2940: Scaling Success: Strategies for CTOs and VPEs

[00:00:01] What does it take to nurture amazing work cultures and high-performance teams when rapidly scaling tech startups? Well today I've got Francis Lacoste, an engineering leadership coach who has dedicated his career to helping CTOs and VPs of engineering thrive in their roles. And he's got a wealth of experience

[00:00:22] including recent role as Senior Director of Software Engineering Culture and Engagement at Salesforce and he has a unique perspective on building collaborative and innovative environments. So today we'll dive into the importance of the inner game for tech leaders, the critical impact of

[00:00:42] maintaining a strong culture during rapid scaling and how psychological safety and mutual accountability are key pillars for high-performing teams. And hopefully he'll also share a few best tips for staying effective and making unimpacted at every stage of being a startup CTO or VP. So buckle up and hold

[00:01:03] on tight as I beam your ears all the way to Montreal where we'll explore the journey of a tech leader who is passionate about fostering innovation and growth throughout the tech community and beyond. So a massive warm welcome to the show Francis. Can you tell everyone listening

[00:01:20] a little about who you are and what you do? Yes I'm Francis Lacoste, I live in Montreal in the province of Quebec Canada and I'm now a professional executive coach. I work with CTOs and VP of engineering at startups when it's

[00:01:39] time to scale and I help them to scale with their organization. Well a big welcome to the podcast and one of the reasons I was excited to get you on is one you listened to the show before so I know you know kind of what to expect and

[00:01:53] you should also know that I'm always intrigued and fascinated by my guests origin story. So to begin with can you tell me a little bit about your journey from leading engineering teams at companies such as Salesforce, Heroku and

[00:02:06] Kanokyo to becoming an engineering leadership coach? There's got to be a story there right? Yes I mean the story starts so my background is as a software engineer. Actually I started in the open source so was doing open

[00:02:24] source development and that eventually led me to Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu and then I joined there at software engineer and after a few years got invited to become an engineering manager and I didn't know at all what I

[00:02:39] was getting into I just said yes and then realized okay this is totally a different job because that's nothing to do with programming and but my background actually I never studied computer science. I mean I'm a self-learner. I learned through working in the free software community and but

[00:02:58] my major was in sociology so when I became a manager it was kind of oh this is a social system that I'm working with and so all my love of social systems kind of came back and then did that for a number of years eventually moved to

[00:03:16] Heroku to help build the remote culture there and after a few years in there was a reorg and I ended up again with a single team which was not you know a challenge anymore but there was a guy on the team wanted to become an engineering

[00:03:33] manager so I said oh great you're already running most of the ceremonies I'm going to mentor you and because that's what I loved about the director role it was about helping might bring about the next generation of leaders and

[00:03:48] we had a lot of first-time engineering managers so I had with some more bandwidth I said okay I opened it up and said hey I have time if anybody is interested in mentoring coaching for engineering managers hit me up and a lot

[00:04:05] of people took me up on that offer so I ended up like mentoring and coaching a lot of the managers there and started to study okay coaching that's actually a real discipline so started reading and studying that and then oh this is this

[00:04:19] is different than just mentoring and and that that continued to happen in parallel as we nice ended up leading a large largest engineering department again at Heroku and that was about five years ago and that's when I realized

[00:04:35] actually the engineering leadership path is not fulfilling to me anymore and this this coaching that I'm doing and this is what interests the helping build a culture and build a leader to build that culture so I kind of knew that

[00:04:51] eventually I'll be where I'm at today kind of as a consultant independent consultant but spoke with my VP and was able to be created a role for me so I ended up chief of staff you know which was more aligned where what I want to do

[00:05:07] and then after an order reorg I ended up like running engineering culture programs for all of Salesforce platform so that's that's all and I mean that lasted it's what the pandemic hit during that transition so lots of my expertise

[00:05:26] was very welcome and appreciated and and then in 2022 we could see the contractions coming and so then there was less interest in culture and I was thinking okay maybe it's time to make the move and that happened in 2022.

