Leading at Speed: Curiosity, Decisions & Growth with Helen Sutton

We get into the reality of the CRO role: owning the number, shaping the plan, influencing product direction, and then switching straight into the gritty detail of deals, risk and negotiations. 

We’re joined by Helen Sutton, who went from electrical engineer to Chief Revenue Officer in high-growth, private equity–backed tech businesses, and proves there’s no such thing as a straight career path.

We explore leading at scale, what it’s like operating in fast-moving PE environments, and why the CRO role is so much more than just hitting a number. 

We dig into the career pivots that get you there, including that first awkward jump from peer to manager, and the moments that shape your leadership style. 

We talk about earning respect in male-dominated environments and why a coaching approach beats telling everyone to do it “your way”. 

Helen also shares why leadership can feel lonely at the top, and how having a coach gives you a safe space to think clearly while still showing up with calm confidence for your team.

Decision making becomes the thread that ties it all together. We explore decisive leadership, the difference between consensus and commitment, and why “perfect” can block progress. 

Plus, Helen wraps things up with three simple but powerful career tips, including why you shouldn’t change your job and company at the same time, and why the best careers are a bit “squiggly.”

Insightful, practical, and refreshingly honest, give this one a listen.

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https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Transcript

Summer Check In And Guest Intro

Sam 0:10

Welcome to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group, the podcast about the people that power the tech industry. It's finally feeling like summer, Vicky. How are you? What's it looking like in your shiny new office in Deepest, Darkest, Oxfordshire?

Vic 0:25

It's actually well, it's it's looking and feeling like you say, like summer, but at least uh the heat wave has uh has passed over now.

Sam 0:32

Yeah, that was a bit toasty, wasn't it?

Vic 0:34

It was a bit toasty. Yeah, I think I would get into about four o'clock in the afternoon and my brain was just like, I'm just not working anymore. Just not yeah.

Sam 0:42

Yeah, I think that's that's fair enough in that sort of scenario. So who have we got on the podcast today?

Vic 0:48

So on the podcast today, we have Helen Sutton. Most of our guests I've worked with in the past. I I actually haven't worked with Helen, but uh we know an awful lot of people and we've worked in the same network, I think, for So you haven't worked with Helen, but you feel like you've worked with Helen. Do you know what? When we met for the first time to do the prep, it was like a meeting of minds. It's like, oh my goodness, we're coming from the same place, we've got similar experiences. Yes. So it was it was really fascinating. But I need to share with you the the reason that I got in touch with her is because Helen has the most uh phenomenally useful and authentic posters on LinkedIn, and they just really stood out for me because I think there's very few people that are able to really strike the balance between really providing some blooming useful information, but remaining really human and authentic at the same time. And I'm like, we need to talk to her. So I'm absolutely thrilled uh that that Helen's joined us today.

Sam 1:58

Well, welcome, Helen. We're delighted to have you on the podcast.

Helen 2:01

Yeah, likewise, and um yes, uh I share the I share the joy that the heat wave has passed, although I see it's coming back next, next weekend actually, which is a little bit troubling because I'm taking my um 88 um year old mother to Wimbledon for the for the day.

Sam 2:16

Oh gosh.

Helen 2:17

Um we'll be stopping up on those fans, I think.

Sam 2:20

Yeah, yeah, and a nice big wide-brimmed hat and what have you.

Helen 2:23

Exac tly.

Sam 2:24

I'll be I'll be in a field somewhere near Chilternham in a metal box on wheels.

Helen 2:28

Okay, alright, we can do to do that story another day.

Sam 2:34

Are you kidding, Sam? No, no, I'm uh well, I'm playing a festival this weekend and then I'm off to a festival next week to go and watch and uh and enjoy. So yeah, it's all good. It's all good.

From Engineer To Tech Leader

Sam 2:45

So Alan, maybe you could start by giving us a little bit of your background as as you are a new guest to the podcast.

Helen 2:51

Yeah, so in a nutshell, my background, I actually started uh my career as an electrical engineer. That's what I studied at university, and finished my corporate career as a chief revenue officer in private equity-backed companies and sort of in between worked for a variety of tech companies. If I just sort of focus on the tech side of things, I figured out pretty quickly that I was going to be able to earn a lot more money in IT and tech than I was as an engineer, albeit um I was a perfectly adequate engineer. So I I sort of, and this was a lot of this was pre pre-internet. I don't want to sort of excessively date myself, but you know, sort of established and uh through the books went and approached a number of tech companies and uh the sort of the rest is a little bit of history. So um throughout that career, some highlights, probably 12 years at SCP, um, ended up leading the strategic customer segment of the business part of the UK leadership team. I worked for DocuSign, set up the enterprise function at DocuSign across Northern Europe and went through an IPO and my first private equity stint. I was the managing director of a company called Unit 4, another ERP company, followed um the CEO through there, who I knew. So that was sort of 100 million,400,000 people. And since then I've sort of worked in increasingly smaller PE backed companies, which I just love. I just love the pace. I love the fact that everything's a little bit grey. And I stepped out of corporate just over a year ago, and I'm now advising people who are doing the job that I used to do in primarily sort of PE backed companies that are growing from sort of 30 to uh to 300 million ARR.

