team that was able to deliver this in seven months, which to this date, I still don't know how we did it in seven months, because something like this is a two year project.
Bryan: Alex, those were two great stories. But can I ask you a direct question? What do you think it takes to be a really successful leader in this context?
Alex: I would say the first thing is that you need to really, really sell and explain the purpose. What is it that we are doing and why is it important and make it relatable to them. So, what is a purpose for a business? It needs to be translated in terms of what does that engineer need to understand that purpose. What does it mean for that engineer? What does that engineer need to do? So it's [00:20:00] relatable, and acting as the translator so that purpose becomes contagious and everybody talks about that purpose. That's why they're doing this. That's why they're coding this. That's why they are documenting this process. That's why they're doing the business case. And that's why we need to deliver this. So that creating that contagious. That is the why we need to do this.
Bryan: Love it, yeah.
Alex: It's number one lesson, because without that, it doesn't matter whether you've got the greatest team because they haven't got that sense of purpose. And I think, you know, that one week in San Francisco, we've got everybody together that was for the first time, we all got aligned on that purpose. And the second thing for me is that, when we make a promise based on that purpose, no matter how tough it is, we've got to do it. I think the third one is about giving that autonomy and creating the right environment for the team, because we had some amazing talent to do this because you can't do it with, you know, without having an amazing team. But of [00:21:00] course having an amazing team to exceed the potential, what they think it's possible they can do, you need to give them space. You need to give the most talented individuals the space to be creative, coming up, so you need to get out of their ways in some ways and just making sure that they know no matter what mistakes they make, you're going to have their backs and they will test you because there will be times in any major program that you make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, but they look to you to say, if I make a mistake, is Alex going to have my back, and the answer is no matter what you've got to have their backs because they trusted you.
Bryan: Alex, I think it's great advice. I mean, if you think about people's route into technology and their career path, they start off in very technical, often precise roles where it's their IQ that has got them there. There's, you know, various routes through that, whether that's engineers [00:22:00] coding, whether that's project managers, engaging in delivery or people involved in solutioning. They're all quite precise, these roles, very specific they don't really necessarily focus on some of the core leadership disciplines that are needed at a more senior level and then at some point in they advance through their career, and the pivot is much more towards strategic leadership, strategic purpose, understanding.
Well, understanding mission and purpose and people, mapping stakeholders, understanding their different drivers and priorities, being able to create stories and, build by it, focusing on the why we would say, that's what we're really talking about here. That's what we're looking for, is people who can recognise what the business strategy is, what the [00:23:00] business purpose mission is, and alongside the ambition, how do they bring their skills and their leadership and the technology capability to align to that ambition?
It sounds like you are doing all of that, but I'm hearing a bit more, I'm hearing there's this bit about going the extra mile creating a belief system in your people where they felt empowered. I don't want to exaggerate or over egg this, but I think you're making people feel that they're superhuman, that you've got their back, that they can learn, that they can fail, they can experiment, and it seems your leadership that you bring is like your superpower.
So, Alex's career story, so far, we've touched on disruptive internet banking we've talked about transformational leadership in grocery. Now, Alex, if you [00:24:00] indulge me, we're going to shift gears into the world of luxury fashion and not just luxury fashion, but online luxury fashion. The disruptor of all of that, which was NET-A-PORTER, Alex, can you just describe a little bit more about the YOOX NET-A-PORTER challenge? Maybe a little bit about where they were, what their ambition was, what were they trying to get at in terms of their future direction? They were clearly a player and an established player in the online luxury fashion world, but can you share some of that story with us?
