Suhail Khan, Director of Development, Programming, and Engineering at Huawei Suhail talks with us about working in an agile environment and dealing with the challenges that arise, how software is universal across industry, and learning from yours (and other people's) mistakes as a leader. He also discusses taking a retrospective viewpoint, the importance of culture fit as much as tech fit, and the excitement of working for a global leader. Suhail is a Software industry leader with vast experience in scaling consumer-centric products and services within blue chips and innovative start-ups, having worked across diverse industries such as IoT, Business Software, Renewable Energy, and Telecommunications. Currently, Suhail is transforming the consumer business of Huawei in Europe as the Director of Development, Programming, and Engineering, where he manages cross-regional agile teams. Suhail has also authored columns for international newspapers focusing on digital transformation and is an active keynote speaker at technical conferences and podcasts. If you enjoyed this video, please remember to Like, Subscribe & Hit the Bell Notification Button.
Transcript:
David Bloxham (00:03.098)
So Hale, good afternoon, how are you?
Suhail Khan (00:06.574)
Hi David, I'm good, how about yourself?
David Bloxham (00:09.37)
Very well thank you today yes yes it's a it's a it's a Tuesday where we're recording this so you know start of the week and all that but um but now yeah the the year is progressing quickly and it's always great to kind of speak to another one of the leaders in our network so just to kind of introduce we have Sahail Khan here he works at Huawei Technologies obviously a world famous world beating company and he's a director of development engineering there
within the German locations based in Munich. 15 years experience in the industry. And we're really, really happy to have him on board. I know he's done quite a few podcasts and different public speaking engagements, so we're very lucky to have him. So welcome to Hale. Do you wanna just quickly, before we start, just take us a little bit through your role, a little bit through your background, just so the listeners can get an idea of what you're about, really.
Suhail Khan (00:53.742)
with.
Suhail Khan (01:01.038)
Sure, David. First of all, it's a big pleasure to be on your show. And I've seen some of your episodes and they were really interesting, especially focused on the leadership aspects of it. So it's an absolute pleasure to be speaking to you here today. So at the moment, I work as the director of development and engineering at Huawei's consumer business group.
David Bloxham (01:09.338)
Thank you.
David Bloxham (01:16.602)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (01:29.71)
And we are focused on building software solutions for our customers in multiple industries, starting with IoT to consumer devices, to healthcare, to robotics. So yeah, at the moment I'm involved in quite a few verticals. Really fortunate to be in these as these industries are growing quite a bit at the moment.
David Bloxham (01:55.066)
Yeah, yeah, and it's so interesting to be kind of developing software across industry. Do you, when you start to do that, do you, you know, when you move into a new industry, and we've spoken a little bit before this, that you've worked in different types of industries, do you have a kind of set of principles or a set of ways that you look at things as a leader that you think helps you to?
Suhail Khan (02:01.294)
Yeah.
David Bloxham (02:21.69)
We're in a different industry now, so if you went into the recruitment industry, you think about certain things that you need to understand before you progress.
Suhail Khan (02:25.23)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (02:30.414)
Well, as I was really fortunate to have worked in multiple industries, but the underlying principle is the same everywhere. Always look for gaps when you start out in a new role or in a newer industry. And the challenges are always around the processes and also around delivery and improving the efficiency. So...
From a high level perspective, these are the three characteristics I always try to look out for in any industry, whether it be automotive or IOT or business software as well, right? So, I think that's it for this video. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at www.global.com or email me at
David Bloxham (03:10.81)
Sure. And do you use quite a lot of kind of business analysis or work with your business analysts or user, you know, UAT or user requirements just to really kind of understand.
Suhail Khan (03:19.438)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've always been a firm believer in user driven development. So it always comes from the user's requirements, the customer is the king. And yeah, I've always used that as my foundational base before I start building processes around it. And also interestingly, I always try to keep the structure of my teams.
to work in an agile methodology.
