Culture Over Hierarchy: TechLabs London's Unique Recruitment and Retention Strategies with Mohamed Mostafa

[00:00:00] Mohamed Mostafa: I had training back in the days on how people actually try to recruit themselves. Every time you go on an interview, typically every person would try to be like, is this person as good as I am? And then they trying to bring that person or is the same background or is this similar interest? Or, you know, you're trying to connect to them.

And if you feel that they're very close to how you think you are, then you end up recruiting them and that's wrong. Because if everyone is background as a Microsoft Dynamics consultant all their life, that's all of us are just one background. But if you bring people from the industry, that itself enriches the business.

[00:00:31] Neil Benson: G'day and welcome to Practice Leading, a podcast for emerging and curious practice leaders of Microsoft partner businesses. If you're anything like me, with an unquenchable thirst for improvement, And zero tolerance for BS, you've come to the right place. Hi, I'm Neil Benson, and this is my personal invitation for you to join me on my own journey of discovery.

Together we'll learn from innovators and investors, executives and entrepreneurs, business leaders and business coaches that have already left their stamp on the Microsoft community, and those that are exploring new and smarter ways of building their businesses. Whether it's groundbreaking innovations, hiring high performing teams, or the sheer force of will to disrupt our industry, each episode is a masterclass from the trailblazers who have already achieved significant success.

Find Practice Leading on YouTube or visit practiceleading. com and learn from the mentors you wish you had earlier in your career. Today I'm learning from Mohamed Mostafa. He's the CEO of TechLabs London, the team behind iProperty Cloud, a housing management platform built on the Microsoft Cloud. Mohamed founded TechLabs in 2016, and today has 75 people in the UK and Egypt.

Mohamed shares with us the secrets of his innovative hiring strategies and building a dynamic company culture, and how he accidentally created a holacracy, a rare type of organization we'll learn more about shortly. We'll discuss the importance of diversity and the pitfalls of traditional hiring practices.

Mohamed also shares his personal journey from a senior role at a big four audit firm to finding tech labs London, emphasizing the value of bootstrapping over fundraising and the power of people in driving business success. Stay tuned as we unpack Mohamed's approach to leadership, mentorship, and fostering a positive work environment where employees look forward to Mondays.

Mohamed, lots of leaders might say that their customers are the most important thing in their business, but you reckon it's people. I'd love to learn more about your perspective.

[00:02:34] Mohamed Mostafa: So Neil, I think, um, people is absolutely the core of our business and it's not just the word. This is actually reality. People is the product that we sell.

I remember many, many years ago, 20 plus years ago, when I first started the route of consultancy, I was told by my manager at the time that our product is our people. So if they are the best people, if they are in the best state of mind, if they are being treated very well, if they're happy, then we have the best product.

Um, but if they're not happy, they're not treated well, they're not trained, they're not the right people for the right job, then we don't have a good product and we wouldn't succeed. So I think the whole Consultancy and Microsoft Business Solutions and any consultancy even outside Microsoft. The product is people and hence you want the best people and you want to make them have the best experience within your organization and your business to succeed.

[00:03:24] Neil Benson: Reflecting on some of the organizations you worked for prior to starting your own business, what were some of the lessons you learned about how to treat people, how you were treated, and how have you taken that forward into TechLabs and how you lead it today?

[00:03:35] Mohamed Mostafa: So, um, without mentioning company names, but I had some of the most fantastic, uh, environments and cultures and, and teams and groups of people that I worked with in previous companies.

I also had some not so nice. Experiences or cultures in some other organization, but the key thing, um, and it's actually interesting to mention that we set up tech clubs London with many objectives. One of them, of course, is to make money, but one of them is genuinely was to have an environment where people feel good.

about Monday morning. You're not coming to Sunday and you're like, Oh my God, I'm going to go back and have to work with these people and in this company and the way they treat me and you know, Monday blue, very common. I generally had one of my objective is to have this environment for myself first and for everyone else in the company.

I wanted a business to have a business where people are actually enjoying Monday morning. They're not feeling like. Oh, you know, I'm gonna have to do this actually feeling like, you know, Monday morning, I was coming. I'm going to meet my nice colleagues who are everyone is respecting each other.

Everyone's helping each other. We've got complex programs, complex projects, difficult customers, customer situations, everything that we typically have on everyone else will have, but I have a very good environment, a very good culture, um, around me, and a very supported, uh, supportive environment and culture that actually makes me feel like, you know, let's do this Monday morning.

