#208 - Navigating Tech Leadership Transitions: From Engineer to Executive - Norman Noble

[00:01:42] Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another new episode of the Tech Lead Journal podcast. Today, I have with me Norman Noble. He is the CTO of Mindvalley. Mindvalley is a company that I followed for a long time, and it has been transformational for my personal growth and personal journey. So I’m really excited to have this opportunity to speak with one of the executives from the company, right? So, Norman, welcome to the show.

Norman Noble: Thank you.

[00:02:06] Career Turning Points

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. Norman, maybe let’s start in the beginning by asking you to share a little bit about yourself. Maybe some career turning points that you think we all can learn from you.

Norman Noble: I originally am from Scotland, the northeast of Scotland. But I lived in Australia for quite a long time. And I now live in Asia. So I’ve got this mixed up accent that people often confuse for Irish. Um, but yeah, I mean, in terms of career, you know, I started out quite early. Um, I was one of those kids that was always playing around with computers at a very young age. Lucky enough that my parents supported that and helped me, you know, get into that.

And, yeah, I was actually thinking about it this morning, I probably did it for longer than most, just being an individual contributor, um, was easily, you know, the first 15, 16 years of my career. And I did that without really having to think much more of it than that.

And then I obviously moved to a larger company called SEEK somewhere along the line, and that was probably the first point I’d worked at a company that was really large scale.

And that was really where I got my first opportunity to look after a large group of people. And that wasn’t even by deliberate design, you know, it was kind of, I was happy doing what I was doing. There was a big transformation project going on. And, you know, a large part of that is you have to convince people and you have to get people on board and you have to kind of bring them along on it.

And, you know, so there was a huge learning curve around people. You know, up until that point, I’d been solving problems primarily with software and programs and hardware and, you know, reasonably predictable stuff. But then when you move into the domain of people, it’s very different. You know, you’re dealing with people’s self identity, you’re dealing with people’s emotional responses versus logical responses, you’re dealing with people’s own, in many cases, their own career ambition, their own, you know, fears. So, initially it was kind of scary, and then, you know, I remember the first couple of meetings thinking I am way over my head on this, but then I just started to really enjoy it. Like, I realized that, oh, actually, this is just problem solving with humans rather than with computers. So I kind of went deep in that area and started reading as much as I could about psychology and behavior and incentives and leadership.

And the more I went down the track of people, the more interest that I got in, well, okay, we’ve got people. How do we make sure that people we’re bringing into the organization are the right people? So, you know, I kind of went deep on hiring. I went deep on career growth and development, and spent a large amount of time with SEEK, revisiting how we hire, building a grad program. That was arguably one of the most fun things to do was building a grad program. Really enjoyed that.

And, you know, all that work just led to eventually there was an opportunity came up, SEEK as a business was growing. There was a bit of a reshuffle at SEEK and it was like, okay, we need to consolidate the business and unify our product set and it’d be faster. And so…

So that was another key inflection point. We thought we were settled in Australia, we’re going to live there forever. And then, you know, I had to go up to my wife and say, what do you think about living in Malaysia? And, you know, initially, it was just meant to be a, you know, they call it a two plus one. Like you’re here for two years and there’s a possible one year extension.

Um, I came over here thinking, right, this is a technical people transition job and I’m going to help here. But then, I think I’ve been here for about six months and the CTO of the company at the time, a guy called Daniel Walters, was moving back to New Zealand. So, you know, he gives me a message one day, hey, I’m moving on, you’re being pulled into the SEEK Asia exec team as my replacement.

So that was another inflection point, I was like, okay, I’m going to look at this differently now. And again, that was just a completely different world. I had to rapidly learn there that even though my title was tech, I now no longer worked in a tech team. You know, I worked in a commercial team. There was marketing, there was sales, there was HR. That was my primary team now. And, you know, that took the whole concept of cross functional team for me to a completely new level. But what that allowed me to do is that allowed me to just move into a new space of just understanding commercial, you know, like why businesses do the things that they do, you know, how to try and grow. That was just a whole new problem set for me. It was like, you know, we’d done the technical, we’d worked with the people and now it’s like this new interesting world of how do businesses work? How are they growing? How do they make money? How do they move to new markets? That was really good fun.

SEEK is a company that was going through a lot of change at the time and there was a new CEO came in, there was a reshuffle of leadership. And that’s where I jumped off into Boost. At the time it was an eWallet and it was transitioning into a digital bank. Boost is a company that’s owned by a telco, so a lot of cultural differences, a lot of differences in the way that companies operate. When you’re working in companies that are regulated, there’s a lot of different things. Things that I would consider normal like moving really quickly and deploying frequently really panicked them. So, you know, you really have to adapt and think about that a bit differently.

So we were considering moving back to Australia at that point. And then, just quite accidentally, I came across Mindvalley. The team that I met there honestly did the most amazing job of convincing me to come work with them. Like I got a sense very early on, this is an awesome team and I’m going to have a lot of fun working with these people. So that allowed me to transition from Boost into Mindvalley and yeah, I’ve been there for the past two years. Um, so, you know, it’s kind of been a bit of a journey.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you for sharing such a comprehensive journey, right?