[00:05:46] Yeah, here I am. Wow, what a great story and when I was researching you one of the things I came across was you emphasized the importance of the inner game especially for CTOs and VPs of engineering at

[00:06:01] scaling startups so can you explain what the inner game entails and why you think it's crucial for tech leaders? Yeah, so the inner game is so I mean especially as in tech and leaders we're very focused on you know artword

[00:06:19] behaviors or what are the things we should be doing or the process to create and all of these outward these actions are good but for them to be inspired and effective there's kind of an inner dimension so the inner game is

[00:06:37] our own and I have colleagues who call this like self as instrument you know so it's our own interior objectives our mindsets our attitudes our beliefs and that is what generates our action so the inner game is about self-awareness you

[00:06:57] know emotional management emotional mastery mindsets and that's super crucial because I mean especially when you're leader this is often like a very lonely position you don't have necessarily a lot of peers or even the CTO will usually their manager will be the CEO but you have

[00:07:25] very little mentoring and I think so it's so you need you need to cultivate these inner resources. Just to interrupt you know I mean one of the things that I hear time and time again on this show is when scaling a team quickly

[00:07:39] it's culture that's often overlooked possibly one of the most important areas so what are some of the strategies that you would ensure that or suggest that would ensure a positive collaborative culture is maintained during rapid

[00:07:52] growth because it's missed so many times isn't it? Yeah I mean this is this is crucial I often say one challenge with scaling rapidly is that you know rapidly you had the startup might have existed for a couple of years with very

[00:08:08] few people and people who've kind of grown with the culture and the startup and then you often get like now you're ready to scale and you hire massive and so this side of that people double in less than a year so you go from 10 to 20

[00:08:25] or even more like in from 6 to 18 months and which means that at that point you have more people coming from outside than people from outside so this if you don't have a strong culture and a strong onboarding process and then

[00:08:42] everybody I mean especially in a startup there's so much to do you know and there's everything to build then everybody comes or well this is how we do this at my last company or that other company and then you can up with

[00:08:53] something which is kind of a very hodgepodge you know it's kind of not because what Audi did at their previous company doesn't mean that is the right thing for this company so for to mitigate that this is when when you're

[00:09:07] ready to scale you really need to have a strong culture and by that it means okay being I think clarity around why what is it that you're doing or why and more importantly why you're doing it and how you're doing it so the values and if

[00:09:22] that's clear then you want to this is the onboarding aspect so I mean of course if you have that you will there this is in the hiring process itself it needs to manifest you need to select people resonate with that culture but if you

[00:09:36] don't have a clear culture a clear idea then you cannot use that as a filter in your in your hiring process and even then after once they come in you need it needs to be reinforced and and people need to be onboarded into this vision

[00:09:51] now things are done that's working and and and then that this if these central principles will need to be enacted in everything that the company does so that it's kind of continually reinforced this is often why it's all

[00:10:06] kind of in our you hire or you promote how you fire performance management and and also more than that in how you actually work so this is why it's crucial yeah it really is and another area of course is psychological safety and mutual

[00:10:25] accountability key pillars of high-performance teams but how can leaders foster these elements within their teams especially in remote or hybrid working environments where people are very often on board and and enter the workplace and they work alongside teams without meeting them

[00:10:42] physically it could be quite challenging to come very much so yes and so fun fact here I always work remotely I've been working remotely for 20 almost 25 years now and I learned to management that kind of nickel which was a remote first

[00:11:00] company this was back in 2008 way before it ended and I think this is one of the double edge of the pandemic you know for a really regards to remote work so it kind of showed the world that oh we can work remotely but I think it gave

[00:11:17] a very skewed view of what remote work actually is so I'm before and because like you said I mean now it's common for people to be on boarded without meeting physically their colleagues and which is not how it was done previously to for

[00:11:35] companies that we I mean at Iroku and sales and canonical we would when people came in we would try to get them to align their first day with or if it was not

[00:11:47] their first day within their first month at the very least with a team of so team would me know you you would you we work remotely most of the year but we would the teams would meet together between you know at least one ideally two

[00:12:04] sometimes four times a year and those these periods are just kind of accelerate the building of psychological safety and getting people to be comfortable with each other but one one anecdote that illustrate that is

[00:12:21] whenever so I was working remotely with my team and we would whenever we would and at that time we were not video teams were video tools were not what they were today so most of I mean we didn't have group calls it was one-on-one on

[00:12:39] Skype and text messages on on our scene which is kind of very what came way before slack and and thieves and these types of instant messaging and so most of our communication were text based using our seat and whenever we would

[00:12:56] meet you know for a couple of weeks after we were back at I was back at home I would hear the message that I was reading in the voice of the person I had

[00:13:07] just met you know this is how it kind of created that but too so that's kind of for the context but then the the how to cultivate that I mean in a way getting people together else but you can actually be more deliberate and and that

[00:13:23] kind of accelerated building psychological because psychological safety is and is a technical term which means that which is around the the perception that the team is safe for interpersonal risk so another way I mean back in the days Patrick Lentz your knee was colleague this is a firstly