Alex: I joined YOOX, so it became YOOX NET-A-PORTER almost soon after I joined. So obviously then the target was to converge the platforms and create a world's largest online fashion and luxury platform. And again, for me, that was one of the motivations that why I joined, because I'd seen many platforms being built, [00:25:00] I'd built some of those platforms, but I'd never built an end to end eCommerce platform, everything from front end to back end to Order Management and of course it is a big undertaking and building it for 40 plus brands, it's something that I meant - The everything that I learned in my career up to that time, I had to put to test and I felt that I want to prove that I can build a platform that could support Forty brands. So that was a motivation for me as well but I think taking people on the journey, building those relationships was probably the most important thing that some of my learnings from, ASDA Walmart helped me because in Italy, a lot of things get done through relationships it's not transactional that you can just say to somebody, just do this no, no, you need to talk to people, they need to explain things. And I never forget one week after I joined and I moved, I'd moved to, Bologna where our head office was. [00:26:00] I said, I wanted to have an All-Hands, I want to really talk to everybody in the team and of course, at the time I was just CIO of YOOX part, so I only had one week there, so I didn't really speak Italian.
For three days, I just studied Italian as best as I could, day and night, I just put myself through learning Italian and then, faced with 450 of my team in this big hall, I introduced myself, I welcomed them in Italian and... I never forget it, the moment I did this, the whole room erupted, and they just sort of stood up and clapped because they were just surprised that I made an attempt. Of course, broken Italian, nothing to talk about, but the fact that I had tried to connect, that created emotional connections between us as early as the first week, so that was an incredible feeling. And of course, this was just one example of a relationship building that was [00:27:00] important and how to create that connection to everybody.
Bryan: Alex, it feels like despite all of the leadership skills that you've had to deploy, your super strength is really in leading people.
Alex: The people aspect. I think it's sort of something that I've always had, but of course, you improve that, and in different environments and you take the best of it and of course, the two examples that I mentioned, the pivotal points egg and ASDA Walmart’s working with some amazing people, I realized that's what I wanted to be.
But I think you made a very good point. I want to come back to it, which said, the environments that I had been in, they were all pressure cooker environments, you may not, you might not have used that word, but I say that and they have been, they've always been a pressure cooker, because it's always been an urgency to do something. But what I've always done is to protect my team from that, you know, pressures that I've had to deal with. And somebody said to me in the early part of my becoming a CTO, CIO said, it's [00:28:00] a very lonely role, are you sure you want to do this? And that person was right, there were times that I felt so lonely because I've had to protect my team. I couldn't share somethings with my team, and I had to figure out a way that I could manage upwards, but at the same time to get the work done in a different way and it was lonely at times and I've had to deal with all of those in some of the pressure cooker environments. But you learn how to manage those and you become more resilient and it's back to the grit that I mentioned. You become stronger, you protect your teams, you always, you always smile so that you don't want to worry them, but you have that worry on your mind and you've got to, you've got to find a way of solving it.
Bryan: It's fair to say that the CIO or CTO role, in fact, any C suite level role, it's a lonely role I mean, C equals lonely. Leaders in this position often feel that they have to take the pressure themselves and protect the teams [00:29:00] and own that responsibility.
And perhaps that's a podcast in itself for another time, let's go back to you, Alex, as a leader, because what I think's really interesting about you is that you are laser focused on people, to make it fun, to make it ambitious. I think that's, that's fantastic. This podcast is meant to provide inspiration to others, aspiring to be group CIO or group CTO, but it's also meant to provide some validation or affirmation to those in those roles, listening to each other's stories. Is there any particular advice that you would give?
Alex: Well, first of all, I would say the role of a CTO in the, in the C suite right now is the most complex of all the C suite role. I'm very firm and convinced about that statement and it, and it wasn't always like this. So I would say 10 years ago, I wouldn't [00:30:00] have said that, but right now I would say is the most complex of all the C suite roles.
And there are reasons what I would say that it's just because, apart from hundreds of projects that you need to deliver the various, you know, business stakeholders that you need to support and understand the businesses and of course, technology is moving at such a fast pace, vendors have become very powerful. So not only you need to understand which tech to choose, but also you need to make sure you get the best deal for that tech. Of course, there is, employer branding, because obviously if you don't attract the right talent, so there is lots to be done.