Sam 4:37

That's interesting. What why why PE specifically?

Helen 4:41

Um, so I think there's probably a number of number of reasons.

Sam 4:44

I've never I've never been in a P in a in a PE backed business, so I I don't know what's different, you know, culturally or whatever. That's quite interesting.

Helen 4:52

It is. I mean, well, I mean, bluntly, the two reasons that I ended up in PE is uh X bosses brought me in. Yeah. Um so I was brought into Unit 4 by CEO there, Jose Duarte, who knew me for my CP and brought me over. So, you know, I don't know that I was so particularly had a career path and plan and um saying yes to interesting things is a good thing. And then when I joined joined DocuSign, that was sort of more late stage VE, VC at that point. Um, again, that was an ex-boss who brought me over and asked me to set up the function. So, you know, I'd love to say that I had a 10-year career plan and master plan of sort of ending up ending up here, but I've always just gone with interesting, interesting roles as as they've presented themselves. But PE is just really interesting because you know, yes, there's a load of playbooks, and again, that's sort of one of the reasons I'm doing what I do now, but there's no right or wrong answer because you are by definition growing super fast. Typically very high double-digit year-on-year growth. So that means that you get to have just a huge impact, and I think that's what I really enjoyed and still enjoy.

Sam 6:05

I suppose, yeah, when you're growing that fast, your personal impact is accelerated by whatever growth factor the company is going through.

Helen 6:13

Yeah, it's exactly right. And honestly, sort of every nine months, you're effectively running, you know, all or a partial of a new company. So your org structures, um, you go through the market plan, the people that you need for that particular stage, uh, you know, everything about it, and yours that therefore, the closer you get to the top table, uh, you you know you sort of get to work on quite a broad remake, including having heavy influence on the direction of the product, for example, you know, what what markets do we open up next? So it's you know, it it's it's fast-paced and I like that it's not, you know, 100% predetermined as to how you do it.

Sam 6:56

Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I mean, obviously, you know, we had a a reasonable degree of growth at SoftCat and it felt a bit like that. But I guess you if you're PE back, you probably have more defined stages where we we we just always felt like we were making it up as we went along.

Helen 7:13

I I'm sure that's not the case, Sam.

Sam 7:16

I'm sure it was.

Helen 7:17

I think what um, yeah, I think I again a little bit that I've sort of learned is that pattern recognition because you know, so you're not making it up as you're going along, what you're doing, and I'll rephrase your sentence for you. You are taking, you know, a number of years of deep experience and applying it to a different situation and joining dots a lot more.

Sam 7:38

I like that. I like that, that makes more sense. We'll we'll take that.

Helen 7:40

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're welcome.

Sam 7:43

Yeah, perfect. So in your your prep or our prep call with you, you talked about defining moments in your career. Can you can you share a few of those for us, maybe?

Helen 7:53

Yeah, sure. So it was where Vicki and I, when we were sort of prepping for this, we just had a had a fantastic conversation, other than sort of figuring out that that that pretty much everybody that we knew knew, you know, knew each other what a small world is. We we actually were sort of talking about career transition points, because you know, you don't nobody has got a career path when um, you know, I mean it sounds as though we've all got daughters of similarish ages. Um my daughter's just finished having all of us as yours, Vicky. Sounds like your daughter's uh a year ahead. Um, so you know, nobody in the careers fair goes and says, I know, go and be an engineer, and then some years later you're going to be a chief revenue officer in a private equity-backed um Norwegian headquarters company. So you you sort of really have to have to sort of take the opportunities, and I think some of the transitions that that I've made have been particularly uh sort of interesting. So yeah, but I I think a a couple that probably I would highlight. One is when I moved from being

Earning Respect In Male Spaces

Helen 8:55

an engineer to working in IT. It was very curious actually. So I was working in steel mills typically, which um, you know, Vicky, you can tell me if you want me to tell you some of the stories I was sharing.

Vic 9:06

I really would love you to tell that story because I have shared it with so many people since. Yes, okay.

Helen 9:14

So yeah, so Sam, just for your benefit, the story that I was telling Vicki, because we were talking about um sort of, you know, I see my role as being a role model in having done what I've done and achieved what I've done. So I would like to sort of show my daughter, other females in tech, for example, that it's possible, but without you know, wearing it lightly, without being sort of too, you know, deliberate about, you know, I want to have more women in tech, although I desperately would love to have more women in tech. So um I think the first time I ever realized that you could you could achieve something with a level of subtlety, it sounds really easy now, but at the time I was terrified. I was working an um in a tin ink mill in South Wales and sort of rocked up in my first site office, young girl. I was, I was 20, working during the summers, I was sponsored for university um by a particular engineering company, and rocked up in the site office, which you can imagine exactly, you know, a really, really crappy porter cabin with with no facilities and everything. And I I was sort of you know walked in with my my body suit and my steel toe caps, not having a clue what I was doing. I was absolutely terrified. And all the men uh in this porter cabin, everyone had their own desk. They had um the Pirelli calendars, um, which I don't think they sell them actually, still. It'd be really interesting to find out. Um, but so I you know walked in, obviously.