Let's just get on with it. We have a number of things in our, um, businesses from a model perspective around respect. Um, we have a very, um, flat hierarchy, for example, and if you want to talk about this at some point, we do something called holacracy instead of the typical way of management. We, our management style is, or our organization is applying holacracy.

Um, and that really works very well for me.

[00:05:15] Neil Benson: So I've heard of Holacracy. I remember reading Ricardo Stemmler's book Maverick, and that sounded to me like a Holacracy. I think Zappos and a couple of other organizations have applied it. It's a management idea that some people have experimented with, but I don't think it's ever really become mainstream.

So can you explain the concept a little bit further and how it's working for TechLabs London?

[00:05:36] Mohamed Mostafa: Like Agile, and you're the master of Agile, not every project is a hundred percent Agile, right? So there's always going to be an element of voter poor, an element of not pure Agile as we would all want to do it.

But Agile is a, is a name. So again, similar with Holacracy is very similar. I don't think Holacracy is, first of all, I think it's a framework. I don't think it's like A, B, C, D, E, I have to do this. Otherwise, you're not doing Holacracy. But also it is something that you aim for if you believe in it and You can apply a lot of it, but you don't have to apply everything.

One of the key things I personally believed in was the concept of not having hierarchical management. The idea that I have a manager, my manager has a manager, he has a manager, and we go all the way up to 10, 12 layers of management. Now, if I want to speak to someone, even two layers above me, it's going to be very difficult to bypass your manager.

It's just, I don't think it works in this modern age. You want everyone to talk to everyone at any point of time. It doesn't mean that everyone is People with more experience, of course, maybe their time is more valuable or their time is much more limited than people who are maybe just fresh juniors who started out of uni or out of school or something like this.

But everyone should be able to talk to everyone. Everyone should raise. Different points with everyone on. We shouldn't really, as an organization, put any barriers to that. So as part of this, we thought we don't want to have this hierarchy, but we also I can have a project manager who's doing a very good job on a project, but he's only working on that project three days a week.

He can be helping out with things like marketing, and maybe he's talking to a customer on application support and another consultant. He's a delivery consultant. You know, dynamics, and or Power Platform very well and he's doing three days a week because the project is coming to an end. I can put him one day on doing some support or I can put him one day on giving us some ideas on marketing or helping out with sales or even doing pre sales or, you know, that idea of circles of interest or groups of people that are working on different things.

So I am part of a group that is marketing. I'm also part of a group that is delivering of Project X. I'm also part of the group that is coming up with new ideas for area. B and initiative C and, you know, loads of different things that's happening, but also keeps employees engaged, right? So if I'm only doing delivery, which a lot of us, us, I spend a lot of my life working on a single project five days a week, nine to nine to seven or eight or 10, sometimes Monday to Friday, sometimes Sunday afternoon to Friday evening, because we have to travel to the own customer site.

But I did any, nothing else with this organization other than. Going to that customer all week, it gets boring, right? But when I'm engaged in lots of different things, I'm getting involved in marketing, I'm being asked to help in pre sales, I'm doing a little bit of application support, maybe training, internal knowledge transfer, and someone has come up with a new idea, and we're doing, we have forums internally for people to come up with ideas.

Product development, we have our own product, our ISV solution. So all of these kind of groups of interest. I can exist in all of them at the same time while still doing my, my job. And I'm very, I'm enjoying my time and I'm very productive to my organization, but I'm also learning something new. I'm doing different things.

I'm, I'm kept interested and excited.

[00:08:40] Neil Benson: So it strikes me that the old notion of departments. you don't really play with. Instead, you've got these groups of people who've got common interests and sets of skills and aspiring sets of skills as well, and they come together to meet a goal, whether it's a marketing objective or product development or whatever.

Departments seem fluid. Your job descriptions must be the same. rather than a list of bullet pointed responsibilities. You know, these are the things I've been hired to do, and you can't ask me to do anything else. You have to negotiate a new job description with me, and I might bring my union representative along to that meeting.

You've got none of that, right? Do you find that people need to readjust to your culture when they come from organizations where there is a lot more structure and rigidity?

[00:09:22] Mohamed Mostafa: Absolutely. I think people, um, so first of all, during the interview stage, if we're in an advanced stage with an employee, we explain to them or a potential candidate, we explain to them how we work.

We tell them that do not expect a line manager that checks on you every day in the morning at nine o'clock and make sure that you're there until five or six or whatever. You don't have that hierarchy. You can talk to anyone at any time and everything else we discussed. But people at the beginning, they say, Oh, you know, it sounds great.