[00:13:43] function of a team accents of trust you and in trust here was you defined it as vulnerability based trust so it's kind of being feeling that I can be vulnerable in this environment people are not going to do that it was that against me or

[00:13:59] take advantage of my vulnerability so in a way there are exercise you can do in in person but you can also do that remotely if you can't do that in person where you cultivate this in a way it's not you it was going to say cultivate

[00:14:18] vulnerability but that's not what it is it's kind of you invite people in vulnerability and I mean so an example of this this is a nurse eyes was from also Patrick and see me which was sharing of personal history so kind of a answering

[00:14:33] a few everybody answers a question like okay where did I grew up and a challenge I experienced as a growing everybody has experience challenges growing up you know it doesn't need dramatic and you mentioned challenges there I'm curious

[00:14:49] based on your experience and everything that you've come across in in your career what are some of those common challenges that CTOs and VPs of engineering face when scaling their startups and how can they overcome some of these obstacles are

[00:15:02] there any trends in the kind of challenges that you see I mean there are common patterns you know so a common one is actually what we discussed earlier around a lack of clarity around the cultural this this is a common

[00:15:18] challenge it's kind of there's no clear idea why they're doing this and what are the their organization values that sort of thing or when there is it's it's more it's either aspirational or it's just written down it's not enacted so it's

[00:15:37] kind of yes you have values but are these really enacted in or hiring in all the way you work other challenges are really good to be coming challenging are related to the inner game and so I come in one is a

[00:15:56] I call it like the need to be friend and certain there's no guarantee you're here during the startup and there's no guarantee that things are going to work out or things like that or so there's kind of a some resilience that needs to

[00:16:13] be developed with that fact of life especially in that time another very common one is issues around accountability having performance and performance management so hey there's I'm kind of unsatisfied with that person on the team and I don't have meeting expectation and I don't know often I

[00:16:36] will ask well this is a common question well do they know about your expectation have you communicated to them you know and oh yes that type of basic leadership aspect because I mean I work a lot with many of them are not seasoned leaders

[00:16:55] you know so they may be managed often their technical co-founders they grew up with the organization maybe manage a small team spot beyond that is this might not be their expertise so that's that's why I dare to help them cultivate

[00:17:13] these skills love and you've also helped grow and build a culture of collaboration and indeed innovation at large organizations such as Salesforce so are there any best practices for maintaining and nurturing values like this in a fast-growing startup is it a lot of startups and businesses alike that

[00:17:34] try to do the right thing they want to encourage innovation but they go about it all the wrong way so I'm curious what you're seeing here as well and the better ways to build a culture of collaboration and innovation you cannot

[00:17:49] dictate innovation so this is the the one thing that that really important is to we talked about that in the psychological safety so you we are your smart people everybody hires the best but then if you hire the best then you

[00:18:07] need to let them work or you need to give them space so if you have a clear this is like the idea of the clarity of the mission of why we're here what we're doing and how we're doing it and then you create the you bring the you

[00:18:23] create a this culture of psychological safety so that people feel confident and and comfort and working with one another then things can can can then innovation and collaboration can happen but often what I seen it's kind of

[00:18:40] trying to over prescribe how things needs to be done or tell people what I mean sometimes can go to micro management so these are these are hindrances so in a way you need to get out of the way also this is also another challenges

[00:18:58] common challenges with CTOs particularly the the it's really when they have a they have been very hands-on so they're kind of the key the unknowingly or unconsciously they still want to remain at the center of every decision making

[00:19:18] which puts everyone in shackle because it's kind of nobody has the autonomy to actually innovate because the disinnovation needs to be validated or integrated by the leader so there's a there's that kind of a stepping out that

[00:19:34] needs to happen for so that the space for collaboration and innovation happens so it's you don't want to be totally out you need to remain but in relationship engage but it usually it's much less prescriptive than people think. It's not

[00:19:56] as simple as not simple as foosball tables and multicolored beanbags and how you create now go and innovate in that space no if only it was right and and the other thing I would say this is this is something I really appreciated

[00:20:09] from Salesforce is that living the values you know I mean at Salesforce the values were not just on the wall in the poster decisions were taken based on the value so that also helps to reinforce that throughout the culture. I think if

[00:20:28] there's a I'm kind of wary of best practices because best practices what's missing is in which context but if there is a best practice here it's about like well if you have values you really need to live that otherwise it's just a

[00:20:48] bolster and usually that a bolster that feeds cynicism. Well although we can't talk about best practices for any listener that's listening anywhere in the world that maybe they're looking for that that valuable takeaway something