Sam 10:39

I mean I'm enough of a car geek that I would actually like a Pirelli calendar with pictures of tires on it.

Helen 10:45

You know, they uh if they still did, certainly when they did them, they had um you know lots of pictures of tires with you know with laser draped over them. But yeah, I think tires featured. Um but the that wasn't the primary uh purpose, I don't think.

Sam 10:59

So um pretty intimidating environment to walk into.

Helen 11:03

It was a bit. So it was a it was a you know, so it took me a few days. I was just trying to figure out, oh my god, you know, and um anyways, cut long story short, that weekend I went into Athena again, dating myself, um, and I bought myself one of those Fyman's calendars. Oh you can imagine, you know, the the the firemen with their tops off uh holding onto the giant fire with fire. Yeah, exactly, you know, holding their giant hoses and um, you know, water hoses, obviously. And so I just sort of put it up over my desk and it was remarkable that um all of a sudden I just became their little sister and they took and nobody would let anybody um you know have uh you know any issue with me. I just suddenly fell into this. And I think I've been very fortunate actually because I've never knowingly and despite having worked in a pretty sort of male-dominated environment, I've never knowingly experienced any sort of you know discrimination um in any way.

Vic 11:59

I think just yeah, yeah, we had this that conversation. I'm exactly the same.

unknown 12:04

Yeah.

Vic 12:05

It's interesting, isn't it? Why is it, Vicky, that you think that you you haven't? Is it is there a style and approach that you've adopted? Um that's a really good question. I'm not normally used to answering questions on this.

Sam 12:17

Um isn't it?

Vic 12:23

I think I think I was just very comfortable in my own skin, and I didn't feel like I had to prove anything to anybody. But my my background is I grew up on a farm and my big thing was actually um having an older brother, and I was so determined to pass my tractor test um when I was 16 because he had. And I think having that a bit of feistiness about me, I would have done my equivalent probably of what you did, Helen. And I but I just got treated with respect. Um and I remember a HR lady saying to me, Um, Vicky, you need to power dress to get these guys' attention. It was when I moved into an engineering team, and I was like, No, I'm not powerful. I'm like, I hope I'm gonna get their attention by what comes out of my mouth and what I say.

Sam 13:08

And I it was I've got not by having big 80s shoulder.

Vic 13:11

No, exactly. Yeah, okay, come on. I wasn't working in the 80s, I'm not that old, Sam. But nice, nice job.

Helen 13:18

Yeah, I think um, you know, was I always comfortable in my own skin? I mean, you know, I'm doing doing hour on imposter syndrome alone, actually. But yes, you know, that that's me, and I suspect, you know, at times you Sam and many people, it's uh you know, it is a real thing. But um yeah, so I think just that that sort of spa um style and making sure that you know you sort of earn earned your place whilst being. I mean, I love the fact that you describe yourself as feisty. I think underneath I'm pretty feisty, and um, but but you know, sort of try and present myself as being a little bit a little bit calmer. So actually, one when I moved from uh from being an engineer, so I was perfectly adequate engineer, I enjoyed it, but I just had this suspicion that I could do more and um I certainly wanted to earn more, and I really, really wanted a car, um, a company car because I was driving some absolutely beat-up um um uh metro at the time. And so I um yeah, I actually just sort of wrote off to about 60 companies asking if they wanted to talk to me about a job. I mean, it was a um, you know, and and and wrote to lots of them and got a couple of interviews. Um and I think the the reason that I realized that I was was ready for that, the the engineering company, they actually asked me because I speak German, I do speak from German. I lived there quite a lot of my life and did a second degree at a I did an engineering degree in Germany. But they asked me to go set up a German sales office, and um I was like, that's fine, you want me to do that, that's great, but I'm going to need a clothing allowance. And they were just so what? It's like nobody has literally ever asked us to do anything like this before. Um, okay, here's 200 pounds, so I'm gonna get myself some slightly sharper, sharper outfit so I could go and represent the company. And then that they we ended up merging with uh with a German company, and that was the point at which I was like, okay, I'm ready to do a little bit of something a bit different. Yeah, but I think um, you know, I think this this sort of tech world with a little bit of more of a um sort of sales bent would would work. So anyway, sorry, very lengthy, lengthy stories, but I think the the pivots are interesting actually.

First Time Leading Former Peers

Helen 15:35

So Vicki, you and I were talking about, I think there are probably um a couple of pivots that I made that may ring some bells with people the first time that I was promoted to lead a team. So from being a team of peers to lead them. Yeah. Quite interesting. That was when I was at SAP, that was um a couple of years in. I was um leading um leading a pre-sales team. Um, so sort of more technical pre-sales um WFC PRP product. And um again, you learn lessons, and I think you have to be sort of fairly self-aware. For the first few months, I was like, I've been promoted because of the way that I do things is absolutely brilliant and perfect, and therefore I'm going to sort of you know tell everyone what to do. And obviously, that got an extremely allergic reaction. So very quickly, I realized that everybody achieves things and does things in their own way. So, you know, it started to develop more of a coaching leadership style, which has stayed with me ever since. So I think that was a particular, a particular pivot in the learning.

