Ludovic Gaudé, CEO of Qinshift and Avenga, discusses the challenges and opportunities of leading tech companies under private equity ownership compared to other ownership structures, including private ownership or a publicly traded company, as well as balancing value creation with fostering innovation. Having led through mergers, he also shares how he adapts his leadership approach in a merger scenario and what qualities or strategies are most critical for success, as well as how he thinks about culture shaping, fostering trust and alignment, and minimizing attrition. Finally, he discusses the key trends he sees shaping the IT services market in the Central and Eastern Europe region and globally, and how those trends will impact leadership.

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 diversified solutions across senior-level executive search, leadership assessment and development, team and organizational effectiveness, and culture shaping. Every day, we speak with leaders around the world about how they’re meeting rising expectations and managing through volatile times, thinking about individual leaders, teams, organizations, and society. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Hi, I'm Lukasz Kiniewicz, partner in charge of Heidrick & Struggles’ Warsaw office and a member of the global Technology & Services Practice. In today's podcast, I'm excited to speak to Ludovic Gaudé. Ludovic has been the CEO of Qinshift, one of the largest IT services companies in Central and Eastern Europe. Six months ago, he was also appointed CEO of Avenga, a global IT engineering and consulting company specializing in custom software development, just as the two companies prepared to merge into a joint structure. 

His background is in various global management roles, in public fast-growing companies such as Nokia and Google, and most recently at Intive, and Qinshift, where he stepped into the position of the CEO. 

Ludovic, welcome and thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.

Ludovic Gaudé: Lukasz, thank you very much for having me. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Great. Could you share a little bit about the differences and unique challenges or opportunities of leading tech companies under private equity ownership compared to other ownership structures, such as private ownership or a publicly traded company?

Ludovic Gaudé: So I would say that, of course, the first obvious advantage of working with a private equity is that as a CEO I have access to a lot of resources. Financial resources obviously, but also firepower to hire new resources, enter a new market, and develop new offerings. So all in all, access to increase and accelerate the value of the company. That's something that is very handy as a CEO when you want to develop quickly. Also you have access to an entrepreneurial mentality, fast decision making, and willingness to take risk, especially on family offices or this part of the private equity, where the private equity is actually investing their own money or the family's office money. There you have the luxury of time and you can really deploy and accelerate value by leveraging not only resources but also entrepreneurial approach. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: And private equity ownership often comes with a strong focus on performance metrics and value creation. So how do you balance these expectations with fostering innovation and maintaining a long-term vision for the company?

Ludovic Gaudé: There are several aspects here. So obviously, the key to succeed is to combine both together. So create a culture that supports both innovation and performance, and you achieve that by ensuring that you build the right team around you. And as you build this group, you need to foster a culture where the achievement of the team is more important than the personal ambition of the individuals. It's contradictory in a way, a bit of an ambiguous way of building the team. 

Usually when you want to have great team members, you have very ambitious people, experienced individuals, and you have to somehow also play with their egos. But if the individual egos are overshadowing the effort of the team, then this is when the culture of combining both the performance and the innovation starts to get complicated. So I think this is the most important aspect at the beginning of building the team.

And then one needs to understand that for private equity, a company is a product, so this is something that they are building to do something with in in the future. So it's very important to manage the expectations of the private equity of the owners, and you need to find ways to improve the predictability of the business. So when we all know and we all have been in those situations where the expectations are very high and month after month the numbers are not met , where it’s important that, and this is what I do myself, when there is bad news, it's better to bring it immediately. There's no point of being in agony for many months in order to hide or to hope that things will improve. This usually leads to a lot of frustration and that's why I've always revealed the bad news in full right away, so you can regroup with the private equity and put a plan in place to work on the next stage. So these are the two important aspects that one needs to keep in mind. I'd like to finish on a positive note because ultimately all the companies that I worked with in the past, without them, we would not be where we are. So Avenga and Qinshift, the two companies that we are blending together now, would not be where they are today without a private equity. So I think a private equity, if well managed, if well handled and properly structured, and if we have a good, healthy, intense relationship with the private equity, can be very beneficial for the company.

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Yes, speaking about blending, Avenga and Qinshift officially merged on the first of January 2025, and this isn't the first time that you're leading a company through a merger. So how does your leadership approach adapt in a merger scenario and what qualities or strategies are most critical for success, in your opinion?

