S14E18: Hard-won truths on leading transformation (Mike Ettling, former CEO of Unit4)

Richard Medcalf
When you’re leading huge transformation across an entire business, perhaps your biggest challenge isn’t actually strategic, but internal. Your own self-doubt that can get in the way. In this episode I speak with Mike Lin, who recently stepped down as CEO of Unit four, after a transformative six year tenure where he led the company through a business model change from taking it from on-premise software provider to a unified cloud first organization.

He navigated culture shifts, navigated the demands of investors, and he also worked on his own self-doubt and in a game, all the things that hold us back when we’re playing at a high level. So we get into exactly this story. In today’s episode, we look at why hiring for hardship and failures is much better than hiring based on, uh, all the usual things that we look for on a resume.

We look at what really breaks a transformation. We look at how you get, um, speed, momentum, culture, purpose in a private equity environment. And we look at how to manage self-doubt when you’re surrounded with brilliant people. So enjoy this conversation. Hard won truths on leading transformation. From Mike Edlin, welcome to the Impact Multiplier, CEO podcast.

I’m Richard Medcalf, founder of XQuadrant, and my mission is to help the world’s top CEOs and entrepreneurs shift from incremental to exponential progress and create a huge positive impact on our world Now that requires you to reinvent yourself and transform your business. So if you’re ready to play a bigger game than ever before, I’m.

Invite you to join us and become an impact multiplier, CEO.

Hi Mike, and welcome to the show. Hey, Richard, how are you? I’m great, thank you. And it’s, it’s a real pleasure to have you, uh, anybody who’s seen Queen live in concert is good by me, so I know that’s probably your in your past. Um, so Mike, I know that you’ve just handed the reins over as CEO of unit four, um, after I think six years in tenure where you transformed it from a legacy on-premise.

Software business into a pure cloud player, uh, very successfully. And um, so I’d love us to kinda explore that and perhaps other parts of your leadership journey today. But lemme start with this. Um, one thing that you mentioned is that even when you are leading at that global scale, and perhaps we can kind of get into.

A bit about what the business, you know, was and is and how you transformed it. But I think one of the key questions that I have is, you know, you mentioned to me that despite leading that global bus, that global business and seeing all this transformation, there were moments where you really had self-doubt, uh, at the top of, you know, at the top of that, that pyramid.

So I’m kind of curious to hear the story of unit four and then to kind of dive into how it felt as you were leading that transformation.

Mike Ettling
Well, firstly, it’s great to be here and, um, my unfortunately, my track record on Scene Queen was five minutes. Okay? Because Freddie Mercury, uh, um, had a voice problem.

We won’t discuss why, um, five minutes into the concert and abandoned the concert. Well,

Richard Medcalf
It’s five minutes more than me. So, you know, that, that does sucks.

Mike Ettling
But yeah, you know, unit four was an interesting story. It was a very challenged business, very um, multi-product business, very on-prem. Traditionally, um, culturally, very much a federation of individual countries.

And, you know, we spent six years and it’s very much transformed now into more of a singular product business, ERP for people, businesses, um, very global and functional in how it runs. Um, you know, and all the metrics are very, you know, almost best in class for a cloud kind of business. That journey’s been very, very interesting.

And, and through that journey, also selling to a new owner, um, from one private equity fund to another private equity fund. Um, so it’s been a really interesting journey. Um, you know, when you think about. Your comment about leading in a global context? I’ve always, ever since leaving South Africa in 1997, I’ve always been called to run global or multi-country businesses.

You know, I’ve lived in different countries, but no one ever called me to run something in the UK or to run something in the USA. They always called me to run something global or something across Europe. Um, maybe it’s the chameleon nature of, uh, US Africans. Um. But I also think there’s a, there’s a very strong element around when you leave your home country and you’re forced to, because our sandbox is quite small in South Africa.

