Rico Surridge
Rico Surridge (Chief Product & Technology Officer at Which?) talks about his career, what skills future leaders should develop and why there is more than just AI to get excited about.
Transcript
Richard: I'm delighted to welcome Rico Surridge to the Technology Chiefs podcast. Rico is currently the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Which? having had a very successful career in and around media so far to date. Full disclosure, Rico and I were colleagues for a while back around 2010, I think when we both worked for itv
Rico, welcome. Tell me a little bit about your current role, if that's okay?
Rico: Yeah. So, well, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm, as you say, I'm Rico Surridge. My current role I'm Chief Product and Technology Officer ,Which? Limited, really interesting role.
It varies quite a lot. I find. CPTO. So my responsibility is, in my context, I'm responsible for both the consumer facing digital experiences and some of the core disciplines that support that. So obviously things like product engineering, product management, product design, some of the delivery kind of capabilities.
And then I'm also responsible for all of the kind of internally facing experiences, kind of IT corporate systems, some of the infrastructure InfoSec type stuff as well. So it's quite a broad role in that sense. You know, some areas more in my comfort zone than others, but certainly never a dull day.
Richard: Yeah, , absolutely fascinating. So, sort of we go back a little bit though, what, what made you pursue a career in products and technology? How did you end up here then, Rico?
Rico: Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question. So I I mean like, like a lot of people, I had a plan, but I also didn't know kind of all of the, you know, exact steps and milestones on it.
I think the thing that probably had the biggest influence on me was one of my very, very first roles who was working for a really small startup. It's four or five people. I was doing a kind of entry level, well I say entry level, I was the only web developer at the time in, in, in that little business.
And through necessity, you end up doing lots of different roles. You know, you've gotta do a bit of design, you've gotta get involved in HR. You kind of gotta do a little bit of everything. And I think that was kind of quite a, sort of pivotal moment for me. Cause it, it taught me that. A, I love building things, you know, I just really enjoy putting a bunch of things together and seeing how that resonates with somebody else and, and how they interact with it and getting a feedback loop.
So I just, I learned, I think, quite quickly through that. I loved building things and then I think in compliment to that, I think I learned that I loved doing a breadth of things as well. I love getting involved and I love understanding different disciplines and kind of product engineering and building.
Very kind of consumer facing, particularly B2C for me. I think experiences just kind of a, a bunch of things kind of clicked into place. So, you know, yes I did sort of the computer science degrees and things like that, but that was all kind of conscious steps. But without really knowing, you know, oh, I really wanna work in, in product and technology, you know, Back when you were at university, you've got no idea that a lot of these things, I certainly didn't know that things like product management and product engineering existed.
So yeah, it was a, through a love of building things, I think that's how I ended up in products and tech.
Richard: Yeah, totally agree. My university, I was back in the sort of nineties and I don't think product management had had made it into the engineering sphere at that point.
So it wasn't, it wasn't even a concept. It was certainly nothing that we, we were introduced to. So yeah, I sort of, I, I came across that certainly in the more early to mid two thousands. Suddenly at one point it felt like everybody I spoke to was a product manager. And yeah. Yeah.
Rico: Yeah, definitely
Richard: Interesting times.
Rico: It, it, I think it all evolved quite rapidly and I think we had that influence from the US and I think there was lots of changes to ways of working. And suddenly there was this kind of new this, there was agile and there was product management and there was experimentation.
There was been more outcome driven and I think it changed a lot of people's outlooks when it comes to software engineering in particular.
Richard: Yeah, definitely. So you talked about obviously, at Which? you've got a very varied role, not only the front of the B2C type stuff, but also actually helping run the, IT the for the actual organization itself.
In your current role, what are your sort of top priorities challenges at the moment? What are you facing into?
Rico: Yeah. Well, like I say, definitely never a dull day, that's for sure. So. I think probably my, my biggest priority right now is my team, I think.
Richard: Mm-hmm.
Rico: Building the, you know, my product these days is my team, I suppose.
So focusing on the individuals. Bringing the right people together, creating the right environment for success. Putting a, a balance of personalities and disciplines together and, you know, providing some of the catalysts for them to do really exciting things. So I think that that's probably my priority is, is creating that environment and, and bringing the right people together.