David Bloxham (03:52.026)
Okay, yeah. And have you worked, I mean, obviously 15 years in, I guess maybe you've always worked in agile methodology or did you know, did you have your, has your career progressed along with agile or did you used to use waterfall or other?
Suhail Khan (04:03.438)
Yeah, it absolutely has. You'd be surprised to hear when I started out, Agile was still a buzzword, but it's caught on quite a bit now. So back in the day when I started, it was all waterfall. You'd always have your requirements, and you just continued to build based on deadlines without really iterating your products. But this has changed.
David Bloxham (04:18.873)
Sure.
Suhail Khan (04:31.95)
quite a bit at the moment. And I was lucky to learn a lot of things along the way and also adapt the different agile frameworks based on the needs of my customers or also based on the needs of my teams or the organization itself. So, I'm going to go ahead and start with the first question. What are the challenges of working with
David Bloxham (04:52.826)
Yeah, definitely. It's really interesting, isn't it? And, you know, as agile within our world as a technology recruiter has become so, you know, kind of all encompassing now. So many, so many people have kind of moved forward and it's obviously you have to set yourself. But what do you find the kind of challenges are when maybe setting up an agile environment or moving from a water-balled environment or trying to get agile? You know.
Suhail Khan (05:13.742)
Thanks for watching!
David Bloxham (05:19.194)
you know to the highest standard to kind of a grade a grade agile.
Suhail Khan (05:22.798)
Yeah. Well, in my case, it was by failing fast, right? I've been on complex software projects since the early days of my career. And I'm a firm believer in what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. One of the beauties of Agile is that it offers, it offers a chance for the teams to have a retrospective before you start your next iteration, right? So retrospective always helps in identifying failures.
David Bloxham (05:38.714)
Mm. Me too.
Suhail Khan (05:52.846)
from the start and from the entire team's perspective. But sometimes this isn't enough. In the beginning, when you defined your agile blueprint on how you would want your setup to look like, you really need to systematically and scientifically break down the structure. There are multiple methodologies and frameworks that you can reference to.
from Scrum to Kanban to feature-driven development to Lean to Less to Safe. There are so many variants of Scrum in the market at the moment. But in my case, I never really followed textbook agile. I rather use those frameworks as a reference and define my own, which suited the needs of the product or the projects I was on.
or also based on the kind of skill sets I had in my teams. But the underlying foundation is always the same. You define your framework, you start with a high level vision, you break down into business processes and from these business processes, you define your epics and then these epics, you could derive your tasks and user stories. Yeah.
David Bloxham (07:10.042)
Yeah, and it's very, it's a different way of kind of like leadership, isn't it? Because it's much more, I guess, high touch. I mean, as you said, we spoke very much on leadership here. It's not, let's review this every two months. It's like, let's constantly review this, you know, I guess that takes, takes quite a lot of, you know, certain mentality, you know, and certain level of rigour to, to, you know, constantly be appraising things, if you know what I mean.
Suhail Khan (07:25.838)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (07:38.158)
Yeah, it definitely does. Also, the biggest challenges I've faced in an agile environment was even before having an agile environment, trying to change the mentality of the whole organization, trying to change the mentality of the people, trying to bring them on the same page. It requires quite a bit of effort.
David Bloxham (07:52.922)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (08:08.11)
It's built on principles of having transparency and also having more adoption and iteration to what you're doing. So, yeah, having people on the same page was definitely a big challenge for me as a leader.
David Bloxham (08:30.906)
And was that kind of change management? Because again, we go back with, you know, for those that don't know, maybe they're listening in, maybe it might actually be quite good for people to understand what the hell we're talking about when we say agile. So maybe so hey, for those are lay people out there, I've heard agile so much in my, in my last 10 years of technology recruitment, I, even though I wouldn't, I could explain it, but I don't know it. But do you just want to quickly explain to us what we mean when we say an agile project?
Suhail Khan (08:36.75)
Yeah. Yeah.
