Throughout his career, Eric has worked in tech roles both in startups and in large multinationals. He has worked for brands including TomTom, Gilt Groupe and, most recently, Zalando, the German online fashion retailer. In Zalando, Eric, along with his 500-strong tech team, is responsible for tech infrastructure and systems across the business.

As someone who started his career with little respect for 'management', Eric is now an advocate of strong, human leadership.

Show Notes:

1.25 – Eric talking about Montana, the SIMMS, respect for management and GILT Group – 4.10 – Moving from being a specialist to being a leader – 4.33 – In tech start-ups, profitability and delivery is key but leadership's critical– 6.08 – Great leaders are human, great at simplifying and communicating – 9.18 – 'Junior leaders need to have basic comms skills – 10.14 – Zalando's Tech Constitution – rethinking how individuals, teams and the company should behave – 12.14 – Creating a culture where its OK to say 'you're wrong', Ford's Pinto and Intel's repositioning – 15.55 – Creating cultures and environments where you fail and learn – 16.40 - It's important to take the right risks in order to grow – 18.10 – when failure does happen they're asked to teach others how to ensure it doesn't happen again - 19.10 – being comfortable sharing stories of success and failure to make the company better – 20.25 – Leader's role is to help bring their people through their change curves - 22.30 – communicate, communicate, communicate during change – 23.15 – Finding early adopters who can support the team – 24.28 – successful change can bring people together – 25.20 – Eric's leadership role models, learning, humour and psychological safety – 29.05 – Respect leadership sooner but don't get into it sooner! Learn 'just in case' not 'just in time'.