But then when they join, there is a little bit of a culture shock. I remember one of our senior members of the team, he told me a month, I was doing like a month review with him and just checking how things are. And, and he was like, first of all, absolutely love it. Best company I ever worked in, in his opinion.

And generally he said that, but he said, it took me a week to actually understand. I don't have a manager. I don't have someone that I have to be talking to every day for the first. You know, week or two or month and checking out how I'm doing. And I felt like, whoa, so I can actually don't talk to anyone.

And I have people from the product team talking to me is like, welcome to the business. This is what we would want you to do in our circle. And people from this project are coming to me and saying, you're part of that circle of that project. And people are, are, you know, taking a back by, this is very, very different.

So of course there's a little bit of a shock, but generally I think a lot of people enjoy it. I'm sure there are people who wouldn't enjoy it. I haven't. heard in our business, anyone who doesn't, but the key thing here is that you already do that, but within one project only. So when you join a consultancy, you're put on a project, typically five days a week, full time.

So you're part of one circle, a project manager, an architect, developer, consultant, BA, tester, all of that one circle, and you're together for the next. Six months, 12 months, sometimes two years, if it's a large program, but it's only one circle. The difference is that you're actually part of multiple circles or multiple groups of people who are working together.

So that again, create that culture of people are knowing each other. They talk to each other from lots of different parts of the business. We have our marketing people talking to our consultants or talking to our developers. People from, wouldn't typically talk to each other. I would join a company and leave and I've never ever spoken to the marketing person because I'm just a consultant delivering a project.

Um, but in our business, I, I have people, um, from all the different parts of the business talking to each other on a regular basis, getting feedback, hearing stories, um, you know, feeling that they're all part of a one big family. And we generally call it TechLabs London family as one big family that we work together and we help each other and support each other.

[00:11:49] Neil Benson: Are the team members then self managing? So if I'm a delivery consultant, but I want to contribute to the marketing effort, I go and join the marketing circle, I help out, I make some commitments to things I'd like to do on behalf of the marketing team. But what happens if my delivery work picks up and I'm assigned to a new project full time and I'm off?

How do I balance that against the commitments I've given to the marketing circle? Is that just up to the individual to balance that, to find somebody else to pick up that work? Or do they speak to their manager? How do those kind of interdependencies and constraints get handled?

[00:12:21] Mohamed Mostafa: So I think it's part of the culture and the people in, in, in our business and in many successful businesses that you want, you make your own decisions, you have responsibilities and you have to prioritize.

And we all do have to prioritize every single day. I have to prioritize. Your amazing podcast today and I have to prioritize tomorrow's presentation. So we all have to prioritize. Sometimes certain things have to go down at the bottom of my list and other things come up. The key part of that prioritization is I need to keep everyone informed.

If I feel that, you know what, I thought I would be able to do this by that day. Which is in a two weeks time, for example, but because of new commitments that come in with a higher priority, I'm having to go and prioritize these items. So I might not be able to deliver it at all, or I might have to be a week later or something else.

And then again, because we all work together, I get a lot of my team coming to me and on chat, for example, we have a no internal email policy. By the way, we never emailed each other internally.

[00:13:17] Neil Benson: I'm still an old fashioned email guy.

[00:13:19] Mohamed Mostafa: Yeah, it's very, very few exceptions when a customer sends you an email or something you can forward it to your colleague or CC them.

But other than that, actually no internal emails. Everything is on chat. So I have colleagues coming to me on chat saying, look, I, I'm doing this. I'm working on that. And I also have, have this opportunity, this part of marketing or something else. What do you think my priority should be? Would you, would you give me some advice or, and you have a mentor as part of that, uh, The way we work is everyone has a mentor or someone that they help with their career and their career progression.

They can always go back to them and say, you know, I would like you to give me an advice, your views, what do you think I should prioritize? And of course we're, we're a for money business. We're not a charity, so billable work and revenue is always important that people want to make sure that they are billable and bringing revenue.

At the same time, they're doing very interesting stuff that also brings revenue, but maybe not directly. So It's all about balancing these priorities and people making their own decisions as much as possible while bringing in, um, other ideas and other opinions from their colleagues.

[00:14:21] Neil Benson: Okay, thinking about the people you bring into your business, let's say you're looking to hire delivery consultants, you could go look.

Uh, inside our own ecosystem at other Microsoft partner organizations and attract the people or try and attract the people with very similar skills and experience to what you need. Or you could look outside and bring in people from other industries with experience of other technologies and cross train them into the Microsoft ecosystem.