If I was giving advice to either a new CIO, CTO or anyone else, there are two things that first of all you need to focus on because they could destroy your career and could at the same time destroy the company that you're serving. First of all, Cyber security and with that also includes data privacy, GDPR and data protection. [00:31:00] You don't want to have a security breach or data breach anytime, certainly if you're new, you don't want to have it in the first 12 months because effectively you lose your credibility and of course it's devastating for the company as well. So that's one thing you've got to pay immediate attention on and a constant attention on. The second one is availability; we have seen and we have heard about many examples of outages and you don't want to have an outage if you're new in the first 12 months and certainly any other time. So you really need to make sure that everything that you do is to make sure that you have protected that. At the end, the business takes it for granted that their technology leader is going to take care of this, in some ways, they take it for granted, you're not going to get any brownie points for saying, okay, I didn't create a breach or I didn't have an outage, they expect you to do that. So what they measure you on, is execution, whatever that execution [00:32:00] agenda is, whether it is digital transformation, whether it is cost savings, whether it's delivering a, you know, a new product, whatever it may be. And you really need to understand what the priority is and what you need to focus on, and what is key in that execution is the productivity of your team because everything is about delivering software and cutting code is unlike any other thing that you do, because it's human centric.
Bryan: I think this is great. Focusing on execution and delivery and meeting deadlines and doing all of the required stakeholder management on route.
I think that sounds like it seems to be pretty important in your, in your mantra. But maybe you also went a bit further and when you're instilling this culture of, you know, delivery that is all about standing by your promises and going the extra mile so that you deliver, and you create an environment where [00:33:00] people want to deliver.
If I was being a little bit devil's advocate, this, this is what's expected of you no, isn't the real goal to go way beyond that and, and to define a culture that is ambitious and help them think about the context in which they are doing all of this.
While you really understand the organization's culture and ambition and strategy and even the politics that surround it, how do you begin to think about helping your teams? Do those things and navigating the politics, anticipating the headwinds that they might, you know, find themselves running into. I mean, in our framework, Alex, you've seen it many times, you know, I have this EQ, IQ framework and on the EQ side, we have major competency areas like leading through ambiguity, which is all about [00:34:00] political navigation, dealing with uncertainty, operating with numerous options that can be adopted based on different, either economic situations or, or even, you know, political situations where different leaders need different things at different times. How do you prepare your teams for that? I'm super curious, to hear your thoughts around that.
Alex: I think, first of all, you need to know their business, so you need to know what the Chief Marketing Officer is worried about, you need to understand what the CEO is worried about. Spend time in their business and make sure that you get credibility by knowing their business, how you can help them and build that relationship with them, and you can only build that when you can speak the language, when you speak the language of a CMO, what the CMO is looking after, what are the priorities? You need to do that earlier on as well, because when things go wrong, and things do go wrong, then they give you time, [00:35:00] they give you some slack to recover the situation because you tried to understand what are the things that they're worried about and how you can help them? These are key and one of the key things I would say across all the business stakeholders, I try not to bore the stakeholders with how software development is done, how technology is delivered because in some ways they don't care.
Bryan: Okay, Alex, I know I gave you a bit of an introduction at the beginning of the podcast, but it would be remiss of me not to allow you a minute or so to explain XOOTS in your own words.
Alex: Bryan, the XOOTS story and why I formed this tech startup a few months ago is linked to my story of how I got here. It's uniquely shaped by my career, my learnings and experiences with large global teams to improve the productivity. I would say in every company I worked in, fast paced execution and elevating productivity of my team has always been an expectation and hence central to my objectives.
So what got me [00:36:00] motivated and gave me the passion and the reason to set up XOOTS was to give something back, share my learnings and help aspiring CTOs, CIOs and other technology leaders to succeed in this very complex world of tech. And it's kind of related to my earlier advice to all aspiring CTOs, that it needs to be laser focus on execution because this is how they're judged by the business leaders.