Norman Noble: Sorry, that was the tightest way you could explain it. A lot’s happened.

Henry Suryawirawan: And a lot of turning points that I think we can cover in the episode, right? Because we-were talking about what we could talk about and transformation as a leader, right? I it’s really critical, right? Just also like Mindvalley, transformation, personal growth is something that everyone, if they want to aspire to be an engineering leader or whatever leaders, right, it’s something that they have to go through.

From what you shared earlier, I think there are three key kind of like transformation that you went through, right? The first is, you know, like from university you went into, you, know, software programmer, right? Software engineer for the long time, maybe like 15, 16 years, you said. And then afterwards you change into like managing people.

This is like quite common in many engineering managers, software engineers who turn into leaders or managers, right? And then after that, you stop working just for, you know, managing people, but you also work as part of the executive team, getting to know how the business is run and all that.

[00:09:59] Transitioning From an IC to a Manager

Henry Suryawirawan: So maybe let’s go through this important turning points because I’m sure many people can relate to that experience. Because if they want to aspire to become leaders, this is the thing that they have to go through. Maybe let’s start from the transformation from a software engineer, just pure IC software engineer, into managers. What do you think are the key traits or key things that make you success back then?

Norman Noble: Yeah, I mean, you know, I can think about my own journey in that space. I can think about the journey that I see people going through whenever they’re making that transition. And, um, I’m not going to lie, it’s a tough one. Like you literally almost have to like just park everything you know at the door and realize it’s now just a fundamentally different job. And I think that, I certainly struggled with this and a lot of people struggles. I see struggling with this as well as when you’re in IC, all your self identity, all the value you think you contribute is all about what comes out of my fingers and what I can code and produce.

But when you move into these roles, there’s a fundamental shift where your value isn’t that anymore. Your value is how do you create and run high performing teams. And it’s a really difficult transition because you’ve just got your comfort area. You know, when you feel like it’s going well, that’s great. When you feel like it’s not going well, you have a tendency to lean back into the things that you do feel comfortable doing. And also, when you’re working in a leadership role, like when you’re programming, it’s very simple. I do this, that happens. Like, it’s very, you know, it’s very easy, you see, I do one thing, something else happens.

But when you’re working with humans, it’s different. Like you do things, you’re like, and then something happens. You’re like, all right, how much of that was because I said something or did something or how much of that would have just happened anyway, you know? So you do have to, in a sense, kind of become comfortable being uncomfortable. You know, you have to sort of be okay with the fact that you might be getting it really good one day and not landing it particularly well the next. And as long as you are just thinking about how am I continually improving, how am I reflecting. You know, as long as you’re being aware of where you are, that will help you transition through that period. But yeah, it is a really hard transition because fundamentally, even though you still have all your technical knowledge, your ability to do that, your role has fundamentally changed.

[00:12:10] Learning From Psychology & Management Books

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah. And you also shared in the beginning, right, that you actually had to learn a lot of psychology related books, right, and had to catch up how to deal with people. Maybe tell us this experience, right? Do you think everyone here should also learn, you know, about psychology, about management books and things like that?

Norman Noble: Yeah, I mean. Look, so I don’t think it’s something you have to do, but certainly it was very beneficial for me. So I was very lucky when I took my first management job. The guy that I was working for at the time was just like, he read so much books and he would just leave books at my desk. And I read that, you know, I think you’d find it interesting. And I think the first one he left for me was kind of I’m Feeling Lucky by Douglas Edwards. He was employee number five at Google or something like that. Like, up until that point, you know, my reading consisted of, like, Red Dwarf, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like, just things like that. So, you know, this was the first time I ever read a book that was kind of like a biography of somebody in a Silicon Valley company. It was just fascinating.

So I read that and said, okay, what else can I get? And I kind of got onto this train of, I can’t even remember how I got to it, but there was a book called The Happiness Hypothesis by a guy called Jonathan Haindt. That was really an interesting book, because it was, you know, fundamentally about happiness, but it was all about thinking styles and thinking preferences. And I remember at the time reading about it, and just a light bulb going off in my head. You know, he was talking about conservative versus liberal, for example. Like, you know, people that are highly conservative tend to have these behavioral patterns. People that are liberal tend to have these.

And I remember thinking at the time, geez, I can apply that here. There’s conservative developers and there’s liberal developers. You know, the conservative developers are the ones that are like, nope, we’re doing it this way, this has always worked, we’re just going to stick to what we know. Whereas the liberal, the liberal ones are the ones that are like, no, we’re going to change, we’re going to use a new framework every single day. And once I kind of got that concept in my head, it was like, okay, now that I know that these personality types exist, what does that mean for how you choose to compose teams? If you have a team that’s overly liberal, you’re going to have a lot of innovation, but you’re also going to have a lot of chaos. And if you have teams that are overly conservative, you’re probably going to have a lot of predictability and stability, but they’re probably never going to really change or move.