I'd love to find out more about your preference for hiring and how that's working.

[00:14:48] Mohamed Mostafa: Yeah, I think recruitment is always a very important part of the business because we said our people is the most important thing in the business. That's what the business is. It's the people, right? So recruiting and choosing or selecting those.

People, the right people for the culture and the right culture for these people and is, is almost the, one of the most difficult parts of my role. I would say, obviously I'm not the recruiting team. The criticism is doing a lot better job than I am, but for me to make sure that we bring in the right people in, um, that I know we're fit because you can have some amazing people, but they just don't fit in that culture.

They wouldn't like it. They won't expect the hierarchy. They expect to have micromanagement. They, they have different expectations. So when we recruit, we try to really think outside the box. Genuinely and try to think if everyone is going just after the same consultants who do the same thing every year, year on year, and just try to hire the same people.

Sometimes you need that type of caliber because they're very experienced. They're very good. I was one of these people who just, you know, did this all the time and that was my bread and butter. But sometimes you have to think outside of, so outside of the box. So one, one of the things we do is that we actually hire from the industry.

So our product, our property cloud, it's a platform built on Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft Business Solutions. But it's very, very focused on the housing and real estate from the property model. So you can always bring in, when we thought about it, you can always bring in a business analyst or a consultant or someone who worked in the actual industry to come and work with you.

Um, and. Learn the dynamics of the technology, not as a consultant to deliver dynamics projects, but as a functional or business consultant, they don't have to go and build systems or go. They can, but they don't have to. But the knowledge they have from the industry is very valid. So we targeted and we actually do have a lot of people from the industries that we thought we have business consultants or consultants who come to us.

I used to be a business analyst or even SMEs in their area of specialty and we'll bring them over. And I learned this from, uh, one of the big four that I worked for and you worked for before is that I've seen them bringing people from the industry, uh, who I've never worked as a consultant. They worked maybe in government for 30 years, but they're bringing them in because of their SME and their.

Public sector knowledge, for example. So we did the same thing. We went out to the market, we brought people with SME knowledge and knowledge about the business that we are working on, and we brought them in. We made, we helped them become business analysts, consultants, and help them grow in, in that kind of, we, we usually, uh, joke with them and say, you've joined the dark side.

Now you've always been on the good side. Now you're on the dark side of consultancy. And now you have to deal with your colleagues and, and see what you were doing on the other side when you're a customer. But it actually works very well because number one, they communicate and they connect very well with our customers because they all come from the same industry.

They work. In very similar circumstances for many years, um, and they get along, they end up becoming friends. We have genuinely a number of our consultants who came from industries, came and worked on projects with people they've never met before, but from the same industry, they ended up after a year becoming very close friends because they worked together as a customer and partner and, and they became friends and got to know each other very well.

So that's one approach. The other approach is apprentices. So we have targeted, um, the, you always go after the experienced people, but you've never actually thought that maybe if you bring in someone who's very junior, even an 18 year old who just left university or left school, or just finished a levels in the UK or equivalent anywhere in the world, you can have this person shaped to be a very good consultant in very short amount of time.

Because the difference of the young person is ready to be shaped in terms of knowledge and experience and gaining and absorbing things around them, if you choose the right person, of course, but it's a lot more easier to shape a young person to learn consultancy and learn technology than if you bring in someone who's maybe Have done all their life something in a certain way and you want them to start working in a completely different way You know if you come to me now and say, uh, Mohammed at your age You're gonna have to go and start a brand new career something you've never done before I'm sure I can do some some of it, but I would never be as good as someone who's 18 years old starting from scratch So what we've done is we brought in a number.

We've actually had a number of apprentices for our size We had a big percentage of our uh new employees as apprentices who Study for one day a week to be, um, to gain their education, but four days a week are working with us full time, fully supported, and they finished their apprentices, they became consultants, they became productive, and actually, unfortunately, in many cases, they moved on to some other Microsoft partners because the other Microsoft partners, they waited until they are fully, fully, fully ready, and they picked them up from us.

[00:19:25] Neil Benson: I'd like to ask you about the success rate that TechLabs has with apprentices because it's something I'm really passionate about and I'm hoping to do on our next round of recruitment at Superware as well. Let's take on some people who are brand new to the industry, brand new to their career. My success rate with those people in terms of do they make it, do they stick with consulting as a career, or are technology as a career is pretty good, but it's not perfect.