All, all the things which you would normally do in a, in assembling talent go out the window because, you know, you land, uh, in, in London and yeah, maybe you’ve heard of Cambridge and Oxford. But you’ve got no clue whether HAR is better than Manchester or Southampton is be, you know, better than Liverpool University.

So you gotta learn. You can’t pigeonhole, your whole pigeonholing ability is removed. So you really gotta learn to interview and recruit talent based on talent, you know, based on capability, you know, because the CV is way worth less to you as a leader. And I think that’s one of the things which. Changes when you, you go and work globally, uh, very early in your career, and then it stays with you.

You, you constantly evaluate talent on that basis. You constantly place less value. I think I place less value on the CV and the academic background than many other leaders do. ’cause I’m looking more at the, uh, sort of cultural background and the upbringing and the experiences and sort of the hardship and dynamics.

Richard Medcalf
Well, let’s, let’s po let’s focus right on that for a second. Um, ’cause it’s a, it is a key issue, right? Hiring is such a key issue for every executive. So, um, yeah. If so, in the absence of that, because there’s kind of cultural markers of, you know, uh, prestige, um, like in an interview setting, what do you look for?

Like, you talk about these kind of cultural markers, but like concretely. Uh, how are you gonna dis distinguish a, a, a mediocre player from somebody that you really, really want to hire?

Mike Ettling
So, there’s a couple things, and then there’s a question I always get into. Um, so generically, I, I’m looking for the ability to have overcome and dealt with hardship.

In their background, um, whether it’s at a personal level, whether it’s at a cultural level, um, you know, I was interviewing exec once and he was talking about how he lived through the Angolan Civil War. So Portuguese exec with his parents, and, you know, they were destitute, uh, through that process, came back to Portugal and almost started from scratch, you know, and to me that is like an incredibly strong signal.

Of the ability to deal with, with hardship and, and, you know, not get taken down by it. So that’s one thing I’m always looking for is where are those great sort of hardship stories? And they don’t have to be hardship, they just need to also be sort of down to earth stories. Like, you know, the person spent a lot of time growing up on a farm.

People have very different kind of views of, of, you know, getting from A to B in life with that sort of background. And then the topic I always get into is, let’s talk about your failures in life and what did you learn from your failures? And, and that question always stuns me when I get into the discussion.

People still, even in today talks will turn around and say they’ve no, they haven’t had any failures. Um, and to me that’s a really, another really strong signal. Can someone talk about challenges they had? Have they internalized it? Can they articulate it, and can they articulate what were, you know, the learnings in that process?

Richard Medcalf
Um, and how has that changed them as a leader in their, in their world? Yeah, of course. I’m gonna have to ask you now, Mike, you know, what’s, what’s the failure that you’ve had and how has it, how has it changed your leadership? I’ve gotta ask the man.

Mike Ettling
Yeah, I, I think, um, uh, you know, I recall in the early days of my leadership, I was very, probably too influenced by leadership box and, um, too influenced by, um, you know, process of leadership.

Um, until a boss, uh, a mentor actually said to me, who the hell are you? What makes Mike tick? You know, what is you? And then we kind of talked about this and I enjoy the bush and I enjoy barbecues or bride as we call it, and rugby. And he said, well do that with your team. Become you with your team. So there was a strong lesson there around, you know, leadership is about being authentic, not about being, about following processes and methodologies.

And I, I’ve actually become quite as cynic. Leadership textbooks. Um, I always say my people always know. I say, there’s only one book I recommend. Everything else is, you know, not really, um, uh, worth reading. And so that’s the one kind of dynamic, which I think is really important. And then I was fortunate very early in my career back in South Africa, I started two businesses and one was wildly successful and one was a failure.

And the one that was a failure. A failure because of stakeholder management. Um, you know, it had multiple stakeholders, um, you know, public company individuals and the stakeholder management. You know, I was a young entrepreneur. I was focused on building the business. I wasn’t thinking about stakeholder management.