So, you know, it was just through reading stuff like that. And I think one part is reading it, the second part is actually contextualizing it to the environment that you’re in. So, you know, you can read a book on general psychology, or you can read a book, say, for instance, Dan Pink’s Drive, an excellent book as well. You can read them, but the important part is actually reflecting on what does that mean for the environment you’re in and the people that you’re working with. And, yeah, I mean, to answer your question, yes, I would wholeheartedly recommend it. I think that, you know, reading will give you such an advantage in terms of what you can learn, how you think about things.

So yeah, it’s about understanding the area you’re in, the domain, and just trying to consume as much knowledge as you can and contextualizing it to the environment you’re in. I did see people that read a lot but struggled with the second part. You know, they would read a book and they’d be like, oh yeah, that’s interesting, but so what? And you know, they just didn’t do that second part of, well, take everything you just read from that and then think about how that would apply to the environment you’re in and what would you think about in those aspects. So that’s as important as consuming the material as well.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, that’s a very good point, actually. I think many people read books. I personally also read a lot of books, but sometimes we forget a lot as well after, well, after reading it. So I think applying it, contextualizing it, reflecting to where you are at the moment is something that is key when you read anything, right?

[00:15:36] Becoming a Better Manager

Henry Suryawirawan: So the other thing about programmers, like you mentioned, right? Typically, it’s very important that they know what they do and the results. Straight away, you can see this kind like a feedback loop. When working with humans, definitely this is something that is more ambiguous. So what do you think, like for a developer, if they want to become a successful manager, what things they should maybe let go or maybe forget what worked in the past, right, and try to become a better manager?

Norman Noble: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think a challenge I see a lot of times, so as a manager, I find like a huge part of your job is helping distill and guide people, you know. So developers generally tend to want like absolutes. You know, they want clear requirements. They want to know exactly when this needs to be done, but like they want certainty a lot of the time. And the reality is you, a lot of the time you just can’t give certainty. You know, things just aren’t concrete.

So as a manager, you’re kind of taking ambiguous and trying to translate that into as much certainty as you can. I was an engineer and thinking about, you know, a career path that involved leading and looking after large groups of people. It is really kind of letting go of the need for certainty. You know, it’s getting comfortable with ambiguity. It’s getting comfortable with the fact that maybe everyone above and around you haven’t got everything ironed out and know everything, you know.

You might see this amazing CEO who talks brilliantly all the time, but I guarantee you that person has not got every iota of the strategy ironed out. There’s a huge chunk of stuff that they don’t know. So when you move into these roles, you just have to be comfortable with that. You have to accept that and you have to realize that your job is to kind of catch that and process it and translate it as best you can to keep the people that you’re working with as comfortable as possible knowing that they really like certainty and they really like clarity.

Henry Suryawirawan: I like that, you know, transforming the ambiguity into more certainty. I think that’s a really important job for the leader.

[00:17:32] Building High-Performing Teams

Henry Suryawirawan: So yeah, the other thing you mentioned is you think that manager’s first responsibility is to build high performing teams, right? So what do you think are critical when building a team, right? How can we assemble a more high performing team and where, where are the areas that we should look at as a manager?

Norman Noble: Yeah. I mean, look, one of the things I probably see going most commonly wrong is people often look at what they’ve got and work out how to get the best out of what they’ve got. Yeah, like I’ve got a team of five people and they all do this. How do I make them the highest performing version of that?

But really, I think the people that really do well are the ones that can kind of almost compartmentalize that to one side and say, okay, that’s what I’ve got. Like, you know, that’s fine. That is one variable. But in order to achieve the outcome that I want, this is exactly what I need. And it’s almost like sitting, doing an exercise of, a mental exercise of what’s the architecture of the perfect team for me. If I just had a blank piece of paper, how would I design the perfect team? Once you’ve got that model ironed out in your head, it is then a case of, okay, back to the group that I’ve got. How do I transition that group to that model, yeah?

The people that do really well, the people that I think, you know, whether they explicitly say they’re doing that or not, like that’s what they’re doing. The people that struggle a little bit are the ones that are like kind of looking at what they’re got and they’re like, okay, how do I make this incrementally better? How do I nudge this, tweak that, move that? They can. They will improve it, they will make things better. But the ones that do a great job are the ones that sit down and think of an architecture to start with.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow, I think I really love that as well. So creating kind of like the architecture of the teams that you want, right? And transitioning people there, right? Because I think, yeah, sometimes we are lucky. We are given, you know, smart people who have worked maybe really well together. But sometimes we have to assemble a team which probably, you know, the morale probably is low because of the transformation and things like that. And we have to you know, nudge them into a better place. Sometimes it’s hard, especially if the people don’t have the skills. But I think, yeah, knowing the architecture, the blueprint, what you want, the outcomes, and transitioning people there is really important.

Norman Noble: I was going to, sorry, I was going to add to that, that, you know, obviously that’s the first part. The second part is then really understanding your team, where are their strengths, where are their areas of development, and how do you align that to the architecture you’ve designed.

The example I’ve been using quite a bit recently is when I think about high performing team. Like I’m a huge football fan, so I think about the Real Madrid team that won like consecutive Champions Leagues year on year. And you know, you can look at the team sheet for that. You can see that, you know, Ronaldo’s here and all the other players are wherever they are. And then the example I sort of show people is like, okay, take that exact same team and just jumble all the players around. Put Ronaldo in goals. Put these players here. Do you still think that team’s winning consecutive Champions Leagues if you played them like this? Like that’s really understanding the relative strengths and development areas of the team that you’ve got and making sure it’s assembled the architecture that makes sense.

