Interview with Miika Huttunen ex CEO at Slush
I had the opportunity to exchange thoughts and interview the ex CEO at Slush, Miika Huttunen.
If you know about Slush it’s great, otherwise this is Miika’s simple and direct definition of it: Slush is the focal point for European and Asian startups and tech talent to meet with top-tier international investors, executives and media.
You can read more about Slush here: What is Slush?
Back to Miika..
He joined Slush in 2014 as a Team Lead, in 2019 he became COO and 2020, 2021 CEO of Slush.
He is incredibly humble when he talks about his experience there, but I’m sure he left such an impact in the organisation because of his incredible clarity and self-awareness.
He was so kind to share 70 of his learnings from Slush in his website (Here), be sure to cut 1-2 hours to get lost in the insane amount of knowledge and experience he shares.
After reading them all I still wanted to ask him some questions and here’s a sort of interview, wierdo to wierdo.
What are the characteristics that people found you had that made you a CEO candidate at Slush?
“In order to become CEO you need to have a really strong drive for the role.”
“You need to resonate the mission of the organisation, you have to deeply share it, many people say that but they are not aligned to the mission: you can sense it.”
Miika knows how to build teams and knows how to get people to do something together in a common direction and also he can get people pretty excited about things.
Some important characteristics are:
Emotional Intelligence in Leadership — How to be a good Leader?
“I don’t believe in the Dogma that people are born for a certain role, leadership is a skill you learn, people can be more charismatic or have a particular ability to get people work together but it’s something for everyone that can be learnt.”
#1 Important thing to improve as a leader is to understand what is something that you seem to be better at compared to people (or just like to do more than others).
#1 Important thing to work in a performing team is Trust
Trust between individuals and teams is like a battery: it’s between 0% and 100% and every single action you or others take either decreases or increases that percentage.
The closer you get to 100%, the better you team works:
It’s about High Trust, towards you, towards individuals, towards the team and between teams.
Because in this position there is no need to second guess any thoughts, everyone expects that everybody is doing the best for the company thus they perform better.
Suggestion on building Trust:
In every organisation, find ways how you can build trust, usually there are no shortcuts or ways to accelerate trust, it builds completely difference depending on people and teams.
Miika on mistakes as a CEO
“Part of building high trust is to show that you as a leader and CEO, are a human as well, you are not a robot that is executing everything.”
“It’s extremely important as a leader to explain situations when you fucked up, when you didn’t follow the values / principles of the company (or even your values).”
This is powerful..
”That opens up an opportunity for the team to speak up about their failures, that’s important because when people feel that they cannot fuck up it’s a very stressful environment to work in.”
“There are some things where you have to perform and you have to nail it, but if you are constantly in the feeling that “if I fuck up this it’s going to be a catastrophe” it’s really stressful to be in the organisation.”
How did you feel about being 24 managing teams at Slush?
“People will have skills but even with the competences and experience you could still be the good candidate for a particular position in the team.”
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“People may be not even willing to do what you want to do (or need to do).”
Why is that?
“In this case being a CEO and a Leader really sucks sometimes, decisions are not always nice, you have to get rid of people sometimes if things don’t work, you’re dealing with lots of conflicts.”
Understand that there is a reason why you have been chosen for a certain role, focus on building trust between individuals, discuss the feeling with the person you feel (in your mind) is more experienced and prepared to cover the specific role.
What is the biggest takeaway of being a CEO at Slush?
Running towards the pain.
“People who are high performers like to work with people that are like those, sometimes you might hire someone that isn’t necessary the right person, who seems to not fit the organisation in the level you expect.
You have to face the situation, this person is really nice, nothing agains him but the Tempo is not right.”
“Do you watch or do you run towards the pain and do the thing?”
“What separates Exceptional CEOs and Great CEOs is that the exceptional ones know what they need to do and do it, and great ones know what they need to do and sometimes do it.”
I honestly loved this definition and comparison between exceptional and good, and from my personal experience I think it comes from integrity and clarity: all the actions you take in the organisation are dictated by your personal principles and the organisation’s ones.
“There are certain things that nobody else will do other than you.”
What was the structure of the day at Slush?
On Sundays he used 2-3 hours to do the stuff that he didn’t manage to do on Fridays, admin stuff + the planning of the week ahead.
Everything he does is in Calendar, every little thing has a slot (email, gym, actions, meetings) and it looks pretty packed.
The goal is to follow the plan, if he executed everything in the calendar he knew things would get done.
Prioritising the most important stuff on Monday and Tuesday, the biggest stuff that defines the rest of the week.
”Having 1 top goal of the week is useful because if everything else fails and the one thing gets done it’s still a successful week.”
Where does the magic happens with startups?
“Start from what does the startup want to do, and how clearly you can articulate it.”
“Many investors like a lot if startups can articulate what is the problem, they can be super clear about the user problem and also explain why the startup has extremely high hunger of solving and do that.”
You don’t need to have super well designed solution for that, but you need to know:
“One of the question that is under-appreciated: why is exactly now the time to start the company?”
(there isn’t a right answer to the question)
“Investors just look for the relentless hunger or reason why you really need to do this company.”
Dylan and Miika: “Everything comes along with that.”
To be a Team Leader at Slush, what are the most important characteristics?
3 Traits at Slush for being Team Lead:
Great Books you suggest?
CEO at Starshot — Te ayudo a superar tus retos digitales
1 年Great interview!