Um, and that business I think would’ve been way more, would’ve been successful had I been able to do the stakeholder management more effectively.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting. It’s, um, I was working with a while back, I was working with, um, leadership team in a pharma company and, um, the general manager, their report, her her reports and, um.

It is really interesting ’cause this hot shot, new person came in and, um, quite young but very accomplished and uh, had a big remit. And um, uh, we had some sessions together and I was, um, I was working with her and um, I think she kind of went off the radar, disappeared for a while and eventually kinda, we managed to catch up and I said, oh, it’s been a while.

How’s it going? And she’s like, oh, super busy. Crazy busy. Uh, as I expected, and I could tell she was speaking fast. She was, you know, she was like in that superhero mode, I call it, trying to prove herself, you know, uh, to, to the boss and everything, and to, and show all the things she could do. And I kind of eventually slowed it down a little bit and said, okay, so just, um, like, why were you hired?

Like what, what are the big goals? And so forth. And in the conversation she suddenly went, oh my word. Like, I’ve been doing this one. We had two main things. I was there to have been here, hired to do, and I’m only doing one of them. Because it was the one which is like the easiest, the most, like it’s the, it’s the most in my comfort zone, the one that I’ve done in the past.

And I’m like massively over-delivering on that one. This other part, I’m, I’m just not even getting to. And then I also said like, okay, and how’s the relationship with the general manager? And she was like, oh, heck, I barely speak to the general man like her boss because I’m so busy running around this large company.

Networking, making an impact and so forth that she was like losing sync with her number one stakeholders. So it’s a different situation. I’ve got examples from CEOs as well, but this one just comes to mind because it can be so easy, as you say, when you’re like focused on some short term deliverables. Not see the big context here.

Mike Ettling
Yeah. And, and you know, I think I was grateful, very grateful. It happened so early in my career and I think it’s easy to happen when you, uh, early stage entrepreneur and it’s, you know, it’s been something which has been very key, I think, to success thereafter.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that moments.

I mean, back to your point about failure being learning. There was a time in my very early career where I took on too many projects at once. It was like a moment where I was up for a promotion. Um, and I wanted to show what an amazing project manager I was, which is gonna take me to the next level. I ended up taking on three really, really interesting projects.

It all happened to, came the same. They normally, they’re meant to be staggered. In the end, they all got sold like at the same date. And of course, I did an okay job on all of them, but. If I had just done one of them and nailed it, it would’ve been much better. It would be much better. And I’d have got that promotion a bit faster.

So, uh, but believe me, you don’t make, well, at least I don’t make that mistake twice. You know, you learn it once and then suddenly you realize, oh, it’s not about the quantity. It really is not about the quantity. Okay. Agree with that. It’s, it’s all about the quality and the quality of the engagement and experience.

Yeah. So there you go. So that was why I was permanently shift, like better to nail one thing than to like. Okay. Three things anyway. So let’s kind of go back to, so, um, we’ll kind of go back a little bit. So, um, so what I heard in terms of hiring, um, yeah, looking less at. All the certificates and accolades looking around hard, looking around hardship and failure as the kind of way to really understand where somebody’s coming from.

Uh, is there anything else you wanna say on that or do we, should we move back onto the..

Mike Ettling
No, I think, I think hardship failure. And then I think the other aspect, which is really important is trying to get to the bottom of understanding how the person will behave in a team dynamic. You know, I think this is really, really an important concept, which is often hard to do in business.

You know, sports coaches spend a lot of time thinking about, if I bring in this fly off or this scrum off, how do they play together and what’s the team dynamic? We tend to focus a bit more on individual, um, capability, and I would say all the times where I’ve had a higher, I regret. It’s all been because I haven’t put enough effort upfront trying to figure out how does this person gonna play on the team.

Yeah. So how do you do that? How, how, how do you try to discern that in a, in a session? I think two things. Uh, I just use two very simple techniques. One is have the whole team meet them, you know, particularly at a senior if you’re dealing with the EXCO senior team of a company. Um, and two. Find and there’s lots of these out there, find some form of assessment.