[00:20:23] Hiring Strategy & Philosophy

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah. So I think the other key point to that is hiring, right? So let’s say you want to assemble a team. You probably feel there are some skills lacking or you just need to grow the team, right? So that means you need to hire. You also have a lot of experience here. And especially you worked at SEEK before, which core job is actually to find people and candidates. So tell us about your hiring philosophy, right? How do you think we can make hiring much better?

Norman Noble: Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good question, because everywhere I go, every company I join, they’ve all got their different views of how they do hiring. And one common thing I find amongst most companies that I work with, is you join and they’re like, oh, hiring’s really hard. We just can’t find the talent that we need. We’ve been aggressively hiring for months. We’re only getting like one developer a month or something like that. And it’s like, okay. And, you know, in Australia with SEEK, we had that challenge. When I moved over to Asia, one of the first things there was, well, you just won’t find enough talent in the market. We just cannot get enough developers.

But what I’ve always found quite interesting is when you join a company and you sit back and critically assess how they’re hiring. And remember that the outcome you’re trying to achieve here is get good, functional people performing in a role into the business. And you look at how they’re doing that. You think the process you’re following, the things that you’re doing, aren’t going to get that outcome. Like more often than not, people’s hiring practices are usually designed to prove that people aren’t good enough. It’s kind of like, that’s the first sort of like, you know, this person isn’t good enough, like this would be the problem.

So, you know, what I often do when I’m working with teams that are hiring is like, try and rewire that a little bit, like, let’s just, okay, let’s just make some base assumptions here. Like most people we’re probably talking to are probably going to be pretty competent, are probably going to be good. They’re going to have skills, they’re going to have experience. How do we get the best out of these people? How do we create an interview process that allows them to demonstrate the best possible version of themselves rather than one that puts them into a state of fear or panic and shuts down the critical thinking parts of their brain, you know. If you pull something in an interview and hand them a pen and a whiteboard and say, design a fault tolerant distributed, whatever, you know. Unless that person is very experienced and very comfortable doing that, most people are going to start get a bit flustered.

So, you know, when we look at how we hire and certainly the companies I work with now, we try and work out a couple of things. We work out, well, let’s just, first of all, go with the base assumption that most people that are applying to this process are capable of doing the job. Let’s work out what areas we believe that they would excel at without any intervention or without any support day one, they would be really good at these things. And then let’s work out the areas that they would need support and development and what that support and development would look like if they joined. And then let’s make sure that we’ve got the capability to provide that.

And if you kind of just shift that around a little bit where you, your base assumption is most people we talked to are actually good enough to join the company. Most people have enough skill to be contributing on day one. We probably need to set up support structures that do ABC one, two, three. Then you find that the pool opens up dramatically. And it can be something as simple as, you know, you just create a bootcamp. Like when people join the company, they just go into a four week bootcamp and like they learn all your tooling, learn the languages, learn the processes. You’ll rapidly get them up to speed. You know, it means they don’t necessarily have to have that experience on day one, but they can get up to speed within four weeks.

And I think when we kind of adopted some of these principles in SEEK Asia, when I joined, when I joined, they were hiring like one developer a month. And I think at the peak, we got that up to like 19. So, you know, you really can open up the pool, find great talent. And if you set it up correctly, these people are genuinely awesome. Like there is no talent shortage. It’s just more of a, the way that we’re looking at it artificially creates a lens that there is a talent charge. So that’s the perspective I take out of it.

[00:24:06] Engineering Interview Strategy

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah I’m intrigued by the point that you mentioned, right? Many people, when they do interviews, they try to prove the candidate who is applying not good enough. So how can we switch this? Because now that you’ve said it, right? I think, yeah, maybe in practice, in engineering especially, right? So we try to prove the engineers who are applying, they are not good enough, maybe in terms of algorithm, in terms of whatever knowledge, experience that they didn’t have before. So how do you think a better way of interviewing engineers in terms of getting people the best out of them?

Norman Noble: Yeah, I mean, so what I always push for, there’s a few things you can do. Like we did one exercise. It was really interesting where we got like, say five or six engineers and we give them a pile of resumes each. And we said, right, there’s a yes pile and a no pile. I like it. You have to put resumes under yes pile and no pile. And we got all six engineers, gave them the same resumes and they did their sorting. But then when you looked at the end, they all disagreed. Like some were saying yes and some were saying no. And it’s like, well, put them together. Why did you say yes? Why did you say no? And then they were like, oh, well, I interpreted it this way. Oh no, I interpreted it this way. It almost got to the point of, like, they’re all yes, like, they’re all these resumes are yes, because, you know, somebody agrees that this person’s worth looking at. So we kind of de-emphasized that part. We basically looked at, if they’ve got some key things in their resume, that’s fine. Like we’ll take them in and we’ll look at them closer.