Vic 16:37

And the the So just on that, the the um the point of I I think you said it so eloquently when we when we had the prep call about whatever the destination is that you're trying to get to, people can get there their own way. They don't have to do it the way that you would have done it. And the fact that you recognise that as a big learning.

Helen 17:00

Yeah, I think it it it and it's yeah, and and I've I do my best. I mean, it doesn't mean that I don't occasionally, even today, bite my tongue thinking, okay, that's you know, there are some shortcuts there that I would have taken or I might have done something a bit differently, but and sometimes actually accepting that somebody in your team or a peer or you know, even a customer doing something 95% is is actually good enough. So I had to tone down my perfectionism over the over the years to allow people to operate in their in their own style and only intervene at the appropriate times. So I'm sure you do a ton on situational leadership, Vicky. I think that's you know, probably um would fall under that category.

Vic 17:52

Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, and you were going to go on to the next one.

Helen 17:55

Yeah, just the other um of the example sort of when I was thinking thinking about moments that might resonate with with people. Um, and these are all examples of being you know mildly out of my depth, obviously, which is I think the learning really comes when you are out of your out of your comfort.

Sam 18:11

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Putting yourself in a in a place of almost discomfort.

Helen 18:17

Indeed, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean it's like it's like sort of weight training, isn't it? Um nothing hurts or is mildly sore a couple of days later, then you probably need to lift lift heavier. Um free exercise

Lonely Leadership And Getting A Coach

Helen 18:30

coaching as well. Um so yeah, when I was um, as I mentioned, so my first uh first private equity um experience was when I was brought in um so I was managing director of uh the UK for Unit 4, it was part of a private equity transition, working for an absolutely amazing CEO who had brought brought me over and trusted me. Um so it's quite a big gig actually. So this is back in 2014, I had 400 people, um, we're going through this big sort of p-back change, and I was um leading the board for the UK, obviously not the global company, but because we're we're a legal entity and it was the first time I was company's house director and all of all that goes with that. And therefore, I knew that I had a ton to learn, but felt quite lonely because it was, you know, who who could I go and ask? Um, you know, my my boss um obviously had high expectations and had a million things to do. And the people that worked for me that were uh obviously everyone was now looking to Helen had just given this this this job and the PE company were very supportive of me. So I actually went and um you'll definitely like this. I went and got myself a coach because I just needed I needed to have uh an environment where I could speak openly about challenges and what was on my mind. And I think again that that that making sure you go and get help when you feel out of your depth, either internally or externally. And that was just the best thing that I did because it meant that I was able to appear with confidence, which I think as a leader you have to do the minute anybody sees you panic, but then it's all over, you have to be.

Vic 20:20

So there's a a fine line, isn't there, between confidence but not feeling like you have to have all the answers.

Helen 20:30

I'd I'd agree with that, and actually, probably that relates to the previous anecdote as well, yeah. Which is you need to give everybody else enough space to do their to do their jobs, but you know, knowing how to do it.

Sam 20:43

Yeah, you you're often not, I certainly found I'm you know, I was very rarely providing the answers myself. I was curating the answers from the brains within my team that just needed surfacing and bringing to the right people, putting in front of the sales guys in a way that they could pitch it, putting in front of the rest of the senior management team in a way that they could understand that this was the direction that we should go in. You know, it wasn't you know, I used to say, I'm just the pitch guy, you guys are the brains.

Helen 21:10

Yeah. And I think that's exactly perfect, Sam. I think that is exactly the right thing to do. Again, you know, you've got people there for a reason, and then but I mean the trickiest, the the trickiest decisions in that environment is do you always have exactly the right people? So I'm sure, Sam, in your examples at various points, you would have realized that you needed to sort of enhance some of the skill sets that sat within your team, which you can do obviously in multiple different ways, and those aren't as easy either.

Sam 21:38

Yeah. I was lucky very lucky with the team that I managed to develop at SoftCat, he was normally adding people rather than removing people, which is great. That's that that's the positive way of doing it.

Vic 21:50

Yeah.

Helen 21:50

Yeah, yeah, I'm pleased that you're able to do that.

Sam 21:53

Yeah.

Vic 21:53

We've found of all our newsletters, the most popular one of all time has been it's Lonely at the top. So what you're saying, Helen, really it really resonates. I think there's a balance between going and finding someone external, so you've got that safe place externally, which is always going to give you a different view because they're not in the weeds of it, which is wonderful. And then ensuring that you are almost consulting with your team so that it's not provided you've got the right team, as you've just said, so that they're they're coming along on the journey with you. Because we see leaders as well who know what they need to do, and they're running so fast, they look behind, and nobody's with them because they haven't been involved early enough.