Um, and it’s not about is there a perfect assessment, but it’s more about putting everyone on your team through the same assessment. So you rarely can, you know, have a common standard to look at the, how the, they balance each other. Um, and then consistently doing that when you’re bringing people into the team.

So you’ve got that kind of view little bit more theoretically over how is this person gonna play on the team in a team dynamic. Yeah. Having that common language. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, whenever I’ve kind of compromised on that or not done it thoroughly enough. I end up in a regret hire situation.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah.

Fascinating. I made me think of an executive team I worked with a while back. And, uh, there was a, an amalgamation of three different companies Basically there, there was like a merger and then there was private equity people who had also inserted a couple of their, their people. And, uh, I’ll tell you what, I did one of these assessments and like you didn’t have to tell me the three groupings.

It was immediately obvious that the private equity people had put in a very cer certain sort of person. The original company had a very certain sort of person and the new CEO and some of his. Team, very specific profile, and they were very different. And so, no wonder, no wonder there was a bit of a cultural, uh, friction.

Uh, because like they, people often recruit very similar people if they’re not, if they’re not aware.

Mike Ettling
Well, you know, and, and I always use like the, the rugby or sports analogy. It’s, it’s easy to see it post the event. You know, six months into the person’s hire, you could walk into the company. And you’re like spotted straight away.

You won’t even have to do an assessment or any sort of process, but unlike, you know, sport where you can go watch the player play at a local level or a local club level, and you can kind of see the interaction and, and that’s essentially what you’re trying to emulate with, with some sort of evaluation skill because you can’t really see that in business when you’re hiring someone onto the team.

Trying to get that, that view I think is really key. And then letting your team engage in the recruiting process as well. Um, which often is complex ’cause you’re doing confidential hiring or something, but at some point I, I think it’s really important to let the whole team. Engage with the individual, you know, before you, you sign on the dotted line.

Richard Medcalf
Perfect. Okay, so let’s kinda go back to this, this journey of, of, um, of, of unit four. Um, because you obviously had to lead this big transformation to, to shift this on premises. Business to the cloud and to go through the whole business model challenge that goes from charging upfront fees to reg recurring subscriptions and all, all the rest of it.

Um, and sounds like that went really well. However, talk to me about, again, that this question of self-doubt that we started up the conversation with a little bit like. Um, how did that show up? You know, was there a difference in, were there triggers when that would come in? Were there kind part, difficult moments?

Um, just kind of wondering Yeah, because I think it’s something which a lot of my clients, a lot of leaders do, do struggle with and they wrestle with and they, they have syndrome. So curious to hear your side on this.

Mike Ettling
Yeah, I think there’s different dimensions to this. I think there’s, um. Kind of macroeconomic, uh, shifts and there’s kind of leadership dynamics.

And I think in the leadership dynamic piece, the whole thing around, um, you know, I, I’m a strong believer in hiring really, really smart people. Really smart people are gonna challenge you all the time. So you better have your self doubt under control if you believe in that concept, because there’s always gonna be smarter people.

By definition, the private equity model is always gonna do that as well. So, you know, if you are a CEO of a style of, I know it all, I’m, I’m the king of the castle kind of approach. You’re not gonna succeed in private equity. ’cause by definition, the private equity model is bringing. You know, lots of pattern recognition, lots of smart people around the table, lots of experience in other companies to bear to help you get from A to B faster.

And I’ve often seen CEOs struggle in private equity because there’s, you know, CEOs sometimes we have this mindset that we need to have the answer to everything. You, you don’t, you absolutely don’t. And you can’t because if you take that approach, you know, within two months of being owned by a private equity fund, you’re gonna think you’re the biggest idiot on the planet.

Um, but that’s the value they bring. And, and your job as a CEO is to figure out how to bring all that value, what to use, what not to use. And how to short, uh, circuit the journey you need to take the company on. So I think that’s, you know, a really important thing about, you know, managing self-doubt and not letting it manifest itself as a leader is to embrace, make sure you can embrace all the smartness around you and accept the fact that you’re not the smartest kid on the block.