Some people spend a year or two with us and then go, look, it's just not for me. I'm going to try a different career path, okay? Whereas if I'd hired somebody. with, you know, five or six years of experience. They're much more well set and they've chosen their career path. The other thing is, like, like you said, is that longevity.

They do benefit from a lot of investment in that early career training and getting those initial skills. And then they get snapped up by a competitor who wants to pay for those skills, but wants to bypass having made the investment and the bet early on in somebody's career. So it's so it's a risk. It's great to hear that it's working out for you, because it's something I want to do more of.

So that gives me a lot of encouragement.

[00:20:23] Mohamed Mostafa: Yeah, it does. And I have to say again, it depends on how you see what is success. You've mentioned two parameters, which I completely agree with. Number one is they continue as a consultant. And I think we, in our case, every apprentice we had 100 percent they continued as consultants, whether with us or with someone else.

But in terms of how long they stay with us and the return on investment for us, that's where, to be completely frank, is not a very clear success. Um, in, in, in my eyes, at least, so we, we have people who stayed for three and a half years. We have people who stayed for two years. I think the longest was two and a half and the shortest was two years.

You can't see this as good enough. Um, I would hope that we would have people staying for five or six or, or continue all their career with us. I think again, the young people want to try and explore different. Uh, companies and different businesses. So, um, it comes in, uh, another competitor offers them a lot more money and, and, you know, show them, uh, a lot of the benefits they think they will get and, and they make a decision quickly to jump unlike someone who's established, they've seen, they've been around, they know that not all promises are true or happen, or it's not a bad intention, but you know, not everything is a hundred percent true.

So, um, or a hundred percent applicable if you like. And, um, and they stick around because they like the culture, they stay for the culture. And that's 3D. The key thing is how we can create this fantastic culture for our business where people can stay, including the apprentices and people who are young.

But of course, for the more experienced people who we have a very good attention rate.

[00:21:49] Neil Benson: Tell me about the questions you use or what techniques you use during your recruitment process to find those people who are going to be a culture fit. Because I find if I do a lot of the recruiting, I end up selecting people who I relate to in an interview, and then we end up with a very narrow set of experiences and cultures.

I'm always trying to find people who are not like me and it's quite hard as an interviewer to engage with people who've got completely diverse backgrounds, languages, orientations, and to keep an open mindset. How do you and your recruiting team make sure you bring in people with the right culture fit without recruiting clones who are like everybody else in the organization?

[00:22:26] Mohamed Mostafa: Yeah, that's a very good point. And I think I had training back in the days before TechLab London on how to, how people actually recruit, try to recruit themselves. Every time you go on an interview, typically every person, um, would try to be like, Is this person as good as I am? And then they're trying to bring that person.

Or is this same background? Or is this similar, uh, interest? So, you know, you're trying to connect to them. And if you feel that they're very close to how you think you are, then you end up recruiting them. And that's wrong. Because number one, that diverse type of, um, employees and we talk about everything, including the back background around business.

For example, I told you, if everyone is background as a Microsoft Dynamics consultant all their life, that's all of us are just one background. But if you bring people from the industry, that itself enriches the business and helps a lot with our delivery and our projects. So I think number one is we, we have to be blind.

We have to be blind when we're selecting candidates about who they are, where they came from, what's the, what is important is. Can they do the outlines of the role? And I say the outline, not the exact job description, and I'll come to that in a moment. Can they do the outlines of the role? And as a culture, would they fit in our culture?

In terms of, and when I say culture here, our culture is, are they going to accept not having? Direct line management all the way as I mentioned before or micro management approach, which I dislike, but some people really need, but also are they willing to work in an environment where I could be doing five days a week on a project that someone else in another project needs some help.

I'm going to drop what I have, unless it's urgent, but I'm going to drop what I have for a couple of hours, and I'm going to go and help my colleague, because that's part of our ways of working. I'm happy to work in an environment that is very different. Holacracy, as we talked about, or, um, uh, the, the seniority, the seniority is there, but you don't have that seniority.

Like, I can be a very junior person, and the CEO of the business saying, uh, we let's, how about we go and do X? And I can say, I think we should do Y. I don't think we should do X. That kind of environment is different and it's difficult for some people to accept. So that's what we look for. Can they fit in that environment?

Do they have that flexibility and flexible mindset to join a company like ours and work with us like this? But then the background and the, you know, the other backgrounds, you know, ethnicity, religion, color, all that kind of stuff, we have to be completely blind. And when we say blind, we're not just saying words, generally, we don't even care who that person is or where that person is.