And then for the actual interview process itself, I mean, I remember back when I was an engineer, it would be things like, tell me, how does this work in the entity framework or, you know, you’d get all these really weird questions like that. What we’ve shifted to now is, or what I push for, is how do you simulate an actual working environment? Like how do you give them a challenge to work on that best represents how they would actually work in the organization? So what I like to do is create challenges where basically we can have a coding challenge, you can go pull it down from GitHub and it will be something like, here’s a independently deployable something. It’s got one really bad bug in it, it’s got one kind of really shoddy feature in it, so fix those two things, and find some way to improve it. Like what would you do to fix this code? So they’ll do that on their own.

And then the follow up part to that is come in and do a pair programming exercise and actually sit down with an engineer and go through it together and work on it and like what would we do? What would we change? And I find that that’s much more valuable because the engineers are actually getting a sense of, you know, the interviewees getting a sense of what it’s like to work in our company and our engineers are getting a sense of what it’s like to work with this individual. And that that’s way more valuable like I’m not grilling them on their ability to regurgitate knowledge in a certain framework or language. I’m actually sitting down and like, would I work with this person? Like, do I enjoy working? Do I enjoy their, the way that they think? Do I enjoy the way they solve problems? Do they think about things in a way that’s helpful and useful and can contribute to the team? And I think that’s just a far more effective way of finding people and also lets people show their best self.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, so I think it’s worth for everyone to give a try, right? So simulating what you have in your working environment.

Norman Noble: Yeah. I mean, the pushback you’ll get from people is it’s time consuming. You know, like we’ve got to do all these pairing exercises, you know. Yeah, but you’re investing in people that are going to join your company potentially for the next four or five years. So, you know, give them that time so they can understand you and you can understand them. Sure, you might come across a bunch of people that aren’t a good match, but that’s good. Like you’ve worked that out, you’ve spent an hour doing that rather than, you know, the next two years working that out. So it is more of an upfront investment, but long term, I think it yields much better results.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, so I think that’s a really good point, right? Because sometimes we don’t want to interview too many people simply because we don’t want to waste time. But actually when we hired wrongly, the time that it takes to kind of like bring the guy to the correct path is something that is more time consuming, I say.

Norman Noble: It doesn’t matter whether you’re a programmer or you work in finance. Like the highest value activity you can do for any organization is the people that you bring into that organization. So, you know, invest the time. Like if you don’t invest time in that, the cost of getting that wrong is just ridiculously high. You know, that is something I would also talk, you know, anyone who’s transitioning from individual contributor to manager, get good and really start caring about that. Like really start caring about interviewing and bringing people into the organization. It’s one of the highest value things you can do.

[00:28:19] Transitioning from a Manager to an Executive

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. So the other transition point that you have is moving from management into something more like an executive role. Something that you are currently doing, right? So that’s where you are exposed to the business, right? How the things work, how the sales work. So tell us about this inflection point and how can someone, maybe they have become a good manager, they want to become a better executive.

Norman Noble: Yeah, I mean, look, if the transition from individual contributor to manager is a challenging one, like manager to exec is brutal. It is, um, you know, you, you, um, you move from a world where you’re reasonably familiar. When you go from engineer to engineering manager, I mean, at least the domain is the same. You know, you’re all still talking the same language. You’re talking about similar sort of concepts and constructs. When you move into the executive world, it, like, you can find for the first, longest time, it’s like, everyone’s talking an alien language. I remember joining and I had no experience in marketing whatsoever. So when people start firing things that you like, True ROAS and LTV and CAC and like, what is like, what are they talking about? So, you know, there is a really challenging period, like when you migrate from one to the other.

The hardest version of that is just when you’re thrown into it. You know, you literally move from, you might be head of engineering or an engineer director, then, you know, you become, an exec. And you’re just thrown into the deep end, sink or swim it’s up to you. A better version of that is when a company is very supportive and recognizes that you’re not an exec. You know, you are transitioning in this role and you can get assistance and support and coaching. You get dedicated time with the other execs to sit down and learn their domains and understand what they need from you and how you can help them and vice versa.

But yeah, I mean, it’s a huge transition. Like you have to, again, leave behind everything that you know. Your job is now, well, actually, you still have to do that part. You still have to look after a large group of people. But now there’s a whole new set of value that you have to understand. And how do you contribute and assist the team that you’re in. And how do you make sure that technology is aligned to the business direction and the business strategy and line all that up. And yeah, I don’t think there’s any… it’s just a tough transition. I don’t think there’s any shortcuts. There’s no cheat codes. If you can, I would always advocate, if that isn’t part of your career ambition, I would always find a CTO that’s willing to work with you and shadow that person for as long as you can. Kind of go the, the Jedi Padawan route. That’s probably a way to do it a little bit easier.

But yeah, it’s a tough transition any way you look at it. And you have to care fundamentally about different things. And you move into a position where previously your manager, like if I was a head of or, uh, an engineering manager of a group of people, the person I’m reporting to is most likely technical, like will be the CTO. So we talk at similar-ish language, you know, they understand me. When you move from, into the CTO position or whatever the leadership and you’re reporting to either a CEO or a COO you talk fundamentally different. Like unless you luck out and that person really understands tech, then you’re talking a completely different language. And you have to adapt to them very rapidly. You have to understand how they see the world, how they interpret things, how they like to think about things.