[00:21:05] that will help them up are there any top tips for any CTOs or VPs of engineering that that you could offer that would help them stay effective and make that significant impact at every stage of their startups growth any tips that

[00:21:19] spring to mind there? I mean trust your people that would be one and then I've already said that numerous times so I'll but I'll say it again because it's very important really get clarity around what is it that that this organization

[00:21:40] is doing and how it's doing it. I mean clarity is essential really for any success because often it's it's not clear so then we don't know I mean if the objectives are not clear or then people cannot really engage in a way in

[00:22:01] that productive manner. And I think also for people listening around the world I think we all unitedly feel the same and this pressure of having to be in a state of continuous learning all the time to keep up to speed with the pace of

[00:22:15] technological change so I've got to ask you someone that's a techie at heart but you're moving in different circles now how or where do you self-educate it? Are you still passionate about this? What do you do to keep up? Oh yes I mean I'm a

[00:22:28] big podcast and audiobook listener I mean I was a book reader yeah a long time ago when I had a commute you know that tells you how long it was and then

[00:22:40] one compute stuff I kind of it took me a while to find out can I cram as much reading and this is where I discovered audio books and podcasts and even so whenever I'm at you know in the car at the gym or walking I'll probably be

[00:23:00] listening to I'm very likely listening to an audiobook or a podcast and built up my over time you know there's a 1x 2x so to maximize the information absorb I mean so that it's faster get more true true true less time the but

[00:23:30] the other thing which goes with it I think and this is more important in a way is their self the reflection time so I kind of listen to these podcasts and books but then we'll take time to kind of make notes of what what what what I

[00:23:45] want to remember and how to apply so the to be I mean life is throwing us a lot of is a great teacher because we have a lot of experience and sometimes it's not so much about reading and absorbing information but reflecting on what is

[00:24:00] happening and when we read we need to reflect also on what we read otherwise it's we're just collecting more data but not really integrating it in learning well we start the podcast talking about your origin story and as we almost come

[00:24:17] full circle now I'm gonna ask you to look back at your career because none of us are able to achieve any degree of success without a little help along the way so is there a particular person that you're grateful towards who maybe

[00:24:28] helped you get where you are or just saw something in you and maybe even just invested a little time in you who would that person be we'll give them a little shout out to them I mean there are many people that contributed you're right I

[00:24:42] mean nobody does this alone I mean I'm thinking of my colleague Steve hired me at Canonical and then provide mentoring one he offered me to become a and is I had two managers there even Kiko both were awesome in doing the necessary

[00:25:09] mentoring to make that transition but really I think the person I'm most grateful to for is my wife I mean we've been together for I mean since high school really and she I mean I learned a lot from her especially around social

[00:25:32] social skills she's a greatly empathetic and compassionate and I'm not I mean I'm especially young I was more and and more looking and not very social and and kind of a jerk really she really made me mellow out and open up and would not be

[00:26:00] late but I'm here oh absolutely what a great answer and for anyone listening but maybe they just want to find out a little bit more information about what you do how you help businesses as a VP coach and anything in between maybe I

[00:26:17] want to connect with you or ask you your team a question where would you like to point everyone listening so we can go to my website the VP coach or find me on LinkedIn process like us on LinkedIn love to connect with people there and

[00:26:33] always that will be for a chat as well. Well first of all we'll give a big shout out to Steve and your wife there for helping you on this journey and a big thank you

[00:26:45] for taking the time to sit down and share your story with me today and we did cover a lot there from the importance of the inner game for CTOs and VPs at scaling startups the critical impact of culture when attempting to

[00:26:58] scale a team fast and also the importance of psychological safety mutual accountability as the pillars of a high-performing team we often get distracted by the technology side of things and forget the most important element which of course is the people and also a big thank you for sharing

[00:27:14] your best tips to stay effective and make an impact at every stage of being a startup CTO or VP pure gold from my side but just thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today. Thank you so much Neil, it's a pleasure. And that

[00:27:28] wraps up our insightful conversation with Francis today who is now my go-to guy in Montreal and I think his expertise in engineering leadership and his dedication to nurturing high-performing teams have provided us today with this valuable lesson with a series of valuable lessons on building

[00:27:47] and maintaining strong root work cultures in tech startups but I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's discussion what stood out to you about the importance of that inner game or the role of psychological safety in

[00:28:01] teams share your insights and join the conversation by emailing me tech blog writer outlook.com Twitter LinkedIn Instagram just at Neil C Hughes I'd love to hear your thoughts on this but please stay curious stay innovative and keep

[00:28:16] fostering those amazing work cultures but more than anything just thank you for listening as always and until next time don't be a stranger