Helen 22:40

Yeah. I I think, yeah, I mean that's that's sort of absolutely in line with the the five dysfunctions that you use as well as tenants, isn't it? Yeah. So yeah, so I absolutely agree. You have to take one of my um visual metaphors, and I do quite a lot of coaching these days, and one of the things that I often say to people is I imagine a vacuum. So I imagine, you know, you guess you report into me. So my job is to sort of maintain that level of gas, you know, geeky engineering example, you know, level it in the vacuum such that if I push down too far, that's going to push them down because you've got a vacuum in the middle. My job is to sort of just slowly go up and up so that they are drawn up with me in order to allow people to develop and grow themselves because your point, Sam, you can't do it all yourself. It's I mean, I'm far from lazy, but um, you know, I don't want to be doing other people's jobs for them. I just want to, you know, set up all the systems and the metrics and do the coaching and uh, you know, have them develop and run their own

What A CRO Owns Beyond Sales

Helen 23:45

parts of the organization.

Sam 23:47

Makes sense. So we saw your post on the five best and the five toughest things as a CRO. Do you want to maybe talk us through that or give us some give us some highlights of that?

Helen 24:03

Um yeah, sure.

Vic 24:05

I've been having a ton of fun with LinkedIn, I've got to say, actually. You do such a great job on it of providing really, as I said at the beginning, really, I'm gonna say vital information. It's it's really educational, but you do it with such It's personal, isn't it? Yes, and there's not there's not many people that are able to post like that, Helen. So it's it's really, really refreshing.

Helen 24:27

You are very kind. Um, I'm enjoying it actually. I mean, if I think you know, what I'm doing at the minute, um, it's really interesting. So sometimes it's shaped, and quite often things are shaped by projects I'm working on, or organizations that I'm working with, and back to that pattern recognition that we just talked about, it therefore makes it much easier when I'm working across. I mean, at the minute I'm working with about four different organizations where there are some similar patterns, and actually, therefore, um, you know, some of the things that I post about is because I just literally have this conversation three three three times within the last month.

Vic 25:01

So I'm the same. I think that's what my job is pattern recognition. It's exactly great description. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Helen 25:10

Um so yeah, I think the um I think this the CRO um the CR role in itself, um, you know, just the difference between being a sales leader and a chief revenue officer is probably the thing that I would just draw out because it's one thing running a sales org and running the number as an SVP or you know, VP or whatever. I think the difference between them being a chief revenue officer is the expectation that comes from being part of the XCO, and therefore you are, you know, we we talked about the private equity world. Uh, you know, I'm often working really closely with the investors, with the board, and um, you're part of that strategy. So you're you know, you're you are influencing you on everything. So there's no um there's no way of saying, you know, I can't do this because that's how you know you have to have a point of view. So yeah, I think the accountability and therefore the prominence of being a CRO because at the end of the day the company lives or dies by its numbers as chief revenue officer, um, you know, you you have that that weight and that responsibility and that privilege to be the person that um pulls the go-to-market thing, and then everybody sits in behind it. So it's a fantastic, fantastic, absolute job to job to do, as I say, it's an absolute privilege. Um, but there's a lot in there, I think, um, being strategic, as I've just touched on, whilst being tactical the next day and negotiating a liability cap two minutes later after you've done a three-year strategic growth plan is sort of quite quite fascinating. And I sort of just love that context context switching that you do. So I would recommend it, but it's um, you know, it's a it's a big big job and a lot to do.

Vic 27:07

So if I just play that back from a I like to think of things super simply. So as a sales leader, you're basically you catch the revenue number, don't you? You you are the uh the receiver of it to go and do your number. Then how you do that number is uh you should have a plan that that fits on how you're going to deliver on that.

Sam 27:31

A revenue bridge.

Vic 27:33

Yeah, yeah. But but what you're saying is you've had a seat at the table that's part of that decision in the first place, and and therefore because you've been part of that decision, there is no escaping from it.

Helen 27:50

Yeah, that's right. And I mean, funny enough, actually, um I did that post recently just around um how do you set the number. And I think there are there are two two scenarios. Sometimes, sometimes you are, especially if you've you've joined and a budget has been set, yeah. Um, you know, then that's down to you to do your due diligence and understand um you know what needs to be in place in order to hit or exceed that. Um, or alternatively, the more interesting scenario is where you are heavily involved in in the creation of that. And I think that's where that's where CEOs get the best out of their teams, where they've got they've got people heavily involved and it's not either an an investor or a CFO sort of top-down.

Vic 28:34

Yeah.

Helen 28:35

But yeah, getting that, getting that number and making sure that all the dependencies and you know, all of us in sales, we're we're here to we're here to hit and hit and exceed numbers. That's why why we do it. We do it for lots of reasons, but um, you know, the accountability that you that you take. So and I think the that that sort of strategic and tactical mix, therefore, then absolutely comes into it because you're being strategic, you're looking around corners, and things like market, um looking one of the um one of the organizations that you and I both had in common where I'm working, working at the minute, you know, we're looking at a we're looking at opening up a new international European country, and you know, there's a lot to think about in there because there's cost involved, there's time involved, there's what's the right market entry strategy, is it direct indirect? And you know, that's just the sort of really interesting things that you do reserve as a as a CRO that you don't do if you're a sales leader. That would probably be the good example.