I’ve worked with CEOs that, for example, didn’t necessarily really understand product. Didn’t understand what the product role was at all. And assumed that was me, you know, so then I get phone calls and like, you know, why does our app not work? Does it not have Bahasa as a default language choice. You have to talk to the product team. Like that’s that they make decisions around that. So, but you know, on reflection afterwards, like, ah, right. He thought it was my job to set that direction. So there’s an adaptation period. There’s a learning period, but it is challenging. I’m not going to lie.

[00:32:09] Upskilling Across Domains

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah. Something that I find many engineers probably struggling a lot is about that, you know, transition from tech, engineering thing to the different domain. It could be how the business works, right? Where they get revenue? Where is their focus? And especially if you talk to different departments, then you need to start knowing about their domains as well.

So I think this is probably one of the big challenge that I find. What will be your tips, you know, like, in the spirit of letting go what you know, from a manager engineering aspect, letting go some aspect to become a better executive. What would be those things, do you think?

Norman Noble: Well, I mean, probably the thing I’d probably touch on first, actually, is what you mentioned there about just engineers. And like from my perspective, you know, if I reflect back now on what I did and didn’t do, and the things that I would do differently, there is actually nothing really stopping engineers learning more about this stuff in their role as an engineer. You know, there’s nothing stopping you being curious. You maybe don’t necessarily need to reach out to the CMO to learn about marketing, but you can reach out to somebody that’s at a sort of peer level in marketing, and how do I understand more? What can you tell me about what’s going on in the environment?

And you’re always hearing about engineers need to understand customer more, they need to be more connected to customer. And I like, completely agree and I’m aligned with that. But I also think that there’s a lot more to it than that, you know, engineers also have to understand how the company works, where the money comes in, where the money goes, how it works. Look, you will, you know, you’ll have access to a certain amount of information more so than others but there’s really nothing stopping you being curious and trying to learn as much as you can and understand as much as you can. And so if you’re in an environment that’s really good at sharing that information, that’s a great environment to be in and that will help you grow and develop and be a more rounded engineer, which should make these transitions easier as you go through the organization.

But to answer your question in terms of what do you have to let go? I think when you move into the exec position, similar principles apply, it’s just at a different level. So one of the things I heavily rely on is the fact that my technology leadership team are great. Like, you know, and I was very lucky. Like I keep telling people when I joined Mindvalley, I kind of won the lottery in terms of the team that I inherited. But, you know, if you’ve got a good technology leadership team structure, and you’ve got clarity around what you’re trying to achieve as a business and you can convey that clarity to them that you can actually let go of a lot. There’s areas that, you know, I would be comfortable working in. Like say for instance, product engineering. I love that space. Like I’d be very, you know, if I allowed myself, I’d slip back into having an opinions and getting involved in that space. But I’ve also got a really great leader that looks after that space. So, you know, I just have to, they’ve got that. Like, you know, I don’t need to get involved. I’m here for them if they need me for anything. I can share my views and opinions.

But you do kind of have to know that you’ve got, again, the right architecture of the team that you’re looking after. You’ve got good people that have the skills required or they’re on the development path of gaining those skills. You need that confidence so that you can turn your attention to the other team that you’re a part of to say, okay, well, what am I doing with this team? You know, I’ve got an executive team. They know where they’re going as a business. They understand strategically what’s important. I need to help them understand how technology is a critical component of that. What that’s going to involve in terms of investment and what sort of time frames we’re looking at?

So, you know, you’ve kind of got your eye in two different worlds. You’re kind of like making sure that that one’s working and everyone’s getting what they need in that space. And then you’ve got your second eye on this world, making sure everything’s functioning as it should. But you have to be confident that that team can handle that in your absence. And maybe the biggest test of that is you go away in a two week holiday and like there’s no major dramas, you know. Nobody’s like panicking or you don’t come back to anything being on fire, I guess.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah. So I think that’s a very key point, right? So knowing how to delegate well to the team that you have built, especially if you have built the team, right? But if you haven’t built the team and you’re just kind of like parachuted in, I think that’s a different challenge altogether.

[00:36:03] Mindvalley Culture

Henry Suryawirawan: So speaking about maybe Mindvalley, right? So I know that it’s an edutech, it’s a personal transformation company. And it’s quite rare in terms of culture and things like that. First of all, maybe my question is how big is, you know, the theme of the company, personal growth and transformation? How does that actually impact the way engineering and leadership are done in the company?

Norman Noble: Yeah. I mean, look, that was a really interesting experience coming into Mindvalley, because one thing I hadn’t really thought about or factored in, the company is all about personal growth and transformation, and like, you know, moving forward and making things better. And what I hadn’t really realized until I was maybe about a month or two into the job is that when you have a company that is built around that, it pre-configures everyone to be very open to change and moving forward and transforming. So I was able to work with the leadership team at Mindvalley and probably get more change done in the first six months than I was able to do in two or three years at previous companies. Whereas previously it might’ve been like, okay, we’re trying to do this as a business. I think it’s going to require these types of changes. This is a bit different. And you know, it might be a bit unfamiliar. Other organizations, people are like, oh, well, you know, you get a bunch of people that are like, yeah, that’s great. A bunch of people like, I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes. And another bunch of people like, that’ll never work. We’ve tried it before, you know.

