How to build a best-in-class tech team with Taher Khaliq, CTO at Trinny London

Your tech team has grown significantly over the last 18 months along with the expansion of the entire Trinny London team. What’s been the most significant challenge during this period of rapid growth?

When I joined Trinny London it was just a couple of months before lockdown so it’s quite interesting starting a new position and getting into a company with such rapid growth as Trinny London, and then to suddenly be thrown into lockdown.

We’ve seen a big change in the way people do business, but we’ve also seen the resilience of some markets, so I think it’s been a really great time for e-commerce.

We had to figure out how to transform our editing, marketing and product development teams remotely, when they have traditionally been in-office roles. We landed on our feet quickly, and we have seen how productive we can be with a hybrid system.

How much growth have you gone through in the last 18 months? 

When I started there was about 5 people in technology, and we are at almost 55 now. The business had approximately 40 people pre-lockdown, and now we’re at 150 and still growing.

We had over 16 new launches in lockdown alone last year, so we’re definitely not taking our foot off the gas. Almost every business I’ve worked at, I’ve either joined in a period of growth, sale or transformation. I’ve never seen what the status quo looks like anywhere, and have always had a growth or aspiration to change.

What are the biggest challenges that came with the growth that you as a leader faced?

There’s something to be said about when there’s only 6 people in the room, and you wear every hat under the sun – you just make things happen.

The challenge with any company that’s scaling is how to keep that mentality. You need to manage risk – you might know what 6 people think, but this changes when you have over 40 people to take into consideration. With this shift, you can’t be involved in every decision, so you have to have that level of autonomy, or you end up having a lot of red tape. That’s why a lot of companies who scale become less efficient and less agile.

We try to always come back to our startup mentality. You need structure, progression, safety, but you also need employees to have a scrappy mindset. This needs to be coherent across the whole department – everyone may have a skill or a strength, but also not be afraid to be thrown into unknown waters.

What percentage of the business were working remotely before lockdown, and how much of your office is now hybrid? 

As we’re not a remote business, we had all the problems many companies face when they hire more people than floor space. We’ve since redesigned the office to create a more collaborative and hybrid space for people to have flexibility on site and at home.

I think the approach we’ve taken is purpose driven facilitation – it’s not about needing to be seen for a certain amount of time. We’ve found that this empowers teams, managers and individuals to balance their lives. We have people from all walks of life and backgrounds, so we’ve found that this has increased productivity.

What are the biggest leadership mistakes a CTO can make when growing a technology function and team?

One of the most important things is to know the company you’re coming into as it’s easy to come in and look at what’s wrong. Actually, it’s really important to understand the organization and their history so that you can look at what goals they’ve achieved and work out what’s going well. You need to make sure you don’t take away the successes they’ve had as a business.

I think the biggest element is trust. You need to earn it, but you also need to be trusted to make decisions as CTO. Moving from tech lead to CTO, the main difference is that you begin to look at more than the technology – you are looking the future structure of the business, the operating model, the marketing. There needs to be an understanding of the whole picture.

How do you define what are you referring to when you talk about culture? 

Culture doesn’t come from the leaders – they support the community to help build a culture. Our focus is to have a diverse culture, but one where there is a core alignment where we all believe in the direction. The McGregor theory of management proposes that if you empower and trust people, 9 times out of 10 they will be conscientious – you obviously have outliers, but you shouldn’t let that affect the community.

We’ve been trying to create a cohesive culture across departments, and across people who don’t normally interact on a daily basis. In this, we’re trying to better align goals so we celebrate everyone’s successes more – I think this will evolve over time.

Being in the highly competitive cosmetics industry, are there any unique qualities in the tech talent you hire?

People often don’t accredit cosmetics or the beauty industry to technology, at least in the e-commerce sense, because it comes from retail or hybrid applications. When looking at tech talent, it’s important for them to have an understanding of the wider technology market and what’s happening in the industry. The power of consumer habits are driven through ecommerce and online digital transformations.

We like to think of ourselves as a technology first business who are driving a physical product. It’s about enabling Microsoft architecture in the back-end, but also enabling the front-end – the content team and the business – to manage campaigns and products easily. We have massive plans for the next six months where we’re launching brand new products and campaigns.

What’s one thing you think more people should know?

Common sense isn’t common – just because something may be common sense to me it might not be to someone else, and vice versa. I think it’s important to recognize that you’re probably missing something and you should be interested in what you don’t know.

What’s the best book, podcast or video you would recommend that you have taken long lasting learns from?

The play ‘An Inspector Calls’ by J. B. Priestley – I think it’s a great analogy for not taking things at surface value.