Ludovic Gaudé: I've been part of multiple bolt-on acquisitions, but mergers are very specific. So I've done three of those. I've done a merger of Nokia and Siemens twenty years ago. I've done a merger with Intive some seven or eight years ago, and now we are doing this one. What I like to do is to continue to be authentic. So of course every situation is very different, every merger is equally very, very specific. There are always different dynamics. But I try not to impose any material change in my own style. I tend to be very participative and very people-oriented, and combine that with some good and rational argumentation. But I think authenticity is what matters. It just makes life easier for me and for the people around me, and this is what we are doing with Avenga. So I ask everybody to be authentic and not to change anything, even though interpersonal skills are very handy here and it's a very challenging task. I just mentioned that it's important to build the team around you and the biggest challenge for me in a merger that might impact my leadership style is that you usually come from one of those companies. So you have already built a team around you and now that you have to blend two teams, you have to assess the merits of each team member to build a new team, and that's very challenging because of the history that you have created with one team. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Yes, you're absolutely right, and the merging of two large companies involves aligning distinct organizational cultures. So can you speak a bit about how you go about shaping the new culture and any key lessons? 

Ludovic Gaudé: Culture is actually one of the key tasks of a CEO. I would say as a CEO, you are responsible for two aspects of a company. One is the strategy and then setting the direction and bringing some sense of vision, but also setting up the culture. And this is something that, as a CEO, you cannot outsource. The culture is really often the mark of a leader and, here, I’ll give you an example to illustrate what is important for me. So when you establish the culture, you get those two teams to work together. And because you are part of one team, of company A, and you have to start working with company B, it's critical that you spend the time to understand the other party. So I usually spend time and have everyone understand how the other company is performing a particular task or developing a particular product or the way they are organized. After a while, I'm asking the head of delivery from company B to explain to me how company A works and vice-versa, to ensure that we all have enough time to understand each other. This is a symbolic moment in the merger where we ensure that before we make decisions we all understand where we are. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Yes, and obviously during a merger, there are two different leadership teams. So I was wondering which strategies do you deem most important to foster trust and alignment within two leadership teams from both organizations?

Ludovic Gaudé: For a CEO that like myself, who is very personal and very people-oriented, it's a challenging task but it has to be done. And the key aspects here are to be transparent about the selection process, interview the candidates on both sides, give them a fair chance, establish a good communication channel, establish a merger team with a good blend of both representations, and put together a merger newsletter. This is, for example, what we're currently doing at Avenga. So you need to be transparent. 

Then the second aspect is the balance of power; the new leadership team needs to be equally represented from both companies. That's also what we've done with Avenga, at least as a starting point. As you go through the merger, of course personal situations evolve and this balance of power is difficult to keep, but at the beginning you need to give equal chances to everybody. And if everyone focuses on the overall goal, on the interest of the team and not the ambition of the individuals, then usually it works well. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: And obviously talent retention can also be super challenging during mergers. So what specific steps do you take to minimize attrition and ensure continuity of expertise and morale among your teams?

Ludovic Gaudé: The drive of a merger is usually to reduce cost and sometimes to improve or increase revenues. So when you bring teams together, there is immediately a bit of fear of what's going to happen with me as an individual. So there you have to continue with the transparency and the communication. But what is even more important, what is critical for talent retention, is speed. You have to make decisions quickly. You have to keep the momentum. You simply cannot prolong uncertainty in the organization. There are certain aspects that need to be evaluated and decided in a confidential way, but you've got to be transparent with the process. You can't wait for too long. Uncertainty is what makes the people you don't want to leave, leave. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Now looking into the future of IT services and especially with AI on the market, what key trends do you see shaping the IT services market in the Central and Eastern Europe region and globally and how does this impact leadership?

Ludovic Gaudé: In our region, in Central and Eastern Europe, we've entered into a digital transformation era and the time of labor arbitrage is gone. We were in a seller's market; now it's a buyer's market. So this is a big change and is forcing everybody, from a leadership point of view, to find ways to differentiate and to defend margins. So one needs to be more consultative and focus on the customer experience. What I ask my team in engineering when I have the chance and when I travel to the various entities where we operate is if they enjoy using the applications that they are developing for the clients:  we want to make sure that the users of what we are developing are actually going to enjoy that. This is quite important. 

Then of course there's been a change in the enablers and the infrastructure. Everything has been cloudified now. I started some time ago to move everything to the cloud, so one needs also to adapt to that. And all this digital environment has created a lot of concern with ownership of the of the data and threats, and so cyber security is very critical. So in the case of Avenga, wherever we go, whatever we develop, even if it's not a prerequisite or requirement for the client, we end up having our cyber security team looking into this and providing some ways to help our clients, ensuring that what has been developed is fully secured. 

Where we are now is that this combination of software that companies like us have been developing for thirty years and data that we are all surrounded by is creating a new paradigm now, a new change. I'm basically alluding to artificial intelligence that everybody's talking about without saying the name, but both data and software is at such a stage now and providing so many opportunities that it's disrupting not only our clients but also ourselves.