Suhail Khan (08:57.134)
So Agile is more of a philosophy than a framework. So it's a way of working. Traditionally, you would have a waterfall development because the opposite of Agile, you would have your requirements. You take these requirements, and you start building it. And then you test it, and in the end, you have a product. But in Agile, what you have is an iterative way of building things.
you'd rather, instead of building everything at one moment, you build it iteratively. So you're right. Agile is the first step of any digital transformation project. And yeah, it's always a challenge to adapt people to the new processes. And it's also a challenge, especially, as you mentioned, with three sources that are less flexible.
David Bloxham (09:35.194)
Thank you.
Suhail Khan (09:53.838)
Because adapting to change change management is such a big thing in itself, right? Yeah
David Bloxham (10:01.402)
Yeah, exactly. And do you, how do you deal with that? You know, when you're, you know, when you're when you're looking at something you need to deliver, like you said, you're coming into a new industry, understanding where the gaps are, you know, that's something we can kind of talk about. But how do you deal with those people that are maybe blockers or, you know, slowing the process down?
Suhail Khan (10:14.99)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (10:23.278)
Well, the first step is always defining the correct agile framework which fits your product on needs. It's about defining how you would want your sprint cycles to look like. How would you want your cross-functional teams to look like? How would you want your agile ceremonies or events or meetings, however you would want to call them, to look like? Because
I've had different experiences. So in a typical agile setup, the teams are supposed to be self-organized. But there have been instances where some of the teams also felt like they've been micromanaged. Being a developer myself, my kind of people love working in silos. We want to be left alone. And
David Bloxham (11:15.13)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (11:18.894)
working alone and delivering whatever comes out of it. But Agile, in a way, kind of forces you to also work in teams, work in a cross-functional way, share your responsibilities, also give enough transparency to what you're doing at the moment. So not a lot of people.
David Bloxham (11:20.666)
Sure, yeah.
David Bloxham (11:45.914)
Yeah. Yeah.
Suhail Khan (11:46.83)
adapt to this flexibility initially, but it has proven results. It's always good to build your products in a modular way, bit by bit, so that you can identify your failures early on.
David Bloxham (12:01.786)
So you build it kind of from success. Obviously you're coming into a new project saying, we've done this before, this has worked well. I guess identifying leaders around you that can, that you know, your supporters or cheerleaders as it were. You know, some people will hate change. Some people are like, yeah, we've been asking for this change for ages, right? And I guess identifying those people is very important for you to kind of, these are the game changers as it were.
Suhail Khan (12:06.638)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (12:13.518)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (12:19.022)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (12:25.134)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Identifying the right kind of skill sets for an agile way of working is quite critical. Yeah, as a leader, it's very important to have your entire team on the same page, working towards the same goal, having the same vision. And yeah, otherwise, it would be a big bottleneck. Fortunately, throughout my career, I've been surrounded.
David Bloxham (12:54.33)
Yeah. Everyone to be arguing, everyone to be arguing, you know, not collaborating. Does that change the way you like interview people, Sahail? You know, obviously, I guess that, you know, we know within technical interviews, you know, you say you're looking for Java or you're looking for, you know, Python, you've got certain technical questions, but would you interview people and say, have you got certain questions that you use or scenarios to, to test the mentality?
Suhail Khan (12:56.11)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (13:01.998)
Okay.
Suhail Khan (13:05.454)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (13:11.054)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (13:15.534)
Absolutely. So, yeah, absolutely. So for a resource to be a technical fit is definitely a plus point, but for a resource to be both a technical fit and a culture fit is what I always try to look out for. So you can have someone who's extremely brilliant technically, but you can't expect this one resource to do everything. You always have to think from a perspective.
David Bloxham (13:33.082)
Right, okay.
Suhail Khan (13:44.206)
of a team and how multiple people come together to build something meaningful. So for me, I always try to look out for team players. And yeah, and also so I always try to look out for people who can contribute a lot of value and at the same time also increase the value of people around them as well.
Yeah.