Vic 29:35

I'm I'm grinning because I don't know if I said this to you, but I am fortunate enough to uh do some work at the Cranfield University, and I teach a module on international business, and the company you're talking about is one of the case studies we talk about, and we talk about whether they're going to expand into a particular country and why they're doing it or why they're not doing it. Oh, how how very interesting. But the students obviously don't have any inside information at all, they've just got what what is out and available publicly. But um, yeah, really, really fascinating. They love it. If you're listening, you know who you are. Yeah, funny. Sorry, divergence.

Sam 30:23

No, divergence is good. We said well, we said we expected this to be f fairly free range. So we did. That's all good.

Vic 30:30

Yeah. Was there anything else, uh Helen, from uh the CRO

Decisive Leadership Under Pressure

Vic 30:35

perspective that you wanted to cover?

Helen 30:37

Um I just think um being it's probably is implied in that particular post, but um being being decisive.

Vic 30:47

Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you talked about that.

Helen 30:50

Yeah, is is is it's just super important and nine whether it's a hiring decision, whether it's a uh you know, a risk-based decision on a particular account, um, just being decisive and doing the right things for your for your for your customers. Um but the being decisive I think is absolutely critical, and I know that's one of the things that people have often commented to me is that you know, I will make a decision on things, you know, with the best of information that you have at the time because in PE speed you can't afford to, you know, wait for another quarter.

Vic 31:27

No, absolutely. So gosh, decision making is a is a fascinating topic. So we have leaders who are so worried about making the wrong decision, they don't make a decision, and the organization almost grinds to a halt. One of my favorite sayings is when we're talking about commitment as part of the five behaviors, we talk about VMware, and VMware's culture was very much a consensus culture. So you had to have everybody across all of the all of a MIR to agree to something before you could move forward. So my job in VMware was a change agent. So one of the questions I ask is what's the difference between commitment and consensus? And in my experience, it's actually it was six months because if you needed to get a consensus from everybody, it would just take it would take that long, and you can't afford six months in the pace of change that you've got now. And we love Amazon's disagree but commit. So where are you committing? But so having leaders that are happy to make decisions but ensure that people have felt like they've been heard and they've contributed to that decision making. There's so much work still to be done there with from a good leadership perspective.

Helen 32:54

Yeah. And have you noticed, because it's interesting having worked for American companies, UK companies, mostly Norwegian companies. Yeah. Do you see sort of much difference in the um sort of cultural context around decision making? Absolutely.

Vic 33:09

Yeah.

Helen 33:09

Yeah. Yeah.

Vic 33:11

Yeah. I've We could have a whole podcast just on this topic. We could, yes. Yeah.

Sam 33:16

We could actually, yeah, decision making. Yeah. A lot of the stuff that I'm involved in these days from a business standpoint is is um startupy stuff, so smaller teams. So easier to build a consensus, I guess, because there's typically there's three people or four people or five people at at that sort of stage. But one of the phrases I use in the context of decision making, I probably overuse it, is let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Speaker 33:42

Yeah.

Sam 33:43

Because you people go round and round and round and they try and get to the refine everything to the nth degree. And particularly in startup world where you're on limited budget and very limited resource, almost doing something is better than doing nothing, even if it's not not necessarily a hundred percent the right thing, as long as you're moving in the general direction. I think that's really important.

Helen 34:06

I mean, that one of the one of my phrases, love you always, one of my phrases, and this is both for when I've coached sort of people on career stuff, but also, you know, business business, is whatever decision you make is the right decision. It's a good decision because you made it with the best of information that you had available to you at time.

Speaker 34:22

Yeah, I like that.

Helen 34:23

But critically, you made a good decision, so don't ever regret it. And in a year, you know, no decision is is also ever finite.

Vic 34:32

You know, you could always no, absolutely. That's that's the key, isn't it? So we the one of the last podcasts we had was um with a uh wonderful coach called Chris Collette, and we were talking about the book Leadership is Language. Okay, but he talks about Marquet, you wrote the book, David Marquet, and his his first book, Helen, was Turn the Ship Around. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay, yes, I've read that.

Helen 34:57

Yeah. That was amazing how he properly delegated yes, really in a submarine.

Vic 35:02

That was an awesome read. That was yeah, really, really fascinating. But um, but what he talks about is from a decision-making perspective, test hypotheses. It doesn't have to be right or wrong, just test the hypotheses, try it for three months. Can we all get on board to do that? And this is the fail fast, this is learn from it, pivot, but move forwards in alignment because it's that when you've got the passive aggressive and people not doing, and all of that internal focus and lack of decision making. That's what paralyzes organizations, and we just see it constantly.