Richard Medcalf
Well, there’s paradox. I think right. There’s a paradox in what you’re saying because on one hand, um, you could say, well, you know, if you didn’t have any self doubt. Right then you would feel you did have the answer to everything and you’re not gonna be open to the input from other people. Right. On the other hand, you know, if you’re crippled by self-doubt, right, then you’re not gonna be the leader that that people need either.

So I think there’s something here about, you know, having the kind of inner confidence that you don’t need to have all the answers, but. You know, you, well, she’s a sporting analogy. I actually use it often with my clients. It’s like you’re wearing the jersey, you know, like you, you, you, that is your role. You don’t have to go around proving it to yourself or to other people, and you actually there for free just to focus on what needs to be done.

Mike Ettling
And I, and I totally agree with that thing, that, you know, the self-doubt and confidence can coexist. You know, they’re not opposites. So you can see very confident leaders build a lot of self-doubt. And I think your point about just having that inner calmness, that inner confidence, you are wearing the jersey, I’m the number 15.

I’m wearing the jersey. I know what I gotta do is, um, you know, so important. You know, I I there in the last Rugby World Cup there was that, uh, um. South African kicker who had Pollard, who had to kick from the halfway line to win the game. I think it was against England, you know, and BGI just handed him the ball and said, force Africa, you know, when made the decision to kick for the, to kick for goals, that’s a classic self-doubt problem.

You know, you could have enormous self-doubt, but he didn’t. He just had that arm inner confidence and kicked it over and won the game. Um, so I think that’s a really important, really important dynamic is, you know, you’ve gotta have that inner confidence. And it’s not about being arrogant and overconfidence, but it’s about.

I think your description of you, you gotta, you are comfortable in the jersey.

Richard Medcalf
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A measurable shift in stakeholder perceptions and a world class leadership development environment. Find out about both of these programs at x quadrant.com/services. Now, back to the conversation. And so when you were going through that trans transition yourself and you had smart people around, like did you find yourself.

You know, veering at some point, like too much into one of these areas. Overconfidence, too much self-doubt. Like what? You know, just where, yeah. How did you

Mike Ettling
Yeah, I think I, I tend to, I’m a glass half full person, so I tend to see the, um. The positive in everything. Um, I work well when I’ve got like a close team, A CFO or a COO on the team who’s, who’s a little bit more glass half empty ’cause it creates a good balance.

Um, but also, you know, when you have really, really smart people around, it’s very easy to start saying, well, what value am I adding? You know, surely I should. Bringing that knowledge to the table. And, and you’ve gotta constantly remind yourself, no, your, your value is to lead this and to synthesize it all and, you know, create the results of the game, not to have the individual skills to make it happen.

Richard Medcalf
And so let’s talk about that as the, um, as you’re running this transition, uh, this transformation of the business. Um, I know that you have. We had a global team, uh, across many continents or many countries. Um, how did you go about actually. Um, moving from A to B, you know, and bringing the organization with you, right?

Because obviously I guess there’s lot, there’s quite a big change process. Some roles are gonna change or disappear. Pricing model’s gonna change, business model’s gonna change, distribution might change. I mean, there’s a whole lot of things that can change, uh, with a lot of, uh, probably creates a lot of nervousness in people or uncertainty.

And you’ve got the different cultural dimensions. So kind of what’s your playbook for navigating through that?

Mike Ettling
Yeah. You know, when we, when I started the journey, I remember using this expression that, you know, unit four is a, um, cloud, sort of got a cloud software product, you know, so masquerading as a cloud company, but behaving like an on-premise company.

The goal is to behave as a cloud company. So the product side is often the easiest thing to do is to, you know, move the product to on-premise from on-premise to cloud. The real challenge is to change the behavior and the behaviors are fundamentally different. Um, and the behavior, I think comes down to this fundamental principle that in on-premise software we.

