Meet the Masters - Andy Britcliffe, Purplebricks
ANDY BRITCLIFFE
Lydia Shepherd, Director at The Up Group met with Andy Britcliffe, Chief Digital Officer of Purplebricks, the UK’s leading tech-led estate agent. Andy spoke about the importance of utilising government schemes to increase diversity in teams, his career highlights to date and the advice he would give his daughters on building a start-up.
In your opinion, what are the top three attributes of a great digital leader?
As a digital leader you need to be customer centric and a key advocate for the customer. Empathy is number one in terms of high-quality digital leadership as you need to be empathetic to the customers’ requirements. Without empathy, you cannot put yourself in their shoes and design a digital experience that generates the features they need.
Leaders also need to create and articulate a vision, to be able to see where they are going and crack down on the narrative as to why they are doing it. Digital is all about the future and capitalising quickly on the opportunities that come in; if this visionary thinking and foresight can be combined with empathy then this really creates a compelling, highly relevant and ultimately successful strategy.
Finally, an understanding for the technology. I recognise that not all digital leaders do have a depth of technical knowledge, but I believe it is the glue that enables the best digital leaders to connect the dots between the customer view, the vision, and the art of possible from technology.
How do you get the rest of the leadership team on board when they are not technology experts?
Everything starts with a clear strategy. My job is to create a product strategy which underpins the business strategy. The product strategy is the key connective tissue between myself, my peers, and the rest of the business. At Purplebricks we shaped a product strategy very early on with key pillars that we collectively felt underpinned the business strategy and in parallel we tracked customer personas to understand their expectations. We presented this to the board in a clear and vivid way so everyone, despite not being highly technical, could recognise what we needed to do to meet these expectations. Simply, you do not have to be technical to understand what customers want.
In your opinion, why does diversity matter? Do you have an example from your career where you have seen tangible business impact from increasing diversity?
Ultimately, the research proves that the more diverse your team, business, and community, the better the outcomes. What is interesting and something that I am witnessing first-hand is that there is a noticeable increase in women in technology. Currently, about 50% of my digital leadership team are female and I recognise that this gender diversity gives different cognitive inputs into what we are doing which creates better outcomes.
Purplebricks leverages diverse talent and has a strong D&I agenda in place. I firmly believe this agenda is a strategic imperative for us which will help drive us on to be better and achieve the Purplebricks mission of making every home move amazing. We are a business with a national footprint and a diverse customer base, so representing that internally is important to us. Within my digital organisation, we focus on taking bias out of the recruitment process using techniques such as blind CV screening, and we also sponsor several initiatives to enable people of all ages and backgrounds into a software engineering career.
What advice do you have for your peers and other executives on prioritising D&I within their teams?
Over the past seven years, I have partnered with apprenticeship schemes and code camps to attract diverse software engineers who have not been to university and are from different demographics and ethnic backgrounds. It has highlighted the fact that you do not need to have attended university to have a logical brain and become a software engineer. In the first apprenticeship scheme I was part of, we brought in three engineers who cross trained from other roles in the business, and at Purplebricks we have hired two software engineers so far from partnering with The School of Code in Birmingham. It has been very impactful to see the opportunity we give people and the talent that we have brought into the business through these schemes. I am always looking for alternative ways to attract great talent and by taking a different route, rather than the usual recruiting channels, we are attracting a diverse spectrum of people to join us, which I think is great.
My advice to other leaders who are struggling to hire diverse talent is to try different things. There are an amazing array of schemes and government grants so exploring these options and being proactive in finding other ways to attract talent is key. There are limited talent pools, especially in digital, so you must be able to be flexible and look at a variety of routes.
How do you create a high-performance culture? Any examples you have put in place that have been effective?
Sadly, there is no silver bullet to a high-performance culture. I believe high performance comes by being consistent in your approach to creating a positive, growth mindset culture. It really all stems from creating an environment of psychological safety, which is difficult to do so you need to be very deliberate about it. Once this is established, people feel they can try things and fail. This then pushes teams to be ambitious without the fear of failure as the ‘safety net’ enables them to hold each other accountable in a positive way as everyone is collectively trying to improve. With these ingredients and a lot of hard work I believe the green shoots of high-performance grow.
What is your career highlight to date?
I have been lucky to have lots of highlights in my career. My first highlight was becoming a software engineer and learning how to build code and create great software for customers. The desire for me was to always work for Microsoft and I achieved that; I was fortunate enough to be part of a team that shipped software to over a half a billion people in my time at Microsoft, which felt pretty impactful(!). Another highlight was founding and growing my own start-up, which helped my personal and professional development. It was really an all-encompassing role, but it meant I shifted from being a software engineer to an entrepreneurial tech leader, which allowed me to develop further into leadership roles.
One major highlight over the years has been seeing the development of my colleagues and team members; it is hugely satisfying! I try to keep in touch with as many people as I can, and it is great to see them develop into fantastic leaders at great businesses . I am proud to have played a small part in that and I hope to continue to bring people up the curve at Purplebricks.
Are there any books or podcasts that have influenced your career or leadership style that you would recommend?
I love to take different ideas from lots of different people so I could list many books! I think to narrow it down, and recommend one that is particularly relevant to digital transformation, Satya Nadella’s book Hit Refresh is a fantastic read and insight into how he has done such a phenomenal job at steering Microsoft onto its next phase. In terms of podcasts, I have recently come across The Diary Of A CEO by Steven Bartlett and listened to a fascinating interview with Monzo Founder, Tom Blomfield, a really deep discussion on the challenges of being a credible leader.
If your daughters came to you and told you they wanted to build their own start-up, what would your advice be to them?
I try to encourage my daughters to have an entrepreneurial mindset. I do not know where it came from in me, but it was always there and part of my DNA! My advice would be to just try it when you are young as the risk tolerance is higher. Go for it, try it out and learn from it!