Helen 35:36

I do. And um, I hate to be the first person to use the magic word here, but in the world of AI, um, you know, literally what used to have an impact of a year, if you made a decision for yourself, what the impact is. I mean, now we're talking weeks and months, aren't we? Yeah, loads of

AI Changes The Decision Cycle

Helen 35:55

changing. So, yeah, you've got to be decisive and um move fast.

Vic 35:59

So actually, we're we're I'm gonna go off topic a bit now because it's actually something that I've seen this week is leaders using AI to make decisions, but they're now making them in that AI bubble and they're not bringing their team with them. So I think that's a real warning for me. So that's gonna be a pattern that I'm looking for.

Helen 36:19

That's interesting. So so they they're just letting Claude give them advice and that they're sort of skipping all the steps there for.

Vic 36:26

Yeah, of bringing the team with them.

Helen 36:28

Right. That is super interesting. Um yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, Lord and Tech to you, you know, I bet AIs are available. Um, but you know, they they they're amazing.

Sam 36:40

An almost infinite choice of AIs seems to be available at the minute.

Helen 36:43

Yeah, yeah. I'm massively in love with Claude actually. But I'm sure they'll all they'll all leapfrog each leapfrog each other. Um but yeah, I I think it it's um again, slightly off topic. Um my colleagues has uh he's sort of created an AI board agent, so he's doing some board coaching, and he's actually created an app that will actually sort of sit in their board meetings and um uh sort of helpfully interject. So it's listening and it's actually sort of responding when asked to, but it's also you know prompting people to we think that you might have missed out something. So you know, I mean how how cool is that? So I think that's almost the opposite. It yeah, that's wonderful.

Vic 37:29

That's really good to hear. Yeah. So we've we've talked about um pre-mortems and looking at the risk there. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So that that fits really nicely with that, doesn't it?

Helen 37:43

Yeah, but I think yeah, you absolutely have to stay on top of the tech. That's why I think honestly, I I can't tell you how exciting it is to be sort of working at this particular my husband keeps saying, Why are you doing this? Like, yeah, you're you know, because I I run out going, look, look what I've just look at this, you know, thing that I've designed and I've created using using AI. And he's um, you know, never quite as excited about it as I am, but you know, just the curiosity that you get to sort of fulfill at the minute because every month is different, isn't it?

Vic 38:13

Yeah, it is. Actually, if you haven't listened to it, um the podcast that we did with Stu Pike from ServiceNow, so he's the COO at ServiceNow for APAC and how he's used Claude to stitch together the go-to-market operations. Oh, we could finish that one.

Helen 38:28

Yes, you're right. Yeah, really

Three Career Rules That Travel

Helen 38:30

interesting. Yeah, really interesting.

Vic 38:32

Yeah, absolutely.

Sam 38:34

I think we're approaching the top of the hour. Um, Helen, if you don't mind, maybe you could you could give us somewhere in the region of three takeaways for our listeners, please.

Helen 38:43

Um, sure. So if we stick with the theme of sort of career type stuff, yeah, probably three things that I always say to people. Number one is when you're making a change, then you can either change your job or you can change your company. So you can easily change one at a time. Changing both introduces risk for you and for the business. So, you know, if I'm coaching an individual contributor, um, and you want to be a leader, you know, best do that in an environment where you know the company and get promoted there, making that step into taking that self-leadership role in the newcom just introduces more risk and you're definitely makes complete sense. Yeah, and that that one is um a number of people have played that back to me over the years, actually, that they'll call me up and they say, Yeah, you know, I I sort of put that to good use. So that seems to have gone down well. You can change a job, you can change a company, easily change one at a time, but don't try and change both without understanding the risk that that involves for you and the business. Um the second one, I mean it's gonna sound a bit bit wishy-washy, but go left and right in your career. Um that there aren't career paths anymore, you know, unless you're in, you know, the the medical profession or you're a teacher or something, which isn't your audience, uh then just give things uh give things a go. I've you know, as we talked about earlier, my career path has broadly been following some really good people who have very kindly taken me with them and doing a good job and then going, oh, that looks quite interesting now. And um, you know, why don't I uh has been a little bit more deliberate than that, but yeah, just experiment a bit. You know, I've worked for big listed companies, I've worked for VC, I've been through an IPO, um, spending a lot of time with PE now, so and all are different, and I think that that variety helps me be very good at what I do now.

Vic 40:48

So yeah, go left and I can see, and actually that's a very similar message to we had Scott Heron, who's the former CFO of Cisco. Okay, yeah, and he basically said his career went all over the place from and the roles that he did from being so he led EMIA Citrix for a while. He was CFO, he was uh the CFO in Citrix in Europe to being a revenue leader. To then I actually worked for him when he led the product group. Um, and then he then he uh then he went uh to Autodesk and took Autodesk through a tremendous um, I think their stock went from uh something like $34 to $74, and they really did that S curve that was pretty impressive to um to becoming CFO of Cisco globally. Um and so uh he said it's very squiggly and and and my career too went from the different jobs that I've had, no job title pretty much was the same, it was all over the place from alliances, tech marketing, product marketing, gosh, running global sales S and B, moving to VMware and doing the partner P. It was just all over the place, but that has given me such visibility for the for what I get to do now. So I think that's a really, really good piece of advice.

