Samuel Skott is the former CEO at HiQ, a tech consulting firm. Having been a leader at publicly traded, privately held, and private equity–backed companies, he shares some of the unique challenges and opportunities he’s encountered while transitioning between these ownership models, as well as how he adapted his leadership approach between them. He also shares what it means to lead in an AI-enabled world, how AI has been shaping his leadership priorities, and what organizational changes will be needed to ensure continued efficiency as new technologies and tools are utilized.

Below is a full transcript of the episode, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Welcome to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of senior-level executive search and leadership consulting services. Diversity and inclusion, leading through tumultuous times, and building thriving teams and organizations are among the core issues we talk with leaders about every day, including in our podcasts. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Daniel Sjöström: Hello. I’m Daniel Sjöström, a partner in Heidrick & Struggles Stockholm office and a member of the Global Technology and Services Practice. In today‘s podcast I’m excited to speak to Samuel Skott, CEO of tech consulting firm HiQ. Before HiQ, Samuel held several leading positions, including CEO of Tele2 Sweden and Chief Commercial Officer responsible for the integration between Tele2 and Com Hem. Samuel, welcome and thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.  

Samuel Skott: Thank you Daniel.  

Daniel Sjöström: Tele2 was a part of the Kinnevik family. Kinnevik had a great history of bringing in young trainees and bringing them up very quickly into leadership roles. What was your journey at Tele2 like? 

Samuel Skott: I joined as a trainee in 2005; I then spent fifteen years with the company. I think it was a very great culture, which was very results-driven, but also a culture of no prestige that provided people with a lot of mandates. So if you had the will and the ability, you were definitely able to grow within the company. I got thrown at the deep end. Plenty of times I managed to swim. I got a lot of great support from a lot of great people and great leaders and grew and grew within the company and spent fifteen years there, 15 great years.  

Daniel Sjöström: Your leadership spans companies with very different ownership models: publicly traded, privately held, private equity–backed. Can you share some of the unique challenges and opportunities you’ve encountered while transitioning between these ownership models, and how have you adapted your leadership approach?

Samuel Skott: As you said, Tele2 was part of Kinnevik, and you could say in the sense that Kinnevik was a large shareholder and a dominating, very clearly dominating, shareholder at Tele2. So even though it was publicly listed, Kinnevik was a very active owner. So in a sense, you almost got a bit of that privately held working style there, but of course there are clear differences. I mean when you’re publicly traded you have a lot of external—even more external—stakeholders, even more owners to care about. You have all the public information you need to provide, and of course, the quarterly financial reporting that you do. That affects the cadence and it sometimes affects decision making as well. While in PE [private equity] you have a more direct communication with a single owner, and it’s more an ongoing conversation in terms of “How are we? How are we tracking? How are we trading? What do we need to adjust?” How can we continuously accelerate? So I think that’s one aspect of a difference. Another difference is with a PE owner, you have a more clear time frame set: This is where we want to get to within five years. And that also creates a bit of a different type of working modus because you have an even clearer target and an even clearer direction and time frame. A lot of people talk about how with PE, you get higher ambition, and I think yes, you might have higher ambitions within PE, but you definitely have a higher pace because there is so much you want and need to do within this time frame. So it creates different dynamics with a much more direct communication, and it creates different dynamics with a higher pace reaching these high ambitions. And of course that affects me and the team and my leadership as well in terms of providing a clear direction. You can be even clearer and also be about building a team that thrives in an environment with a more direct communication style, direct decision making, and also, in a way, a clearer timeline and a clearer target.  

Daniel Sjöström: So it’s a slightly different team build within PE?

Samuel Skott: Yes, because I think different people are attracted by different things and it’s not—I don’t like the generalist saying that everything in PE is much more ambitious and public. I don’t think that’s it, but it’s about this pace. It’s about having to do more things in parallel and it’s about a bit more impatience, I would say. And you need to like that; you need to thrive in that environment. And not everyone does. And so yes, it’s a bit of a change from a team build perspective.