I think one of the key challenges to that, perhaps I think. Is this kind of post covid world that we're living in. I'm, so I think one of the things I'm still chewing over , and for context, Which? is, you know, we're like a lot of organizations, we're operating in a very hybrid fashion. We're very flexible. People are typically coming into the office one, two days a week. That works really well for kind of work-life balance and, kind of people's lives, dropping kids off at school, all of these sorts of things. I did that this morning. But I think one of the things that I'm still personally kind of really chewing over is that's not necessarily complimentary to a really high performing team.
You know, if you want , a group of individuals to operate at pace with high levels of, of kind of interaction, it's very difficult, I think to replicate that. Without being co-located, which is not a very popular viewpoint to have, I think particularly in the tech sphere where actually there are so many benefits to being remote and it certainly helps with hiring.
And there, there, there are lots of pros to having a distributed workforce. And some organizations really make it work. I think for organizations that have perhaps been around for a little bit longer, that are going through perhaps more acute digital transformations still, there's lots of change taking place in an organization. I think doing that in a hybrid way is really, really tough. And I think it's particularly tough for the leaders in the team. I think trying to articulate your points, show people what good looks like, create that environment and that culture is very, very difficult to do remotely, I think even harder to do in a hybrid fashion. So I'm still kind of kicking that around thinking about, you know, the different kind of tactics and ways that we can approach. Ways of working in this kind of post covid world. That's probably, I would say the honest answer is that's probably my biggest challenge. There's loads of other day-to-day stuff.
I mean, there's, you know, the environment that we operate in at the moment with economic challenges, with war in Ukraine and some of the InfoSec challenges off the back of that. There's, there's so many things, but I, I still think actually it's the human element that's probably the biggest challenge.
Richard: Yeah, I think think you make a really, really good point there. And it would be, yeah, if we're exploring a little bit further, you, you are obviously musing how to, to, to create that high performing environment and actually really what you, you are alluding to. And I think a lot of leaders that I talk to and certainly I experience as well.
I am conflicted because it, it is so helpful and it is created a really nice work-life balance working from home as you know, we both are today. Yet you are a hundred percent right. It, it, you know, we've seen it both sides of the coin here. And definitely when we've co-located everyone in the office working together, that that, that energy that you can get and that, that clarity and that speed of thought. You just can't do that remotely. Everything's really efficient, but not effective necessarily, you know? And so what I was gonna try and tease out of you got any good ideas yet? Because I'm definitely struggling.
Rico: I mean, we talk, I, I talk a lot at the moment about moments that matter. And I think one of the things that perhaps makes the biggest difference is, is setting, perhaps not expectation, but almost giving permission for those moments that matter.
Not always to be the, the, the kind of very formal meetings or things like that. I think there's this. Underlying unconscious assumption that if I'm going into an office environment, I've gotta make the most of every minute of that time. And so if I'm going in on Tuesday, I'm gonna do back to back meetings between nine and five or nine and six, and I'm gonna be really efficient.
I'm gonna get all that done, and then I'll do my other work when I'm, I'm, I'm not in the office. And I think actually, almost the reverse is true. I think the time that we spend together in the office environment is more about. The micro interactions, it's more about a software engineer and a product designer sitting next to each other doing some of the day job, doing their craft, but then still being able to lean over a shoulder and go, Hey, have you thought about doing it this way?
Or Have you thought about moving this over to the right? And I think it's that. It's the little things in practice. That we are missing. And so when we talk about moments that matter, we're actually, we're not talking about this particular strategy meeting or this other thing. It's more, it might be say, you know, we're at the beginning, you know, it's day one of a sprint or something like that.
Yes, we might have a a backlog session on day one of the sprint for an hour or something like that, but it's actually, it's the time outside of that. It's the conversation. It's the discussion. And I think one of the things that enables that is, is, is talking about that with the team. Giving per, they don't need permission, but kind of giving them permission and giving them confidence to say, we're coming into the office on Tuesday because it's a really moment in time, important moment in time for our team.