In Mindvalley, almost everyone was on the side of like, yeah, let’s do it. They were just really excited and proactive. I mean, obviously still one or two people that weren’t aligned, but I just find that’s in the DNA of the company. Like, it’s just, they’re all about learning. They’re all about moving. They’re all about transforming. They’re always about being on the cutting edge. As a technologist or working with a technology team, you couldn’t actually ask for, culturally, you couldn’t ask for anything better in that sense. So if anything, sometimes I have to be the one that’s like, slow down, slow down. You know, we can’t make that change just quite yet. And I’m not used to being the one that has to say those things.

So how that translates to Mindvalley, a group of really positive, really helpful, engaging individuals. An absolute pleasure to work with. Whenever we’re thinking about doing something new and interesting, you know, we’re in the continuous AI hype cycle at the moment. There’s always a new thing, new thing, new thing. Or, oh, that could be interesting for us. There’s an engineer who’s like, oh, yeah, I’ve already done a demo of that. Would you like to see it? It’s like, all right. And the next thing you know, we’ve got that almost in production. So, um, it is an exciting environment. It’s fast paced. It is very progressive. And yeah, I think that a lot of that comes from just the type of product it is and the type of mindset that that attracts. And, um, yeah, it’s fantastic to work with.

[00:38:41] The Power of Diversity

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. And something that I know that Mindvalley does pretty uniquely as well is they have people from all around the world gathering in the company, right? So we’re talking about diversity here. How do you think diversity play a big part in the success of the team and the company so far?

Norman Noble: Again. I mean, that is something that as a leader, I was aware of. You know, you always hear diversity is important and, you know, you understand that groupthink is a bad thing and you wanna get as many perspectives as possible. But I’d honestly never experienced like such a wide group until I joined Mindvalley. Like literally we circle the globe. I remember when I joined, I was like, I have engineers in Brazil? Like how does that work? And, you know, there’s just, there’s so many different um, personalities, lived experiences, backgrounds.

And really what that does is, I really value thinking about things like, you know, critical thinking. If you have a solution, if you have a problem in front of you and you have a solution, then my expectation is you tear apart your own solution and you tell me why that won’t work three different ways and then how you’re going to deal with that. And, you know, that can be quite challenging when you’ve got a small group of people, similar backgrounds, similar perspectives. They tend to align quite quickly. They tend to come up with similarities, similar approaches. If problems occur, they have similar solutions to solving those problems.

But when you have this like wide group that I’ve just got different lived experiences, you know. You’re talking different ways of schooling, different ways of family, different ways of what’s going on in their government. Like just all these different perspectives. What you find is you just got this like crazy array of thinking around how I might address this problem. And, yeah, I mean, that’s superb. Like Mindvalley literally has people, whether it’s an engineering or the leadership team. My executive team literally runs from Malaysia. I think I’m the furthest, I think I’m the furthest east, all the way back to San Francisco. And there’s just all these points along the way.

So yeah, just, that’s been the first time I’ve really experienced, you know, what real diversity means. Like really, you know, you’re looking at it at a global level, not just through the lens of do we have a balance of male or females? Do we have a balance of this and the other? It’s really the full scape.

[00:40:46] Practising Mindfulness

Henry Suryawirawan: So maybe something that you have learned as well in Mindvalley is like the other aspect, you know, like the consciousness, you know, mindfulness and things like that. So how do you think those things play a part into, maybe like we just come to the personal growth rather than engineering related. So how do you think those things play a part in our life? And do you think we all should invest more time in doing that?

Norman Noble: So things that, or ways that I’ve changed since joining Mindvalley, like I would have always said prior to, I’m a pretty down the middle, evidence led, show me the data, that way of thinking. What Mindvalley has done for me is it’s kind of opened up the lens a little bit in terms of, well, yeah, you can look at things that way, there’s nothing wrong with looking at things that way. But there are other ways of looking at things that are helpful to people. You know, not everyone thinks the same way you do, not everyone appreciates the same things that you do. And something that may not resonate with me, that’s fine. Like, you know, as long as I’m happy and I’m getting what I need from the things that are valuable to me, we shouldn’t discount or disclude the things that do resonate with other people. And we should be open to looking at them and sort of like trying to understand why it does things for people.

A thing that I didn’t do before that I do now, like, you know, would have definitely been on the wooey side for me, but like, you know, just a simple thing like meditation. And arguably meditation is becoming much more mainstream. You know, there is now much more research behind it in terms of the benefits. But, you know, when you’re in an environment where that’s like highly normalized, like mindfulness and well-being is highly normalized and you maybe don’t feel like an idiot sitting in your office, closing your eyes for like 10 minutes. You know, you don’t feel done doing that. You know, that’s fine.