Daniel Sjöström: Can you balance that pace and say, “We’re going to create value in five years’ time with a longer-term vision?”

Samuel Skott: I think you definitely can. Because for me, all long-term visions have to be value creative, otherwise I don’t see the point of the long-term vision. With that said though, you have plenty of stakeholders, and not everyone is attracted to exactly the same part of that long-term vision. Not all of our consultants are attracted by the exact financial outcome that we’re striving towards—they’re more attracted by the culture, the projects we do, the ability for personal development. You always need to have all these aspects as part of your long-term vision. Because at the end, what we’re trying to do is to build a fantastic company. And a fantastic company that yields great results has to have super happy customers that care about the quality of what we do and the projects and fantastic people that thrive in these projects and are together building a great culture. So yes, you can absolutely combine this ownership model and this direction with a very well-functioning long-term vision.  

Daniel Sjöström: We said that the team build was slightly different. Kinnevik is known for focusing a lot on talent, actually, but is there something that you’ve changed in terms of how you develop people or think about talent under this new ownership model? 

Samuel Skott: Yes and no. Yes in terms of it is a bit of a difference coming back to the pace, the target setting, and the more direct style. So that is much more what suits different types of people. No in a sense that it’s not peer driven. But in general, by being more experienced and by learning, I think I’m a better leader and a better team builder today than I was five or 10 years ago. And for me, that is a bit actually on diversity, on building more diverse teams, both in terms of seniority, backgrounds, experiences—things like that. Ten years ago, being brought up in an organization that was very much actually fostering talent meant that if you have energy, we can help you with the rest. So I think in the beginning I tended to build teams that were highly energetic, but maybe a bit unexperienced, and then you needed to make up for that through just hard work. Today, I try to strike a little bit of a better balance also in a smart way, so that you get more efficient and also more successful.

Daniel Sjöström: OK, switching gears in to something that everyone’s talking about: AI. You work with your customers all the time on this topic. I think, both in terms of what you do internally and with your clients and customers, you operate at the intersection of technology and innovation. What does it mean to lead, to you, in an AI-enabled world and how is AI shaping your leadership priorities?  

Samuel Skott: Well I think first of all with AI, and not only AI, everything is becoming much more data- and software-driven, and I think that is something we as leaders have to acknowledge. It doesn’t really matter if I’m working in an already software-centered business—that’s what we do, that’s how we build our products. Also, in traditional industries, software is becoming more and more important, data is becoming important, and of course AI is a very powerful tool to drive value and efficiency going forward. So I think there are a couple of things that are important: One, you need to use it yourself.  Everything cannot be delegated. You have to experiment yourself and actually work with it in order to get some understanding yourself and have it at your fingertips. I think that’s extremely important. And also, as I said, it needs to be on the leadership agenda. You cannot delegate AI. I mean you can delegate a lot of things within AI, but the direction and creating the foundation, that cannot be delegated. You as a leader, I as a leader, have to take that responsibility. But with that said, there are a couple of things that we focus a lot on. One is, of course, enabling the tools and providing the policies so that everyone feels secure: What can I do? What can I not do? How do I think about safety, data protection, etcetera? That is clear, so that everyone can start experimenting. And I think that’s the next step: Building a culture that fosters experimenting and collaboration between business and tech, while having value in front of your eyes. I think that’s a very important thing, and sometimes when people talk about digital transformation as well, you sometimes unfortunately see projects where you don’t really understand the value of it. It’s driving a lot of digitalization, but you don’t truly understand why. It’s digitalization for digitalization’s sake. That’s not interesting. You need to have business value or people value, whatever you’re driving towards in the forefront. So you need to get your hands dirty. You need to create the fundamentals for your organization, to get working on it. You need to provide the direction and make sure everyone has the value in front of their eyes, because then you can delegate, then you can create the energy, then you can unleash people to get going. 