We're not gonna spend the whole time in meetings. Actually, we're probably gonna take a longer lunch and we're gonna kick some ideas around over a. Sandwich or something like that. But, but creating that, that notion that there are really important moments in time. They're not all the time, they're spaced out, but giving people that sense that that's a time to come together in person.
Richard: That's brilliant. Thank you so much for sharing that. Rico. We've talked a little bit about you know, it's, it's a strange time, but how do you see the role of the technology leader changing over the next, you know, few years?
Rico: Yeah, interesting. I think you can't really break the two. Words apart. So I think tech, so technology leader, I think the leadership component probably won't change in practice all that much. I think, you know, the role itself thinking about the vision and the strategy and creating the environment for the team and, and so much of it is about People in practice.
I think that side of things in so many respects will probably stay the same. I think the context, the economy, the working patterns, the technologies, all of those will definitely change and nothing is more consistent than change itself. I think the technology part will, as it has continued to evolve. I mean, we're seeing a whole storm around AI at the moment.
There is always a thing, a next thing, and technology never stays still for very long. So I think that side of it will. Be consistent in that we will always have to respond and adapt and understand a new thing and think about our policies around it, think about the opportunities, think about the threats.
But the leadership piece I think is pretty consistent in many respects. Yeah. Is it, you know, is ever kind of effervescent and exciting? .
Richard: Yeah. I, I tend to agree. Now, you sort of opened up the AI discussion, but we, you know, we, we like to sort of ask what, what sort of trends are you most excited about and why? I suspect AI will feature somewhere in there, but maybe not. Let's, you know, what, what trends are you most excited about at the moment?
Rico: Yeah, I'll try and answer that question in a different way because I think everyone's gonna say AI at the moment. What am I, what am I, what's the art? What am I genuinely interested in? I think I get excited about. Some of the [00:12:00] incremental improvements that we see to things.
Richard: Mm-hmm.
Rico: So for me, it's not always the kind of big bang, here's the new shiny thing. So if I think about things like some of the health, some of the kind of personal health tech stuff, things like Apple Watch we almost take for granted. The fact that every year there's a slight update. You know, it broadly certainly from the, the, the kind of industrial design side of things, it stays very familiar. But actually there'll be a new sensor. There'll be a new thing in there that incrementally improves our understanding of our own health. And I, I get quite excited about the evolutions that we see in some of that product development and how it's quite considered and it's quite. Sort of well tested and that we see a new thing each year and there's kind of a cadence to it and, and it is evolving. If you look back five years at some of the watches that were around then it was in a very, very different place to, it is now, it feels quite slow, but at the same time, back not that far. It's, I think in practice it's quite different and I'm excited, so I'm, I'm genuinely excited to see that, how that evolves. What new. Understandings we can kind of have of ourselves, how that can improve our daily lives, you know, so some of the really practical stuff, to be honest, like I've got a 90 plus year old grandmother having things like the fall sensor, you know, picking up on the fact that you've fallen over and then alerting someone, it's just incredibly useful. I mean, that sort of thing is genuinely saving lives and improving the quality of life for people. So I get quite excited about some of those sorts of things. I'm excited about seeing what happens in the automotive space that feels, you know, is in a real kind of acute point of disruption at the moment. Obviously electric cars is a big thing. I'm yet to be fully convinced by some of those. I think particularly from an environmental sort of sustainability point of view, we've kind of just shifted the problem and I think battery tech is gonna be, I, I, I'm really excited to see somebody crack. That problem in a meaningful way. And I'm, I, I get quite energized by seeing people be quite creative in that space as well. Like we've seen some of the hydrogen experiments not really playing out yet, but such incredible kind of potential there. And then some of the kind of eel synthetic fuel stuff that people are working on as well. It's quite exciting seeing an industry like that that has been quite. Stable for so long. You know, it is produced a product that has got so much legislation around it and so many standards around it that the products that come out the end, okay, some of the visuals are, are kind of different, but actually it's fundamentally quite similar. It feels like that is going through a real period of. Disruption now, and it's probably not gonna be one thing, it's probably gonna be a sort of a smorgasboard of a few different things, I think, for a period of time. So I don't know. I guess I get excited about some of those sorts of things. I think incremental changes to some of the products that we use every day that are sort of genuinely useful. I'm really excited to see. What Apple does with AR and kind of vr, you know, speculated to release something later this year. You know, a bunch of people have got, you know, actually very good products out on the market, but we haven't seen that sort of true mainstream adoption yet. So I'd be, I'm kind of interested to see what happens with that and whether they make a success of it or not. And I've managed to say all of that without really talking about AI, which is the thing that is on kind of everybody's mind at the moment. There's, I don't think there's a CTO or a CPTO out there in the last sort of three months that hasn't had their CEO come to them and say, what is our AI strategy? What is our AI policy? So for sure that is on the mind as well.