Used to build software, sell software, support software, and often it became somebody else’s problem to make the software work. You know, an integrator or an SI. In the cloud world, everything’s far more integrated. The customer comes back to you. If it’s not working, they don’t go to the integrator the way they used to go.

In the on-prem world, it’s my problem when it doesn’t work. So there’s a fundamentally different cultural behavior around how we sell, what’s in the terms, what’s in the contract, the language we use. Customers, you know, so you often see, and we went through this transformation where you get the product right?

You get your sales contracts right, and then you’re still having customers struggling, and then you realize, well, your implementation, people are still arriving at the customer and saying, what do you want? Which is the on-premise way first arriving and saying, this is what you’re gonna get. How do we help adapt your processes to this best practice model?

Or here’s two best practice models, which one do you want? You know, it’s so that’s very different culturally and you know, it’s very hard in the SI world. I previously was CEO of A of an SI business who specialized first in on-premise and then cloud software when SI people have been heroes for 30 years by asking a customer what do you want?

And then going off and customizing exactly what they wanted. It’s very hard to change that DNA and to change that, that culture. You know, how do you do it exactly? Well, you gotta do it with a combination of process people, uh, and constant, constant selling. I call it selling the dream. Um, so process. You gotta put the right process, new processes in place, which make it work.

You gotta bring people in and scatter people in the organization who were born in the cloud. Who, dunno another language who only speak that language because you put, put people with the right, you know, enough foreign language in the organization, the old people pick up the new language. Um, and then you gotta really keep, you know, selling the dream, keep talking the language, keep reminding people what it’s about, keep reminding what we are doing.

And, and that’s how you transform it. Um, and then it’s really a question of, you know. Getting the choreography and timing right, so you don’t break the organization and every organization is different.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah. It’s definitely a dance. I mean, what’s the, what would you say is the, um, what was the trickiest part of that?

Like, was there a particular mindset or particular part of the organization which was just really hard to, to shift? You know, because of the,

Mike Ettling
I think, um, our implementation, uh, business was the hardest to shift. We shifted the other stuff very quickly. Um, uh, and, and unit four was the implementation business.

Cause we did have a very malleable product and we could customize. We had features in the product which enabled customization to the NS degree. So, so really changing that culture was, was quite challenging. And then I think the other thing which is, which is hard to change, but a little bit more, you can do it a little bit more playbook driven, is cult changing the culture from being country centric.

To being a global functionally run software business. You know where country is, is yes, there’s a country head, but they’re down in the organization. They’re not the, the sort of fiefdom of country presidents. Um, I. That, you know, that took much longer than I thought. Um, but when I look back on it, the thing I think, which is the key in my advice to people doing this transformation is you have to transform your HR and finance function first.

Because often what you find is that. The country fiefdom power is driven by the fact that there’s a financial director and an HR leader in that country and they keeping the mo up as to why you can’t run things globally. You can’t run it functionally. We gotta do this in the country for hr. You know, we gotta close the books in the country.

Richard Medcalf
Um, transform that first and then you the rest actually is quite easy to do. Yeah. It makes, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Um, yeah, I’ve seen that in a number of places. And you’re right, there is a, the on-prem world did lead to a, a fiefdom of, you know, country presidents, um, in the income.

Yeah. And, uh, um, yeah, and I, I, I would’ve probably guessed the finance part, but I think HR as well is quite interesting. One. Was that because of, yeah. What, how did hr, how would HR kind of get in the way? I mean, finance obviously has got the access to the numbers and the numbers.

Mike Ettling
Well, hr, you know, kind of has, well we gotta do this ’cause this is what it’s done.

You know, this is what happens in France, this is what happens. Yeah. Whereas what I found is often in hr, there’s kind of like the, the norm. There’s what’s legislatively required and often they’re quite different. And often the norm is portrayed as all being legislatively required and it’s not. Um, so, you know, kind of driving HR process and philosophy and, you know, we, we did all of this transformation between 2019 and now, and our engagement scores went up 10 points.