What is important is when they fit that culture, would they be able to deliver this role? And then the points around the outlines of the job is very important. We interviewed a lot of people. We interview and we, we try to hire when we do an interview for a role, we could interview a hundred people and we hired five, for example, we literally, our rate is almost 5 percent of, um, over the last maybe five, six years, we have a whole database of our, uh, candidates and we, we really want to get the best, the best of the best.

So one of the things I've found is. If you have a role in your mind as a hiring manager or as a group of those roles, always a circle, not one person. But if there is a circle that is hiring a business consultant role, and we want someone with specific experience, specific knowledge, specific years of experience, and then you get a number of candidates.

Not all of them tick every single box. If you only look at the ones who tick all the boxes, You might miss out on someone who's actually really great. You might not take all the boxes for this role, but they take two boxes in this role and five boxes in another role. And you actually end up having one person doing two, almost like two till nine to five and 40 hours a week.

But they're doing almost two jobs, right? Because you can hire someone who, for example, a consultant that has a marketing background. So, but you know what? We wanted someone who's very good in dynamics, but they haven't done dynamics before, but they know marketing very well. And we want the dynamics.

Consultant who can deliver dynamics, marketing and customer customer insights project and also because he's a marketing person before he might help with our own marketing initiatives and come up with ideas. So he's helping with our internal our own marketing is helping with delivering projects. We actually have knowledge about the industry.

So not everything that we think we want has to be ticked in an interview. So in that case, we put the outline, a number of expectations from the role. But even if someone doesn't meet all the expectations, they have a very promising kind of CV. We still go through the interview process. And in many cases, we hired people that at the beginning, we thought we don't think he's a perfect match or she's a perfect match, but actually through the interview is like, this is perfect.

And you know what? We're not going to hire just one person. We're going to hire two and hire. Him or her because they take almost two jobs and we're gonna hire the person who was a perfect match, for example, because we still need that role. And so, so I think being open in your recruitment to people who might not be ticking every single box is really a winning strategy for us, and it helped us a lot over the past few years.

[00:27:13] Neil Benson: Can I circle back on this idea of industry experience for a second, just to pick your brains and ask for some personal advice really? Our product development team, uh, in at the stage where we can justify hiring somebody out of industry and giving them a full time role. We just haven't got the budget for that yet.

We're not quite there, but we do need more industry experience as we're building our product. So what we've been doing recently, it's just advertising for industry specialists to join us on a one hour feedback session, we talk through some concepts, we might show them a demo or some prototypes, or, you know, some screen designs, just to get their feedback, we ask them, you know, what's good, what's missing, and we compensate them for that either a gift card or charity donation, something like that.

And we're finding It's definitely not as good as hiring somebody out of industry to come and join us, but it's kind of good enough. And we're getting enough industry feedback and input into product development so that hopefully next time we have a demo in a real sales situation, we're talking the right language, we're emphasizing the right features, we're talking about the appropriate outcomes and the business benefits.

Have you ever taken an approach like that? You know, bringing in some expertise, um, in very short term, even for an hour or two and paying for it?

[00:28:23] Mohamed Mostafa: Yeah, absolutely. And we've we've done that on the business, especially on the industry and knowledge point of view. So, for example, um, to give you an example from our product.

So we do compliance as part of our property cloud and compliance is a very complex subject, or we do certain things around repairs for properties. And there are certain areas of expertise. Sometimes those type of SMEs, subject matter experts or industry experts, they wouldn't want to go into and work full time for a consultancy that is just delivering a technology in their industry.

So we can actually hire them for four days a week or five days in one week to do a full end to end kind of brainstorming, brain dump on us with ideas, challenges in the business, challenges in the industry, pain points of the business. various businesses they work with, um, how we can make our products really beneficial to our customers, how we can have the edge over our competitors.

And it works really well. These kinds of things works really well because you're actually having very dedicated time. And it could be one hour, it could be a week in our case, but it's a complex method, but you could have them for a whole week, for example, five days a week, but we dedicate some of our product team.

to them. We dedicate some of our consultants to them, and we just do nothing other than knowledge sharing, understanding everything, really get them to give us as much knowledge and information as we can. And it continues as a very good relationship in the future because they would go and typically they are independent consultants.

They would go and work with other customers or other consultants. So we have a good relationship for the future, but we also do something, um, something else that you might be interested, um, uh, in, or we haven't done it yet, actually. It's something, it's a new idea that we're planning to do. I'm gonna share it with you and, and it's not something I'm gonna do to help the community.