David Bloxham (14:11.77)
Right, so skill transfer, that sort of thing. Yeah. And so, you know, again, for our listeners, maybe people that work in a similar role to you, would you advise very much to not just focus in on the technology aspects, and also look at the soft skills quite hard, really understand people's psychology?
Suhail Khan (14:26.734)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (14:33.39)
Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Soft skills is critical. So I've had instances where I've had people who were brilliant developers or they were really, really good technically, but they could never really communicate well. So this had a lot of issues. On one hand, their work wasn't visible enough. And
On the other hand, there was a gap in information in the entire process itself because they were bad communicators. So it's important that you hire people with good soft skills and also with the right attitude as well.
David Bloxham (15:24.89)
And then I guess, you know, you also have to kind of review those first few months and weeks as well. We talk about fail faster than technology, we have to review that people can kind of come up to speed because obviously some people do well in interviews, people don't do well in interviews. But you know, you're expecting a certain type of people I know from experience. They don't always turn out, do you? What you get in the interview is not always what you get on the first day, is it?
Suhail Khan (15:27.374)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (15:37.582)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (15:48.27)
That's really true. Yeah, we could do an entire episode on speaking about bad hire.
David Bloxham (15:58.682)
what happens to that person. Yeah, no, exactly. It's a tricky one. I think, you know, for me it's...
Suhail Khan (16:00.302)
Yeah. But also, David, I'm a firm believer in trying to train people and help people grow. For me, the definition of success itself is growing the value of your team. As a leader, you're their main enabler, right? And it's up to the leader to train them, to help them see...
David Bloxham (16:11.898)
Sure.
Suhail Khan (16:27.79)
gaps within themselves that they wouldn't normally realize. And yeah, so I'm a big believer in improving people's skill sets, whether it be soft skills or even technical skills.
David Bloxham (16:44.346)
And if I look rightly kind of back on, you know, when you kind of, you obviously, like you said, you're one of those people that's kind of come up through the ranks and you've done it. And now you're in a director position where you're running multiple projects, multiple nationalities, global, you know, and obviously a lot of leaders that we speak about, I'm a recruitment consultant, I'm a recruitment CEO. So I have that, that background. I know I've been there in the trenches as it were, but, um, you know, do you, do you
Suhail Khan (17:03.374)
Yep.
David Bloxham (17:13.85)
One of the things I noticed when you become a leader, you have to almost divorce yourself from some part of what you used to do and maybe what you even used to enjoy. You enjoy doing coding, enjoying being part of the scrum as opposed to leading the scrum. Has that been a difficult transition through your career? Obviously everyone's got aspirations that they want to move forward, but sometimes people find that the job isn't quite as interesting as the one they...
started out doing or quite as fulfilling sometimes.
Suhail Khan (17:41.838)
Yeah, in my case, the leadership was, it was quite organic how it came to me. So you're right. I really started from the bottom as a software developer and then grew on to roles where I had to lead a few people initially, and then this just grew further on. So this, this helped me learn from not, not just my own mistakes.
but also from the mistakes of other leaders or other managers I had at one point. Yeah, so this helped me learn what are the best practices on how you manage teams, what's the bridge between doing operational work, like coding on a daily basis, to delivering a final product, to also strategizing future roadmaps. So, yeah.
David Bloxham (18:19.386)
Yeah, yeah.
Suhail Khan (18:41.582)
It definitely helps to start out from the bottom and grow organically as a leader as well.
David Bloxham (18:52.57)
do that apprenticeship as you kind of move forward. You know, the other thing we mentioned there was obviously these large organizations that you work for. We've talked about the kind of the agile process, we talked about working in different industries. One of the things I'm quite interested in because you've made a quick progress in your career. So obviously you've been successful as you move forward, but you know, what's your advice for people that are maybe taking on, you know, not just new industries, but...
Suhail Khan (18:52.654)
Yep.
David Bloxham (19:20.794)
but new and larger teams. You know, I guess you've had to test yourself at some point to say, well, I was running a team of 10 now, now I'm running a team of 100, now I'm running a team of 1,000. What was, you know, how do you go about it? How would you advise those, suddenly I'm running this big global team, what should people again do to make sure they're doing a good job and dealing with it?