I went from 70 to eighties while doing a significant amount of transformation, and I don’t think we could have done that if we had HR operating independently in every single country. I.

Richard Medcalf
I got it. Yeah. Really, really helpful insight. So Mike, um, uh, as we kind of start to think about perhaps wrapping up, I have, um, I guess couple of quite final questions for you.

One question is, um, what advice would you give a CEO perhaps who’s joined? You know, who’s. Um, taking on the reins at a private equity owned company, you know, has got a big, uh, challenge ahead of them. Um, that’s a scenario that you know well, like where would you invite, you know, where would you encourage them to put their focus as they kind of get into the role and, you know, any particular, you mentioned a couple already, but like any particular kind of, um, missteps to avoid?

Mike Ettling
Yeah, I would say, um, probably two. Um. Three areas. One is, you know, every private equity firm underwrites a deal based on a value creation plan. So really understand the value creation plan, but not in the context of, you know, I see often too many CEOs come in and say, right, we’re gonna sell the company for X billion.

In such a time. Well, no, you’re not. You’ve gotta build a great company and then you’ll have lots of options to sell it for something. But the kind of, the conflict with that is that the PE guys have got a value creation plan when they’ve mapped out, you know, the five things which have gotta happen and they’ll get to this kind of model.

So how do you internalize that value creation plan in the organization? In a way that it’s, that it’s in the context of a sense of purpose, not. For not a price tag on the business in four years time. Because if you, if you drive a value creation plan with a price tag concept, you’re never gonna get it. If you drive the value creation plan in the context of a sense of purpose, then you’ll get it.

So often what I see the struggle is CEOs come in, the business has had a certain sense of purpose, you know, before when they’re running it. And they’ve never thought, oh, hold on. We might have to realign or change the sense of purpose to kind of incorporate this. So that would be my first thing is like, look at the sense of purpose.

Don’t change the values. The values are what made the company great, but look at the, what’s the sense of purpose? How does the value creation plan play into that? How do you build that into a consistent story? The second thing is around talent. Um. And this is the one book I do recommend to every, every leader.

And it’s Marshall Goldsmiths, what’s Got you Here Won’t get You There. Um, because I think that’s the single fundamental thing which you gotta get right, is what got the business to the sale is not what’s gonna get it to the next phase. You know, if you look at the team, which existed at unit four when we sold it from Advent to ta, there’s only one person left on that team.

You know, including looking at me because what, you know that because of that exact principle and often that’s often tough for CEOs ’cause they’ve got to a milestone. Where the business has been sold to PE or where everything and the team’s been successful, that’s a tight-knit team and there’s a sense of comradery, but you gotta be able to step back and look quite clinically at, is this the right team now to deliver the value creation plan?

And there’s a difference between is it a good team? Is it the right team to deliver the value creation plan? So that’s the second, uh, sort of piece of advice I would have. And then the third one is in this context of, you know, self-doubt. Lots of smart people, lots of MBAs at the table, you know, lots of advisors all around.

Is the way you kind of herd all those cats is control the cadence. Don’t, don’t give up control of the cadence. So, you know, what are your calls with, with the PE firm? What’s the board structure? What’s the monthly meeting? Have a very well documented corporate calendar and corporate cadence. Very clear things of what do you wanna achieve in the different calls.

So example, we have a monthly sponsor call, which lets the PE guys go crazy on the numbers. Which means they don’t have to do that in the board meeting. And the board meeting can focus more on strategic topics, you know, and the non-execs can be more, spend more time contributing in the board meeting. So getting the cadence right.

So those three things, uh, would be my advice to any CEO stepping into their sort of first, uh.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Beautiful advice and, um. Yeah, so, so much in that Actually, Mike, I think the, uh, um, the point about purpose is really well made. I think it’s too many CEOs end up, just as you say, they just become, oh, I’m just a person hired to deliver a number, uh, rather than to build a great business, uh, which requires actually embodying the requirements of the investors, but also everything else that makes the business important.