Daniel Sjöström: And in this new world then, where technology can do a lot of the stuff that humans have been doing… I mean this has happened before, technology has taken over, but still it’s at an accelerating pace. So what skills and mindsets do you believe leaders will need to thrive in this AI-driven world?

Samuel Skott: You still need to have a clear direction, right? You still want to know, in general, Where do I want to go with this? Where are the areas where we see the biggest potential? You need to provide the tools and the policies to create a playing field so that you can get going. But otherwise it is about fostering this experimental, collaborative culture, making sure that people feel safe to try and actually do it, and that people collaborate between business and technology, between different areas of technology, etcetera, so that you get going. Because I think that’s the most important thing. But you need to get going with the direction, you need to get going with policies and tools in place, and you need to get going with business value prioritized and those projects yielding the most value done first. In the end, that’s how you get a business case. That’s how you get a positive momentum. That is how you get, you know, everyone behind wanting to do more. 

Daniel Sjöström: And the organizational changes needed when you implement these efficiency, these new tools, does that go hand in hand? Is that now more and more part of your consultancy as well? Do your clients have to change the organizations to take advantage of these technologies?

Samuel Skott: Most definitely. I see more and more projects where we start out as pure tech consultants—producing code, providing tools, systems, and building solutions as a starting point—actually going in with “OK, but how do we do this? How can we do that with AI as an accelerator? How can we do it more efficiently? How can we do it with higher quality?” And there, of course, once again you get to the questions on tools and processes, but also people. AI is a people topic; AI is created by people; AI is steered by people. So of course it’s a huge tech thing, but it’s also a big people thing. We’re seeing ourselves helping out in that area as well more and more.  

Daniel Sjöström: So we’re going back to your early career and into a new one, but with a different angle. So from [telecommunications] to tech. Telco twenty years ago was tech, in a way, and tech has become more and more software. What leadership lessons have you learned through this shift from telco and from twenty years ago till today?  

Samuel Skott: A couple of things. I think one, an understanding of what it is to run a business, which is truly critical. When I started in telco, it was already very important to people and businesses; now it’s completely fundamental. It cannot fail, it cannot go wrong, you need redundancy. So being able to take that responsibility without losing innovation and flexibilities. On the one hand, being very rigid, long-term planning—making sure you have the fundamentals in place, but on the other hand, also having that flexibility, a sense of urgency that when things go wrong, we find creative solutions to problems, etcetera. So I think leading in that environment and with that kind of pressure and expectation is, of course, one big learning. 

Another learning is that today these companies are my customers. So I think that is a learning as a provider and as a partner to these customers. A lot of our customers, they’re big companies, they have a huge need to innovate, to stay in the forefront of technology, but they also have a lot of legacy, they have a huge need of optimizations and getting efficiency gains. Seeing and having led that firsthand is an important knowledge and an important learning that I bring with me in my work today. It isn’t just getting that new system in there in one hand and that will rule everything. The world for large customers and large corporations is much more complex and we have to challenge that, but we also have to have respect for that, and I think that is something I’ve learned. Otherwise from a more pure, you know, organization of people leadership, I don’t know if it’s a telco learning. I think it’s more a Kinnevik Tele2 learning. Having kind of grown up as a leader in that environment where values and culture were everything driving the business, and where those values came from the necessity of the business. The value of being cost-efficient came from the pure fact that in the early days of building that company, we didn’t have enough money, so we had to be cost-efficient. We had to be flexible in order to be customer oriented and things like that. So I think that is one big learning. And another is of course, as we talked about in the beginning, the ability to attract talent, but also to foster talent and to grow talent and to grow people.

Daniel Sjöström: You talked about innovating and transforming your customers and clients. You’re living this. Digital transformation has been a buzzword now for a decade. What does this actually mean? What does successful digital transformation look like?  