Suhail Khan (19:26.702)
Yeah. Yeah.
Suhail Khan (19:34.606)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (19:40.014)
Well, personally, I love this topic. I've been asked this quite a few times, especially because at the moment, I work in an organization that has over 200,000 employees in over 66 locations globally, right? So it has a big multinational footprint with really large teams. And I'm really fortunate to be managing these multinational teams.
David Bloxham (19:55.546)
Yes.
David Bloxham (19:59.098)
Yes.
Suhail Khan (20:07.15)
The number one best practice for me would be to understand the work culture of that place. So not in a way that you would stereotype a certain region or certain resources from a certain region. As my experience has always taught me that every individual is unique irrespective of where they are from. But rather try to understand what kind of projects these teams
David Bloxham (20:18.138)
Всё.
David Bloxham (20:35.034)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (20:35.982)
or individuals have worked on in the past, and what kind of people they've worked with in the past. So I could give you a nice example. I used to have a team from a location, which I do not want to name, but due to where this team was located, they were treated mostly as an outsource wing of the company rather than as an internal team.
Right. So their mentality was mostly to work in silos and they were treated more as vendors rather than colleagues. Right. You know, so, so their mentality was to mostly work in silos and to also be really cautious in their approach.
Suhail Khan (21:34.51)
one big team. And I think COVID definitely helped in bringing remote teams closer to you. Yeah, remote work, I think has helped us empathize also and help us make understand how these remote resources could work and what issues they would face as well.
David Bloxham (22:01.05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I thought it was a, finally, it's definitely helped with the kind of, you know, it's one of the key pros, positive aspects of kind of running global teams that we do at GCS. We have our offshore delivery centers. It's helped us to integrate people into the team. Sometimes I think it's quite funny that you forget what time it is, don't you? You know, if you're dealing with India and you're like, oh, hi, good morning. And like, well, I'm doing it. You just, you know, because obviously everyone's working like follow the sun and stuff.
Suhail Khan (22:16.942)
Yeah.
Thank you.
Suhail Khan (22:26.382)
Yeah.
David Bloxham (22:30.17)
just forget. I guess that's an empathy thing as well, just to kind of understand that you're four o'clock in the afternoon is your, so how is your kind of five o'clock in the afternoon but in India, you know, it's you know 11 o'clock at night, you know.
Suhail Khan (22:31.502)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (22:42.478)
And also the mentality of people in different locations could be different. So I've noticed that in some of the locations, people live to work rather than work to live, right? There could be instances where not your entire team is working with the same energy and dedication, but yeah, as a leader, you have to balance that out.
David Bloxham (22:51.77)
Yeah.
David Bloxham (22:59.29)
Yeah, yeah.
David Bloxham (23:06.778)
Yeah.
David Bloxham (23:11.29)
Yeah. And I think, you know, for me, it's just really kind of interesting when you, when you start to take on those teams. And the other question I had to have was as you, as you grow, because you've seen mentioned how you work in different products, different software teams, you know, and obviously, you know, I'm assuming you've got different projects going on with maybe different outcomes, different software. So, so again, that's, you know, to me, you're, you're the story of your career, story of your leadership is.
is of ever increasing complexities, right? It's multiple strands. Again, you know, again, how, and I think a lot of, I'm asking you a lot of questions, how do you do this? How do you, you know, but I think our listeners will be very, very interested in that. How do you really deal with those different kind of complex projects? And what sort of kind of reporting tools do you use? How are you kind of structuring your day so you know you're focusing on the key issues that you need to sort out?
Suhail Khan (23:40.302)
Absolutely. Yep.