Right. Um, uh. Comment about the right team versus a good team. And then I think, yeah, I think your, your point about the cadence, which for me is I describe it as, you know, there’s structure in, there’s life, you know, and you have to put in the right structure, like the trellis upon which the plant can grow and be supported and, you know, a stronger structure or enable a stronger.

Plant or organism to grow in many ways. And I think, you know, your, your comment about helping the numbers guys get happy outside of the board meetings is, is genius, right? Because, um, otherwise, I know a lot of CEOs who’ve found that their board meetings are not always delivering what they really want.

And become, they could be quite, quite, uh, tedious for them because probably, as we said, they’re not necessarily getting those issues off the table to create space for the really important conversations they wanna have.

Mike Ettling

I had this, this beautiful experience when I was down in the bush recently and there’s a territory which a particular male lion was controlling, and we found this lion really early morning and it was out.

Absolutely growling and, and you know, marking its territory with its noise. And then it was sort of went to the watering hole and there were all these, uh, ee or go newses as they called in English. And it was kind of herding these canoes. It didn’t want to eat them, but it was like herding them to go, you know, they all running away.

So it could go to the watering hole. And I kind of thought of the PE analogy of like, in the lion being the CEO, you’ve gotta manage all your stakeholders effectively, otherwise you can’t drink water.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Beautiful analogy. Well, hey, um, Mike, it’s been a really, um, a fascinating conversation. I got one other question for you.

I know you, in your new role as you step out, you’re taking more of a, a chairman role, uh, mentoring a number of CEOs, um, and executive chairman, what. What shift will you need to make as you, as you shift roles for you to multiply your impact in the coming years? What’s gonna be the biggest kind of stretch and biggest challenge for you personally?

Mike Ettling
I had this learning, this aha moment when I, about 12 years ago when I first took on a non-exec board role and aha moment was that they don’t have to listen to you, um, as a non-exec. So. As a CEO, you got kind of got your list of this is what, you know, you kind of know the mental model. This is what you gotta do, but you always gotta take the point of view that they don’t have to listen to me.

So, a, how do I use brevity to pick the things which are really gonna matter to help the CEO. And b, you know, how do I resist, like, just forcing the playbook because the playbook, you know, needs to be owned by the CEO. Um, and that requires, I think, a lot more people interaction skills. It requires a lot more kind of being conscious of this is something the CEO should do.

So I’m gonna step back. So often what I see in my role is I’m sometimes saying. The PE guys wanna do something, I’ll come say, you shouldn’t do that. Let the CEO do it. Because I know that if the CEO does it, it’s gonna have a much stronger impact than if someone from the PE firm goes and does it. So it’s that kind of dynamic of kind of being more sensitive to how do you make the c somebody else, the champion and, and success, you know, and said old Chinese saying, of.

If, if they’re successful, they in the spotlight, you know, they lead and I, I’ll be in the background and kind of applauding their success. Yeah, absolutely.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Beautiful. It’s a great, great, great analogy for, um, I. Uh, yeah. Moving from, from one role where you actually have, you have all the strings to being in that role where you kind of look at the dynamics of the ecosystem at a, at a, at a new level and how you can pull those levers and, and influence.

So. Beautiful. Well, Mike, thank you so much for, um, a really fascinating conversation. We know we’ve covered hiring, we’ve covered self-doubt. We’ve covered, um, PE CEOs and, and some of the, you know, the playbook that you’d recommend for them. There’s, there’s been a, it’s been a really rich conversation sprinkled with, uh, liberal rugby, uh, metaphors, which is always good.

Um, so appreciate that. I appreciate your convers uh, our conversation and look forward to following along in your next chapter. Awesome. Thank you, Richard. It’s great to chat. Thank you, Mike. Goodbye. Well, that’s a wrap. If you received value from this conversation, please do leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform we’d deeply appreciated.

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