Samuel Skott: For me, in essence it’s about utilizing the power of technology, digital tools, and software development to create value and impact. And that value can be business value, generating more revenues, or lowering cost. It can also be a societal value, being able to do the things with your tax authority much more efficiently and digitally and more transparently. Or it could be people value, just being able to have more fun or being able to consume video or music or things in a better way. That for me is digital transformation in its positive essence. 

Daniel Sjöström: With AI and other emerging technologies driving digital transformation, how do you balance experimentation with the need for persistent results?  

Samuel Skott: It’s about that focus on business value. As long as you have that—if you have a clear direction, if you know what you’re doing is toward driving business value, you will also yield results. For us, of course, as a competence-driven organization, it’s a bit of a luxury because this is what we do, right? We help our customers develop and by doing that and also adding in perspective, we continuously develop ourselves. So for us, on-the-job development is a hundred percent true, and then of course we add other things as well on top of that to really stay in the forefront. But for us it’s the key part of our business and it’s why we exist. So for us, it’s ingrained in the business and in the culture, in the way we work. But for companies who don’t have that as a profound heart of the business model, I think staying focused on value and providing a clear direction, but also providing the ability to go and do stuff and develop stuff is extremely important. And don’t be afraid to get help from people like us or other partners or colleagues or people that you know, because you can’t know everything and you can’t know everything about tech or new tech, but there are people that do that for a living, so make use of them. 

Daniel Sjöström: AI is sometimes seen as this double-edged sword, bringing opportunities and, in some cases, ethical challenges and also other challenges and redundancies. How do you approach these dynamics as a leader?

Samuel Skott: First of all, by acknowledging that these aspects are true, right? And that you have to work with them. I think in Europe we are actually helped by regulations. I mean we have the data protection regulation and things like that. So from a data perspective, we are already very advanced in that. I do however, want to raise the risk of getting too focused on risk because the risk comes with us people. It’s us building it, so it’s going to be what we build, right? And I think it’s a bit foolish to think that just by regulating AI, you can regulate the world or save the world or whatever. But I think, of course, you have to be mindful, and you have to work and always have critical thinking, you have to work with data protection, you need to work with security and safety. You need to work with and be aware of the risks like hallucination from AI models, from biases, so that you have to install that into your organization and into your project. But then you also need to drive an experimental culture and the forward-leaning culture and look for the opportunities because the opportunities are huge. So getting the basics in place, know what you do, have critical thinking to allow you to focus on opportunities. 

Daniel Sjöström: Finally, as you look to the future, what excites you most about leading in the tech space and what keeps you inspired as a leader?  

Samuel Skott: Well, then it is this communication of a combination of tech and people. I mean tech and what we can do with tech to provide business value, better companies, better societies, more fun for people; that excites me a lot. Just coming into HiQ here now for three years, and seeing all of the fantastic things we do together with our customers to drive the world forward, if you will, or actually make being able to make the world a better place, that excites me. 

Daniel Sjöström: Do you have an example, like something that surprised you or an innovative new use of things? 

Samuel Skott: No, not in general. I have to be honest that what surprised me is how many of these exciting projects we are in as a company, because being new into it, I think we were a bit maybe too humble in this strange way and didn’t talk about it. But I think it’s everything from being in the forefront of autonomous driving and autonomous vehicles, to much more efficient payment systems, to support systems for med tech, things like that. There’s a lot of areas where we are involved. That gives me a lot of energy actually, to see how using tech in the right way with the right focus truly can make a positive impact. But then coming back to the people, I mean it is done by people. It’s done by people with our customers, it’s done by our consultants at our customers. You know, that’s the thing, tech is a people business, and the combination of tech that can make a change driven by people, that excites me enormously.  

Daniel Sjöström: Fantastic. Samuel, thank you so much for talking to us today.

Samuel Skott: Thank you, Daniel, it was a pleasure.

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About the interviewer

Daniel Sjöström (dsjostrom@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Stockholm office and a member of the Technology & Services Practice.