Suhail Khan (24:01.134)
Yeah, so one thing I always try to do is really look for the fundamentals and the basics of what we want to achieve. So I think as long as you have your vision clear, as your foundation, you can derive everything based on that. So you can derive how many resources you want. You can derive how do you.
plan your capacity in running the teams, how you can build your whole framework around a clear vision. So a clear vision from the stakeholders or from you yourself as the business owner is quite critical. It always comes down to the vision, right? And yeah, having a clear vision also helps you in having clear expectation management along the way, it helps you in doing roadmaps.
It helps you in, yeah, it basically defines the business processes around it. I would say. Yeah.
David Bloxham (25:11.066)
And it helps you to communicate things, right? You know, if you've got that clear vision, then you can then tell people what your clear vision is.
Suhail Khan (25:13.39)
Yeah, absolutely. It definitely helps in communication as well. And another critical thing is to try to be more adaptive to the kind of product or project you're on. So for example, I had a project in my past which was both software and hardware. It was a software hardware product, right? And in hardware, it's very hard.
David Bloxham (25:39.866)
Okay.
Suhail Khan (25:42.638)
to be agile. Because, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah.
David Bloxham (25:49.882)
Yeah, yeah, the products made already or kind of your tweaking it on you. Yeah.
Suhail Khan (25:51.822)
Yeah, yeah, it's hard to tweak something that's physical, basically. So you rather try to build your hardware more in a waterfall way, in the traditional way, and then you try to keep your software agile, but both need to go hand in hand in order for you to have your product out in the market at a certain point.
Right, so there you cannot use a traditional agile framework. You really need to adapt it based on how the hardware project stream is going. You need to map your timelines and your sprint cycles and ensure that they coincide with the hardware development as well. Yeah.
David Bloxham (26:20.474)
show. Yeah.
David Bloxham (26:47.418)
It's very interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, we talked earlier about how looking at the universality between projects and, you know, what you're going to do and the people. But I guess the exciting part of this being the sort of leader that you are is that every single project is different, right? That you can never, you can't be bored, can you?
Suhail Khan (26:59.662)
It is.
It is. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in agile projects. And as I mentioned, you always have retrospective. So in a retrospective, it's not just you as a product owner or a business owner who gets to know what were the issues that the team faced. Yeah. But it also becomes transparent to everyone involved that there are.
certain issues that need to be dealt with that you wouldn't have foreseen or imagined yourself as well.
Suhail Khan (27:40.75)
Yeah.
David Bloxham (27:41.594)
There's a word I want to go back to that we spoke about at the start called gaps. You know, and that's quite kind of interesting in that, you know, just, just firstly, when you say gaps, I'm not sure if people know what the word means, right? But what do you mean when you look at a project and say, I want to, I want to find the gaps.
Suhail Khan (27:52.27)
For me, a gap would be something that's less efficient, a bottleneck in the process, I would say. Yeah, for example, if a certain team has been offering less value over a period of time, or they're really slow in their delivery, that's a gap.
Right? So having more efficient processes, having constant delivery, having quality delivery is quite critical, I would say. And that's where I define my gaps around the bottlenecks of what could be holding something on. So an example of this would be I had a team once which had quite a few senior resources. They were quite skilled.
David Bloxham (28:23.642)
Mm. Yep.
Suhail Khan (28:52.366)
And they were really experts in what they do. But at the same time, they were quite slow. This was a testing team that I inherited once. And they would take a really long time to finish their test. So this would be a big bottleneck in the entire process. So we couldn't release our product until it's been tested and certified. The gap there was that
They were so good with what they do that they were also super thorough with it. They would really look into smaller details and spend a lot of time on the smaller details and this slowed down the entire process. So we had to tweak what needs to be certified and tested to improve their delivery as well. So yeah, it's...
Let's.
David Bloxham (29:50.97)
You strike me as someone who's quite calm, Sahel. I kind of feel like from speaking to you, kind of, I feel like, you know, some of the things you talked about is how you kind of go and manage change, manage maybe conflict, that sort of thing. But you strike me, I mean, maybe I've only spoken to you for a couple of times, but you strike me as someone that could put across, the way you just said, quite slow. I feel like you could put that across without winding people up too much.