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Generative AI is transforming industries across the board. So how do you see AI services influencing IT and, as a leader, what strategies are you implementing to capitalize on these advancements?

Ludovic Gaudé: We are definitely in this tornado right now. During the last fifty years I’ve gone through several tornadoes, and this is definitely one that is very fascinating now. And what's so fascinating about it is that it's going much faster than anything else. So we had the PC transformation, the internet, the mobile phone, I talked about the digital era, and now AI, but it's just accelerating. And for everyone, for any industry, the question to ask is how can we as a company, as Avenga and Qinshift, be complementary to artificial intelligence? I don't think AI will replace us or will replace our clients, but AI will be accomplishing mundane and repetitive tasks, so we need to find a way to be complementary to that. I think it's a good thing because we will be hopefully spending more time amongst people, interacting and innovating, while the more repetitive tasks will be done by something else. So specifically in software development, there are many AI tools that are assisting in developing code. 

But I still think that the creativity will come from the developers and we have to remember that when we engage with clients, the time that developers spend on coding is actually small compared to the interactions that they have with the clients to try to understand what they want to do, and so on. 

So I don't see this as a threat, at least immediately. We have a lot of experience in organizing data, collecting data, and building algorithms and statistical models. We have our own generative AI framework as well. The biggest leap forward, or the biggest tornado, will come when AI will be autonomous : we talk a lot about cars being autonomous, but when AI will be autonomous , meaning that when my assisting AI will talk to my wife's AI and decide where we are going on holidays or when, which restaurants we are going to based on our mood, our past experiences, and on our style. 

This is going to be quite fascinating and scary at the same time. An AI is not cautious of the fact that it's an AI: it's just still a statistical model, but what you can do with it can be overwhelming. So we are ourselves working on that and it goes well beyond the technology or IT, because from a societal point of view, the gap between those who will understand AI and will be able to use it and be complementary to it and those who are not will start to widen. So we are spending a lot of time in making those technologies very human. There is a quite a lot to do on our side also to educate ourselves and help our clients cope with this. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Yes, this is absolutely fascinating. And thinking about mergers, the advance of AI as well as high stakes business environments, these are usually very demanding conditions. So how do you maintain personal growth and resilience as a leader while managing such challenges?

Ludovic Gaudé: Yes, Lukas, you are right.  I think for me, energy is really more important than time. We talk a lot about the time that you spend meeting people and dealing with all the issues that come your way, but what is even more important is the energy you have, because when you engage with people, they expect you not just to listen: they also expect you to concentrate and to contribute. So energy is more important than time, I would say. And then personally, so how do I find this energy? So I do a lot of physical activities, which is a daily requirement for me. I am a former competitive swimmer, I've been swimming now for half a century. It provides a lot of energy to me, so I practice a lot and also focus on endurance training. I'm not that speedy anymore, so I do endurance training on foot, on skis, on the bike, and spend time in nature to keep mental freshness. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: And the final question. Looking ahead and keeping in mind what we just spoke about, what is the most important for tech industry leaders in the next few years?

Ludovic Gaudé: I think that in this tornado that we are in or which is ahead of us, curiosity is a trait of character or a piece of personality that one needs to continue to develop, because I learn a lot from the people around me. I have the luxury of working in an industry where we have a lot of young people. I have my kids, of course, and I have around me in the company, in Avenga, a lot of young people that in many ways know and understand the market much better than I do. So I think it's important to be curious, and in fact is rewarding and fun. So I wanted to really maintain that and to stay alert to what's happening around myself. 

From a managerial point of view, I enjoy being more of a coach than the manager. I prefer to see my teammates develop and learn, and I find a lot of satisfaction in seeing them developing their personalities and taking and assuming risk. I think this is important, more than being a very top down manager. So this is something that I enjoy doing and I think everyone should be really focusing on that because there's so much happening around us that it's important that we let the young generation also inspire us. 

Finally, we talked about working in a private equity which loves facts and driving the business based on the facts. However, to make up your mind, sometimes it's impossible to compute it all, so you have to trust your instinct and learn to make decisions with a layer of intuition on top of the data that is presented to you. So that would be my free advice, because that's what I apply to myself. 

Lukasz Kiniewicz: Ludovic, thank you for sharing your time and insights with us today. It's been a pleasure. 

Ludovic Gaudé: Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening to The Heidrick and Struggles Leadership Podcast. To make sure you don't miss the next conversation, please subscribe to our channel on your preferred podcast app. And if you're listening via LinkedIn or YouTube, why not share this with your connections? Until next time. 

About the interviewer

Lukasz Kiniewicz (lkiniewicz@heidrick.com) is the partner in charge of Heidrick & Struggles’ Warsaw office and a member of the Technology & Services Practice.