What that sort of stuff has done for me is like, it’s actually, the best way I could describe it is it’s given me a two second gap between when I receive information and how I respond to that information. So, whereas before, you know, earlier in my life, fiery Scotsman, you say something I don’t like, you got ‘rarrrrr’ answer. Just through practicing meditation, I feel like I’ve just got a little bit of muscle in the middle of my brain that when I receive information, I can take a pause and go, huh, all right. How do I choose to, how am I going to choose to process that? Is that going to annoy me? Is that relevant or not? And that was through meditation practice that I probably wouldn’t really have thought about doing if I hadn’t been at Mindvalley.

So, you know, that has definitely been highly beneficial. I think there is also a lot of other practices around things that, whether it’s around how you declutter your life or how you basically eliminate stress or how you improve sleep. Like all these things, ordinarily, previously I would have just been like, whatever. Like, you know, I’ll get to that later at one point. But, you know, through Mindvalley being a part of that environment, you take more time and, you know, personally for me, I feel like I’m more relaxed. I feel like I’m more calm. I definitely sleep better. I feel like I can be a better leader to the people that I work with. I can be more measured. I can be more supportive. Whereas previously I would have just been go, go, go, go, go. Like, you know, we’ve got to get results as quickly as possible. So that’s what Mindvalley has changed for me really.

[00:43:48] Making Space for Thinking

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. So I think we have covered quite a lot, right? So maybe the last question here is what other things you want to also share from your experience, right? Or maybe from working in a fast, progressive company like Mindvalley does in terms of how we can do engineering much better.

Norman Noble: Yeah, look, I think, the part that I think about when I think about Mindvalley in that context, what I’ve learned is you have to make space for thinking. As humans, we do our worst work when we’re panicked, stressed, or in fear, yeah? And in software environments with like crushing deadlines, overbearing bosses, it is often easy to be in a state of panic. I need to get this out, I need to get this done. But the part you have to remember is that when you’re in that state, you’re in a state of fight or flight, and you, the key parts of your brain that are important for critical thinking are shutting down. So you’re making poorer decisions when you’re in that state.

So what this has really helped me understand is that as a leader, you need to create an environment where people aren’t working in a state of stress or fear or panic. You have to create an environment where they’ve got the space to understand, they’ve got the space to critically digest and decompose and look at things from different angles. You have to create a space for them to think about that and try things and make mistakes. And that’s how you’re going to get the best out of the group of people that you’ve got. If you just simply look at them as, you know, robots that produce code and like the more you give them, the more they get done. It’s kind of like a false target, if you like.

So that’s really I feel like that was something that was evolving in my thinking over time and then like moving to Mindvalley just really solidified that. It kind of just gave me the opportunity to say, no, this actually, this is super important. Like this is really helpful for me. And I think I’m seeing evidence of this happening for the teams here. So I think that’s a critically important thing that I would always think about now, regardless of where I am.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thanks for the additional plug there. So I think, yeah, creating the culture, right? Making sure psychological safety is in place for people, right? So not always in the pressure and, you know, deadlines, fears, and all that. So I think, thanks for sharing that.

[00:45:50] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom

Henry Suryawirawan: So Norman, it’s been a pleasure conversation. I have one last question that I would like to ask you, which I ask to all of my guests, which I call the three technical leadership wisdom. So if you can think of this just like an advice that you want to give to the listeners, what would that be?

Norman Noble: Three technical leadership wisdom. I think, look, I think these would just be just general leadership wisdom. Like, you know, applied in the context of technology for sure, but number one for me is really know your team and know what you need to achieve with that team, you know. So get to know your people as well as you can, understand them as individuals, understand them as a collective group, understand where they thrive and what makes them work well and what makes them work less well.

The second part really for me is how do you make sure that they’re being fed the right information and they’re being given the right direction? I think we touched on it earlier that, you know, there’s a lot of chaos going on in the world and a lot of ways that you can interpret it and a lot of ways that people will interpret it. So as long as you’re doing a good job of capturing all that noise and filtering it out and making sure they’re getting the signal, like that’s a really key component for me as well.

And then the third and final part for me, really, that’s really important is, how do you know and share that you’re getting the results? You’re actually achieving the things that you’re trying to achieve in an organization. And when you do that, make sure that people are getting recognition and you’re celebrating and you’re saying, look. Might feel like a lot of hard work. Look where we were 12 months ago versus where we are now. This is an awesome place to be. So, you know, just keep making sure that you’re investing in that side of things to make sure that people understand that progress is being made and we are moving significantly in the direction that we need to be in the positive impact that’s having for the business and for the customers. Those are kind of the three areas that I would always make sure I’ve got a lens on.

Henry Suryawirawan: Awesome advice, definitely! So I think, Norman, if people would like to continue the conversation or maybe they want to ask you certain questions, is-there a place where they can reach out online?

Norman Noble: Yeah, I mean, I think you can just message me on LinkedIn. I think that’s a thing. I’m happy to share other contact details with you if you want to share them however you want to share them, but I’m always happy to have a conversation. I’m always happy to learn about, you know, that part of me never went away, learning about new experiences and new areas and new domains. So, and I’m always happy if there’s ever an area I can help somebody navigate. I’m always happy the way I can as well.

Henry Suryawirawan: All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Norman. I really learned a lot from your experience. Many people, I assume they would also learn a lot as well.

Norman Noble: Thank you. Thank you for the invite. Really, really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks.

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