Not really to, uh, but I thought it's a genuine, it's a, it's a genius idea is we're actually thinking of hiring an apprentice. Rather than hiring them with us, we're gonna hire them with us, pay them the salary. But we're going to place them at a customer for free.

[00:30:18] Neil Benson: That's interesting. Okay. With a prospective customer or an existing customer?

[00:30:23] Mohamed Mostafa: An existing customer. So that existing customer would need, for example, someone to help out on certain business activities. But those business activities is exactly what we're building our product for. So if we can go and put that person with the customer for us three months. period, for example, completely for free working with the customer.

So yeah, we help our customer out. He or she is already gaining a lot of experience about that industry. And then they come back and join us. We've already got someone, I'm not going to say an expert, but knows exactly how it works behind the scenes, right? So we're, we're starting to think in some cases where, for example, we have a large council that we are looking to start working with.

We're going to be placing one of our apprentices, the son of us, with us in their own offices. And that apprentice can then go and work with that customer and then join us after three months or six months. And I'm pretty sure after three months, the customer would be like, can I actually keep them for, and we pay you for the, for them as a consultant working with us.

But if not, we would very happily have them back with us on site, but working with us and giving us the knowledge.

[00:31:23] Neil Benson: Genius. So you're going to give them some training in your technology, but your customer is also training them in the industry. Genius idea. I love that. I'm going to take that one back. Thank you very much.

Thinking about the Holacracy idea, where it's quite a flat structure, Mohamed. How do people in your organization get promoted compared to massive organizations like Microsoft with 200, 000 people, probably more than that, where there's lots of opportunities for people to get promoted. I'm sure there's 50 levels between a new recruit and the CEO's office.

In TechLabs London, it's probably not. Um, it sounds like you're flat, maybe four or five levels. How do you promote people?

[00:31:58] Mohamed Mostafa: Don't confuse the promotion and the job title with the flat structure. So we still have developers, senior developer, technical lead, solution architect. And and they are different levels, but that's not a management structure.

The solution architect is not the manager of the technical lead and technically not the manager of the developer or in project management. The project manager does not report to a senior project manager, but we do have a project manager and we do have a senior project manager. It depends on their experience and it depends on the number of criteria for each role.

So let's give you an example. So we've. Set the criteria to be a technical lead in our team. And as you might know, we have obviously head office in the uk, but we have a, an office in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Cairo. And in Cairo, in Egypt, things are done differently, right? So they could be a senior developer after three years of working as a developer.

In our case, you must be a lot better than that. So we had these situations where someone who's a senior developer in a competitor joining us as a developer happily, um, because they know that they're gonna come and learn. The latest and the greatest technology and when it is the right time, they become a senior developer.

So we put in the criteria to be a technical lead. For example, one of the criteria is that you need to be able to run multiple projects at the same time, act as a mentor to the senior and senior developers and the developers underneath. So that's the first thing is defining that criteria. And number two is that you have to do the role.

Before you get the title. And that's my motto. That's my all my life. I believe in this. When I wanted to be a solution architect, I thought I'm going to have to work as a solution architect before I actually got the job title as solution architect on a go to my boss and say, I'm already a solution architect.

I've designed this. I created this solution design. I worked with that customer and that the solution architect was very busy. So I asked him to take this part of the design from him and I took it over and I delivered it. I'm already solution architect. You, you can't argue with that. Right. Um, and that's exactly my motto is I don't want people to, to be arguing for a job title because that's what I want to be.

I wanna be solution architect, then I'm gonna start to act as a solution Architect. No, you get the job, the job done first, or prove yourself in that job role first, and then you'll automatically get. promotion. In many cases, we've actually gone to people and we said, you know what, you're ready to be technical lead now.

I had situations where people were like, do you think so? Maybe I need a little bit more time. I was like, nope, we've tested you, you've done A, B and C and you did this and we know that you're right, you're at the right stage of technical lead. So the two things is setting up a criteria. Number two is doing the job before you get the title.

And as I mentioned, that's completely different. From the hierarchical management, you actually have zero hierarchy in terms of no one is anyone else's manager. I'm not, I'm not manager for anyone. Um, and no one is managing anyone else, but we're all working in those circles with different seniority. So of course, someone who's got 10 years of experience is not going to be the same as someone who's got one year of experience.

And I value experience a lot, but that doesn't mean the person with one year of experience cannot say an idea because it might be too silly or because it's something no one ever done before. Actually, I want those ideas. The idea is that no one has ever done before is what would make us different. If we do everything else that whatever everyone else is doing, then we're just another company.

