Meet the Masters - Cecilia Routledge, CTEK E-Mobility
CECILIA ROUTLEDGE
This week for our Meet the Masters interview series, Stephanie de Wangen, Director at The Up Group, spoke to Cecilia Routledge, Global Director of E-Mobility at CTEK in Sweden.
In your opinion, what are the top attributes of a great commercial leader?
The first one would be the ability to articulate a vision. The person may be part of setting that vision and strategy, but they must certainly be able to articulate it and get people from the commercial or sales team behind them and bought into it.
Secondly, there needs to be a passion for people, customers and product. In terms of people, leaders need to want to develop their employees and help them to grow. With customers, the commercial leader needs to build strong and lasting relationships, understanding their pain points and their needs, in order to successfully position the product or service and to innovate in the future to set the company apart from competitors.
What separates a good commercial leader from a great one?
“Commercial leaders need to be process driven to meet their desired outcomes.”
A great commercial leader needs to be able to develop their employees for their team to be the best it can be. So, we look for leaders who will spend a large percentage of time on developing their sales organisation. Structure is also important. Commercial leaders need to be process driven to meet their desired outcomes. They need to be able to successfully structure a process to ensure they are hitting targets.
In your opinion, why does diversity matter? Have you seen an increase in diversity across your business?
There are several studies which have shown that companies that are more diverse are also more profitable. They are more creative and deliver better results for their stakeholders.
The automotive industry has traditionally been very male orientated. However, it is now changing and there is now more diversity in this industry than there has ever been before. Part of the reason behind this is the introduction of electric vehicles and digital solutions which are now enabling more women to be part of the industry. At CTEK, although gender diversity is increasing in our industry, one of the roles I have is to bring more diversity into the business. I am trying to make a conscious effort in my hiring to bring in more diverse candidates, across all levels.
What advice do you have for your peers or other executives on how they can improve D&I within their teams?
Firstly, I think it comes back to what I learned at Expedia - there needs to be a conscious effort that starts from the very top. For me, it starts with the founders and investors within the company. Encourage more women to become founders and investors. These executives decide who are on the board and leadership team, so having more female founders and investors will encourage a more gender diverse workforce given they are the top of the chain. Having diverse role models at the top of a company will help diversity trickle down through the rest of the business.
“Having diverse role models at the top of a company will help diversity trickle down through the rest of the business.”
Secondly, is to keep diversity at the forefront of your mind during the recruitment process. Pushing diversity throughout the whole hiring process and increasing your conscious effort is a must. You should make sure that the employees you are asking to conduct candidate interviews are also diverse, so there is no unconscious bias, and so that candidates feel they have had a positive experience interviewing for a company which they can see has a diverse team and culture.
What have been the most important leadership lessons you have learnt over the past year and will this past year change your leadership style?
The learning that we had early on was that we needed to make sure our employees were looked after. As a company, we made sure that all of our employees had the relevant equipment so they could have the most comfortable and effective home working environment. We also recognised the importance of frequent communication. At the start of the pandemic, we had daily calls with all our employees to make sure that people felt supported, and we have continued with very regular communication. When working remotely, you cannot communicate often enough.
How do you create a high-performance culture?
Articulating your vision is extremely important so employees can see where you are going. Leaders need to be able to get their team on-board, rallied behind a common vision, and need to break that down into manageable targets. Slowly introducing a goal setting framework such as OKRs into the team can help define and track objectives, which in turn helps achieve your targets. What is helpful with OKRs is that it is not your bonus plan, but it will help you achieve it.
What are you most proud of from your career to date?
Throughout my career when there have been opportunities to put my hand up and put myself forward for a role, I have. It has given me experience in many different types of roles that I think have played a part into developing how I am in my role today and the people I hire into my team. I don’t believe that those roles have come to me, I have had to have the confidence to put myself forward for them and they have shaped the leader I am today.
Have you got any suggestions of great books that have influenced your leadership style that you would recommend?
One book that I read recently was Re:start by Hélène Barnekow, who is the Managing Director of Microsoft Sweden. It is about value-based leadership in a changing world, covering how to lead companies through large changes and transformation, and how as a leader you adapt to that.