I want to do this in a systematic way and use generative AI to translate the learnings into a tool for all technology leaders, software engineers, and also business leaders, because they often see technology as a black box, so it gives them a chance to shine a light into the black box of IT, and I believe This will help organizations in all sectors to accelerate the digital journey by tapping into the power of AI to bring not only efficiency and cost optimization, but also better decision making in every aspect of the journey from [00:37:00] talent selection to technology delivery and hopefully, you know, my answer is giving you an insight into my motivations as why I set up XOOTS.
Bryan: Alex, what a great story. I think we all came away with a very solid understanding of where your passion sits and what your motivations were for setting up XOOTS, great story and thanks for sharing.
So look, we've now come to the part of the show that we agreed we would give people five solid takeaways, takeaways that they could apply to their role as a leader. You shared some great stories; I'm going to do my best to try and summarize five of the ones that stood out for me. There were many more, but these are the ones that hit me.
In takeaway one, I think I heard through your egg story, the need to be bold, the need to be different and the need to really go for things. I think you, you use the term, you know, taking advantage of first [00:38:00] mover advantage.
I think I heard a second takeaway, which is don't be afraid to try things to push yourself, you made some really interesting moves if I think about the Walmart, ASDA, and the labs scenario, you talked about taking your teams out to California, speaking different languages from different cultures with maybe a different context coming into it and your job was to get in lockdown in a room on a single mission and you know, that wouldn't have been easy. You were new in there as well, but you pushed yourself and you went for it. And then you also, you provided another example in that when you moved to Italy, to the NET-A-PORTER role, you left your family behind. You had to learn yourself a new language, a new culture and a new industry. [00:39:00] And that, well, that would have made you vulnerable, but it clearly helped you grow. So takeaway two, don't be afraid.
Third takeaway, and maybe it's connected, but I think it's, you know, taking risks and without taking risks as a leader, you probably never know what you're capable of. So by trying things that are difficult, that are some way very challenging emotionally, psychologically, that will help you grow as a leader, you'll be able to draw on that experience and it will give you a confidence to, to go again and to inspire others to go with you.
And, and maybe the fourth, and I'm giving them as if they're thought through in a chronological order, but they're not necessarily that way. But I think you seem to be laser focused on what the organization you were working for was trying to [00:40:00] achieve. And then you were laser focused around making sure that you created value in that sense, so that they engaged and you in turn, built trust. So anyway, be laser focused on what the business ambition is, understand the culture that you're operating within, understand the drivers of those leaders that you are working with, understand the team's drivers and align them all to the business ambition and the strategy.
And then the fifth takeaway, and I think this is the most single important thing that you are about, and that is people leadership. And of course, you know, the stakeholders that we're describing in the business are people, but I really heard a lot about you as a leader of people, about your teams, and where you've created an environment in which they want to work for you, that they [00:41:00] will go beyond, way beyond the extra mile because, well, you've inspired them. You have led from the front, on one level, you know, you've just given them the confidence to operate and the support to allow them to fail and to learn and to grow and being their inspiration and coach.
Alex: Bryan, I agree, these are five great takeaways, well done for summarizing it so well, I couldn't have done it better myself.
Bryan: Alex, this has been fun! Next time, you are going to have to share some of the question asking when we bring our next guest on, but it's been fun to listen to your story, to try and pick at what's made you the successful leader that you've become today and to hear what advice you can share with others on route. I really appreciate the chance to do this, I'm going to improve my question asking skills and make sure I get right at the heart [00:42:00] of some of those things, but I think you've been a fantastic co-host and guest.
Alex: Thank you, Bryan and I really enjoyed the in-depth, questions and going to the heart of, some of the special moments, so thank you for being curious and asking those amazing questions and going to, particular part of my career that not visited, I've not gone back to those times, as you touched on it.
Bryan: So Alex, next time it's you and I together with our first guest, and we will announce who that is very soon.
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