Richard: Yes. That was, that was fantastic. Thank you , so much to, to pick up on there. And just taking out one point and ignoring the AI elephant , , the automotive industry going through a huge change at the moment. And as you say, the, the back at the heart of it's battery tech And of course when one industry, which has pretty deep pockets and invest so heavily in trying to move that forward, it, it's always interesting to see where that then pops out in, you know, the advancements in battery tech there could make huge difference to how we store energy at home, et cetera, you know? So really, really interesting to see where that goes over the next few years.
Because , we tend to focus on what, future technology leaders should look and do. I'd be interesting to get your thoughts on what skills a technology leader should look to develop.
Rico: Yeah. Okay. Let's go with the power of three.
So three, three things. I think number one, people skills. I think particularly around providing kind of candid, constructive feedback, but also just kind of broader clear communication. I think being able to, Talk to the team and help them help themselves and improve themselves is really, really important. So people skills for one. I think when we're talking a again about kind of leadership roles, I think delegation comes to mind. I think we, and I say that particularly in the context of of technology leaders because we do love to build things. We do love to kind of roll our sleeves up. We are tinkerers more often than not by nature. But actually when you're, you increasingly in more senior leadership roles, you're not doing those things. You are building the teams and working with the teams and I, I, you know, I see so many technology leaders from time to time falling into that trap of, actually I wanna roll my sleeves up and I wanna get involved. And there, there's a time and a place for that, but it can be quite hard to resist. So I think delegation would be the second one. I think the third one then for me would be strategic thinking. Thinking about. The opportunity spaces, how to quantify them, how to prioritize them, how to then articulate some of the proof points along the way. And so when I say strategic thinking, I think it's an evolution from perhaps what you do as a engineer working in the context of a particular squad or a product engineering team. It's, it's a slightly different type of, Upward stakeholder management where you've got shareholders or investors or a governance structure that needs sometimes quite technical concepts articulated in very non-technical ways, and it needs to have that gamut of almost the business case that that wraps around it, but certainly the proof points along the way. So I think short answer is mixture of focusing on people skills. Delegation in a really meaningful way, and then some of the strategic and and kind of upward management side of things.
Richard: No, that, that's really, really helpful and really, really interesting. And I think the just pick on one of your points there. The delegation ones are, really good point. It is so often missed and what I see and probably being someone who's done this a few times in the past and my team now would probably still complain about it, is I, I'm quite good at delegating it. Well, I, what , I then end up doing is probably popping in meddling for a little bit and then, and sort of walking out from it and just basically causing disruption. So yeah, really important to be able to delegate well something myself and my colleagues could work on better.
Rico: Yeah, it's so hard not to show through doing like the natural instinct is to help, like, I think so many of the, the people in direct, like we want to jump in and we want to help and we'll say, we'll sketch something out, we'll create a template for the slide or something like that. Whereas in practice, and we, I, we know it like a, another kind of arm to the role is more of a coaching role and, and helping people ask the right questions of themselves and then think through that thing and then probably have multiple attempts at. Putting together whatever it is they've been, they've been delegated and getting some of those wrong and being quite iterative about it is, is how we learn as, as human beings. And so, exactly, yeah. Our natural instinct, I think.
Richard: Yeah, , totally agree. Brilliant stuff. So there is so much information out there to try and stay abreast of all the issues and challenges and what's going on at the moment. Who do you follow and which sites do you use as a source of trusted information?