Helen 42:16

Yeah, I I think I love the um the squiggly, the squiggly thing.

Vic 42:19

Yeah, well actually I get that I've got that from um Adam Grant. He did a wonder I um I subscribed to his newsletter. Um, and he he wrote 10 things about people's self-esteem. And the last one was careers are squiggly.

Helen 42:34

Yeah, yeah, that sounds much, much more entertaining than the left and right. But yeah, I think just you know that variety, and that probably links in, especially, you know, the way that you've just described your variety. And if I think about mine, my my third bullet would be just being ultimately curious, and you know, we've just talked a bit about AI, and you know, if you're not interested in it, then you know your your career's not going anywhere bluntly. Um, and I think I've always taken opportunities to just go and learn stuff. So when I moved into consulting, the first thing I did was go on a put myself through a Oxford University side business school AI six-week course. Um, when I first started working in private equity, I went to London Business School and did uh when I was on my garden leave waiting for the new um new job. I went and spent a week at London Business School doing a private equity masterclass because I've sort of really wanted to understand, you know, what are the metrics. Um I'm I'm I'm just about to put myself onto a Henley um coaching um examples.

Sam 43:33

So you you could probably teach that masterclass now. Undoubtedly teach that masterclass now.

Helen 43:38

No, I think it's um yeah, I I think there is definitely a difference between being an operator and being uh you know, being GP um in in private equity. There's some super, super smart people. But yeah, I it it helped me get a lot more of an understanding as to what the investors would be looking for, you know. what uh yeah you know what what what are the unit economics and what are the you know the metrics that they're sort of particularly going to be driven by you know how do they make their money and therefore what's important to them so um and uh kind of other stuff I've got like a giant giant file so yeah I think being curious I think you know those three would be you know change job at Company Day change both go left and right or be squiggly let's be squiggly today um just be ultimately curious and I think those um yeah they just yeah really enjoy I'm gonna talk about your curious one slightly differently as well I love curious you know I I think I said to you I'm the chair of governors at a primary school and we've just added curiosity as one of the children's values so I get I think it's super important but I think the way that you've just described it and I think something that's super important to have got to the level that you're at and now what you're doing I mean you you absolutely are such a wonderful role model but what I've just heard from you is you're always learning you're always learning there's not right I've got this now I'm gonna go learn something new and I think having that always learning actually we talked about uh turn the ship around their number their thing was we are a learning culture yeah yeah I I think so well I mean firstly you know life's really boring right otherwise um so you're not if you're not learning and these days yeah so I took a week off over Easter and I basically set myself a task to um I'd like go go next level on Claude and um and that's really inspiring. Yeah and just because you you know you you just sort of need to um and it's it's so easy to learn these days I mean it's not necessarily cheap depending on what you want to do but um there's so much sort of free stuff out there. Yes just I've I you know I've my I say I read one business book a week um a week that that would be a lot uh one one business book a month for example yeah we actually have a within Positive Momentum I sort of consulting group that I'm part of we have a uh we have a book club and uh you know and we're always helping

Book Pick And Final Thanks

Helen 46:10

each other learn from things so I think it's just critical.

Vic 46:14

Bad so that brings us really nicely on to what's your what's the book that you recommend?

Sam 46:21

Yeah.

Helen 46:22

Oh yeah good that is a nice that is a perfect segue actually like yeah I gave a bit of thought to this one actually because you know we spend a lot of time talking about um career and transitions. The book that I found lots of books really helpful um but the book that I have recommended most to people that I am coaching career wise interestingly is the Chimp Paradox. Yes Steve Peters just because it lots of people who are thinking about doing transitions and especially if they're sort of you know earlier um earlier talent um being self-aware and understanding their own decision making processes and reactions to situations is often very helpful. So um I reread it again actually just last year actually um find yourself in another video environment um which is obviously what it's all about and it's it's a really nice easy easy read. Yes I remember David Parry Jones um in VMware UK there was just there was that book was on every desk he gave it oh that's interesting yeah somebody else having somebody else we have in common yeah yeah DPJ yeah um yeah I didn't realise that actually that was his favourite book is I mean it's just it's just it's of a a very sort of simple concept I mean business wise my I still actually go a bit back to Challenger so the Challenger sale the C B again really simple concept that you can remember about how to you know take a take something to your take something to your clients but yeah I just just I read lots of different ones I'm sure you do too.

Vic 48:09

Send me your reading list Vicky and Sam will do that sounds like a good thing to do well cover loads of grounds there.

Sam 48:19

Bad stuff thank you Helen really appreciate you coming and joining us on the podcast I know I've enjoyed it thank you very much for having me on and um Sam good to get to know you a little bit as well and yeah you too bad if anyone listening wants to pick my brains on anything directly they they know where to find oh lovely yeah thank you brilliant yeah appreciate that so it just remains for me to say thanks as always for listening to get amplified from the amplified group your comments your subscriptions are always gratefully received there'll be some info in the show notes and we'll see you on the next one