And the last point on this is I, I used to joke with Microsoft colleagues when I started the business and I was literally starting by myself. It was number one, one person. Now we're 90 people. Um, I used to say to my colleagues at Microsoft, it's like, I'm looking at what every single large Microsoft partner does.

And I do the opposite. Genuinely, I was like, I see what they do and I do the opposite. They hire very experienced people in the same field. I hired junior people who has never done this before, and I trained them up. They go after only certain type of customers. I go after other type of customers. They don't build products.

I build products. So really, you don't have to be unique and different. You have to do different to what everyone else is doing in the market.

[00:35:48] Neil Benson: Yeah. Great stuff. Great stuff. I was going to ask you, what's the one thing that your organization does differently to everybody else? And it sounds like you're trying to do everything differently.

[00:35:56] Mohamed Mostafa: We've got another hour. Yeah. We've got, we do a lot of things.

[00:36:01] Neil Benson: Mohammed, I've got one final question for you, given your focus and your passion for building a great culture and recruiting great people, do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask all candidates and you use a kind of a yardstick for measuring whether or not somebody is a good culture fit?

[00:36:19] Mohamed Mostafa: Yeah, I'm giving away too much now, but I'm going to tell you, um, my favorite question is when I thought of the interview, I say, tell me something I haven't read in your, in your CV. You know, you've given me your CV. It's all focused on the role and the job and what you're trying to, you can help, you know, the business with and your experience.

I want to know something that. It's not on your CV. And based on these answers, you can get a feel of the person and how they fit in the culture. Um, because they might have an interest that is completely not related to work, but it's actually a very good fit. So, you know, I, they like to do charity work or go on, on, you know, marathon or, or they are very active in sports or whatever, you know, something that is not on the CV, but it's something that is actually very interesting.

It shows that person's type of personality to some extent. You wouldn't know everything, but it gives you a feel of what type of person you're talking to. So it's my favorite question is tell me something on your CV.

[00:37:11] Neil Benson: Ah, and is that where most people go? They go to hobbies and interests and tell you a bit more about their, their personality?

[00:37:17] Mohamed Mostafa: A lot, a lot of people, uh, go on, on hobbies and interests. Um, and, and some people, I mean, obviously very, very different type of, uh, interests, but some people actually use this information for a gift after they joined us, for example, and we do something for them. Someone likes a car and you buy them something for their car or, or, you know, certain things like this.

So it's actually helpful. build the relationship with the person if they do end up joining us as well in the future.

[00:37:42] Neil Benson: Awesome. I appreciate that tip. Thank you very much, Mohamed. Listen, it's been amazing having you on the show. Thanks, Neil. In our discussion today, Mohamed shared some invaluable insights and strategies on building a successful team and a thriving business culture.

Here are my three key takeaways from this episode. Embrace diversity in hiring. Mohamed emphasized the importance of moving beyond hiring consultants with similar backgrounds to your existing team. A rich mixture of cultures, experiences and skills, not only enriches the workplace, but also significantly improves delivery.

He advocates for a hiring process blind to ethnicity, religion and personal background, focusing instead on cultural fit and qualification. I'm going to review Superware's hiring practices to see how we can embrace more diversity. Invest in Apprenticeships. TechLab is London, places a high value on trainees, bringing in young recruits and training them in technology and consultancy.

This approach not only ensures talent, but provides fresh perspectives. While apprentices sometimes do move on to other Microsoft partners, their contribution during their tenure is invaluable. Superware is already connected with a local firm that provides basic IT career training and places apprentices, and we're hoping to hire two more trainees in the next couple of months.

Microsoft Foster a dynamic work culture. TechLabs London has done away with strict hierarchies and promotes a fluid structure where employees can engage in multiple roles and projects. This holacracy structure along with cross departmental collaboration ensures a vibrant work environment where innovation can thrive.

I'm going back to reread Ricardo Semmler's Maverick and see how we can break down silos and enrich our culture. What lessons did you learn from the show? Leave a comment in YouTube or in the Practice Leading page in LinkedIn and let me know. Visit practiceleading. com for a summary of the lessons from each episode and to find out more about our guests.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Practice Leading and found it as useful and just as inspiring as I did. If you did, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Reviews help other like minded practice leaders like you find this podcast and grow our community. In your review, please let me know one thing I can do to improve the show and make it more valuable for you.

I'd rather have a four star rating with a constructive comment than a five star rating. But you know, five star ratings are cool too.  I'd rather have a four star rating with a constructive comment than a five star rating. But you know, five star ratings are cool too.

Until then, keep experimenting.