Suhail Khan (30:00.494)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (30:10.03)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (30:14.382)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
David Bloxham (30:19.674)
Is that something you pride yourself in? Other people probably would get people's backs because of massive arguments. But you strike me as quite a calm person.
Suhail Khan (30:22.606)
Yep.
Well, a lot of people have told me that. I try not to panic and I always try to find a middle ground. But at the same time, as a leader, I also expect an output to be there at the right time. Right? You need to have this because every leader also has stakeholders they have to report to. It can be the CEO, CTOs and so on. Yeah.
David Bloxham (30:35.354)
I'm gonna go.
David Bloxham (30:49.754)
Yeah.
Suhail Khan (30:54.094)
Yeah, there has to be a fine line between being too aggressive or being too soft, I would say.
David Bloxham (30:55.194)
Sure. Yep.
David Bloxham (31:07.802)
And I guess that comes back as well again to leading by example. You know, like you said, like, you know, you've got stuff you need to do, then you're doing that at the right times, et cetera, et cetera. That's, I always find that's kind of important for me to, to, to, to act as if I, as I tell people to act.
Suhail Khan (31:15.726)
Yep.
Suhail Khan (31:20.494)
Yeah, yeah. And I would say empathy is a very important skill for leaders to have. We tend to take it lightly at times. And in order to be really empathetic towards my team, I always try to also be hands-on at the moment so I understand their pain. I always try to also dig deep into some of the bigger problems.
they might be having. This also helps in expectation management between me as a leader and between my teams. So I think a lot of leaders get this wrong and put a lot of pressure on the teams, which leads to unhealthy working environment or toxic working environment. I've experienced it myself in the past. So I always try to be as empathetic towards my teams and try to really understand things from their perspective.
and try to shield the team from the other stakeholders as well.
David Bloxham (32:27.578)
Fantastic, fantastic. It sounds, you know, I always think there's quite a lot of the leaders, but it's kind of, it's like a sports team, isn't it? You know, you kind of think about like a cricket team or a soccer team, you know, you've got, you know, you've got to get them focused, got to get them working to the right things, you've got to keep them at right standards, but in the end, you've got to make sure that they're enjoying it and working together as a team. Thank you.
Suhail Khan (32:31.982)
Yep. Yep.
Suhail Khan (32:44.942)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is why I also emphasized on someone being a culture fit is quite important. Because it just takes one wrong hire to ruin the mood of the entire team, as I've experienced in the past. Yeah.
David Bloxham (32:58.17)
Yeah, OK.
Yeah. Yeah.
David Bloxham (33:08.41)
Exactly. Yeah, that's right. I know it's always about talking from experience and learning from experience and like I said, failing fast. Because you can learn from experience. We know, you know, you can always make the same mistake again, can't you? Oh no, I've done that one. So, excellent. So for you, you know, my kind of final question now, Sahay, looking forward to the next kind of year within your organization and for yourself personally, what are your key priorities for the year ahead? You know, what are you...
Suhail Khan (33:08.59)
Yeah. Yeah.
Suhail Khan (33:34.542)
So at the moment, you know, the tech industry is not in its best position as it was maybe a year ago or during the pre-COVID times. So my first priority this year is to really grow my team's value and also grow my own individual value as well. So for growing my team's value, I of course need to hire the best.
David Bloxham (33:38.202)
you're looking to achieve.
David Bloxham (33:57.658)
всё.
Suhail Khan (33:58.862)
and surround myself with experts and hope we deliver a few successful products this year. And yeah, make sure that my teams over exceed the expectations. And to grow my own value, I need to keep learning. So learning new skills, learning new technologies, and most importantly, as you said, learning from new experiences or failures that might come my way this year.
David Bloxham (34:31.226)
Mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'n rhaid i ni ddweud ymlaen, mae'
Suhail Khan (34:40.717)
Thanks, David.
Suhail Khan (34:44.302)
Thanks David.
Suhail Khan (34:52.014)
Thanks David, it was a pleasure.
Thank you.