Rico: There is just an enormous amount of content out there. I think there's all the obvious sort of tech crunches and things. Those are, those are really useful. I really enjoy Benedict Evans newsletter. He does a great kind of wrap up of interesting technology trends and provides a little bit of a business lens to it as well, which I find useful.
There's, I I think that the other honest answer though to that then is probably just talking to the team because in, by, by nature, if I, if I'm looking at particular sites or following particular people, I'm always gonna have a slight bias to that. I'm probably always gonna be a couple of steps behind in practice. So if I want the real kind of nuggets, if I want the news that's kind of emerging. I'm actually better off talking to, you know, some of the junior software engineers and understanding what it is they're reading and what it is they're engaging with. And so just some of the, again, it's maybe sometimes back to being in the office a little bit, some of the water cooler moments, but I think more often than not, the really interesting tech news comes from talking to the team and just interacting with them. I think.
Richard: Yeah. Brilliant. I sort of sort of lead on from that. Do, do you have a particular book that you look back on and you think, actually this would be a good recommendation for someone, , looking to move on in their technology career? Something that's a bit seminal to you, change potentially the way you thought about something, et cetera?
Rico: Yeah. Oh my goodness, so many. I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw a few into,
Richard: You can do a few, a few is fine.
Rico: Good. So I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna flip it on its head a little bit and so I'm gonna start with a producty piece. My background was predominantly in, in, in product, although always in and around digital and product engineering space.
And I think one of the sort of seminal books for me was inspired by Marty Kagan and the Silicon Valley product group. And that, that was definitely the one that helped me move on my thinking in terms of how you build good products, be them digital or otherwise. I think then with more of a technology lens and how. I've, I've helped my own understanding and, and books that I've then shared with, with people that are coming on in their technology careers. I think there are some great ones. I think Accelerate is a great one. The, the Phoenix Project. And, and some of the DO metrics and some of the stuff that, that comes out through that, that's a Fun Monks, it's written in quite a narrative form. And then Team Topologies, I absolutely love that. It's, you've gotta be a bit of a geek to read some of these things by nature, which, which probably fine resonates, but I love that one for. Thinking about organizational structures and how you can shape not just the technology teams, but help then influence the broader organizational structure in pursuit of a particular mission. And then some of the outcomes that you're really trying to achieve off the back of it. But there's loads. I think my final thought on that then is if you are really trying to sort of move on your sort of technology leadership career, it's actually to think well beyond either product or technology and actually look at the other disciplines. So, you know, some of the books I've been reading more recently have actually been on finance or legal concepts or things like that that give you that. Greater appreciation, that broader understanding allow you to have an empathy with other divisions and what they're trying to achieve. And I think that is probably one of the key components of becoming more and more senior in the leadership roles.
Richard: Yeah. Thank you so much for that Rico, that's really great. Okay, brilliant. You've, you've given us so much information there, which is, it has been really, really helpful. But let sort to wrap up here. You know, if you could tell your 20 year old self one bit of information that would enable them to get on in their career, what would it be and why?
Rico: 20 year old Rico. Goodness. Yeah. It was a little while ago now. I I think. It careers aren't all together linear, so I would say don't kind of stress too much. Things will, will always work out and kind of stay curious and keep learning. But I think if I was to say one thing to sort of 20 year old me, it would be do even more of reaching out to people that, that you perhaps don't feel like you can reach out to. So just get, you know, any of those books that we've just mentioned, if you're chewing over a topic in one of those, Just, just connect with the author on LinkedIn or ping them on Twitter or what have you. Because actually in my experience, more often than not, those people are really passionate about those topics and they're really interested in feedback and they're really interested in talking through those things with, with people out in the community. So in my experience, more often than not, those people respond and I wish that I'd had a little bit more confidence and tenacity maybe in those really early days to just go out. Ask people those questions and get involved in the community. Cause it really is a community and, and, and so it'll probably be that I think reach out to people. Just ask.
Richard: Just talk, just network. Absolutely. Well, that's a fantastic way to end Rico. Thank you so much for your time this morning. There's some brilliant answers in there and I know that our, our readers and our listeners will, will find that really, really interesting. So look, thank you and yeah, look forward to talking again soon.
Rico: Thanks, Richard.