Podcast Episode 2: Rob Fell on Authentic Leadership and Thriving in the iGaming Industry

  📍 📍 I tried to play both sides. And there was some lack of authenticity. There was me not staying true to my values. And one person in particular called me out. I learned that lesson in a pretty harsh way.

And I thought I'd, I thought I'd lost a, quite a close friend because of it.

And I will never forget that.

  📍 📍 Welcome to the gaming leader, where we bring you insights from C-level executives and industry experts to help make iGaming a place where high-achievers can thrive. Today, I'm joined by Rob Fell who many of you will know. Someone that has worked at Netent, GVC, Paddy Power and many more. In his 13 years of gaming experience, he has seen it all.

He's shares with us. Lessons about authentic leadership. About the challenges that he's faced and some of the pivotal moments that have gotten him to where he is today. Please join me for an exciting interview that will leave you inspired to take action on your journey in your iGaming Leader career.

  📍 📍 Hey Rob super excited to have you on the I gaming leader. Welcome to the podcast. I wanted to start off

  📍 with asking you, what were some of the, perhaps the misconceptions that you had early on in your career about leadership in the gaming industry?

  I think initially, when I started a product role, definitely within Europe and within gaming product managers was a new term, right? People were like, that's something that people on the West coast of the U S do. And there's like startups in Silicon Valley that have product people.

So   📍 it was all new. My misconceptions were that the people who were in more senior roles than me were absolute experts in that role. They were absolute experts in methodologies and understanding why and these people were like product gods in, in, um, in,

in some regard. Um, and I think actually what I'd learned over time was they were really no different to, me or you.

And they were someone who maybe had been around even months longer than you, not even years longer than you. , we're all figuring out stuff as we go. I kind of looked up and almost idolized some people I've had some really good mentors and that's been amazing. But actually the people that I kind of looked up to at the time, you're like, well, I could have done that. I think the message to people coming up through the ranks and doing these things. Like we're all learning together and we're all trying to be better versions of what we're doing. And there is no real kind of jump between here and here and here. It's just the fact that someone maybe got there a little bit before and thinks in a slightly different way. So, really the

misconception was that I idolized a few people and really there was no difference   📍 between me and them at that point.

How has that affected you, Rob? As you were progressing through your career, most of the people I speak to and I experienced it myself as well, go through this, this kind of this feeling of being an imposter, right. And feeling that you have to have it all figured out.

And the reality is that none of us do, right. None of us have it figured out. And we make it up as we go along. Tell me a little bit about how that's affected you mentally and personally.

I think that kind of that imposter syndrome thing is quite natural in most people. Um, I think there's obviously going to be a few people who, who, who don't feel like that or claim they never feel like that.

I think it,   📍 it does go away and, and I think there are, there are sort of key moments where you go, well, actually, yes, I, I don't need to feel like that anymore because I've proved myself.

We've done this. That's great. Delivered this as a team actually and then you have that kind of moment of retrospection and you go actually yeah I do understand this stuff. I am quite good at it I've got somewhere because of it and I think I think you have those moments of retrospection you get to that but actually I think having that kind of imposter syndrome and it always coming back keeps you humble and it keeps you it keeps the sort of humility there and it it allows you to really empathise with other people and to have proper discussions and be more authentic around it i think it's a good thing 📍  i think you need to have those moments where you go actually yeah i'm doing i'm doing a good job but having that imposter syndrome does keep you humble

yeah. Makes a lot of sense. So tell me a little bit more about, kind of that progress that you made in your career and what some of the key steps were that you took that perhaps helped you make that progress. Was it all luck? Was it performance? Was it a skill development?

What were some of the key attributes that help you progress quickly through your career?

luck definitely has a part to play and timing definitely has a part to play. And obviously we're, we're going through cycles of, of this industry. And, I think I   📍 was very lucky that I joined when iGaming was very, very new. If I look at when I joined Paddy Power, we were in a division called Paddy Power non retail.

And we

were sort of, About 10%, 15 percent of the total business. Uh, we struggled to get any resources within the wider organization. So you have to be very resourceful. And I think that really helped me in that we didn't have any BI support. We didn't really have any dev support. We didn't really have any sort of shared functions that were helping us.

So. A core team of us taught ourselves everything. We taught ourselves SQL on how to pull and build reports. We taught ourselves how to use all the comms tools. We built out journeys and flows and things and ran reports at six o'clock in the morning to engage with VIP customers. So I think that was a key part of the journey that. I covered so many different aspects of an iGaming operation and product role that I really truly understood them.

And then the next part was, I then made a conscious decision that, so I started in bingo and I had no experience of online bingo. I'd never played bingo before, but I started in bingo.

That's where I ended up. I was very fortunate to get that role. And then I said, well, I want to move across to Live Casino. I want to move across to R& G Casino. I want to experience wider parts of the business. And especially when I got to both Dublin with Paddy Power and then Gibraltar with Gala Coral, I made it sort of My goal to learn the finance role, to learn business intelligence, to, to learn how it, how my part of it interacted with the wider organization. And I think that's when you can start to go from really sort of being a manager and focusing on tasks and focusing on sort of lower level stuff to really then sort of embracing a vision and understanding the wider business. And I think that was definitely by design rather than luck that I spent time learning every part of the organizations I was part of. So I think that helped.

And then, and then after that, I basically then kept on with that and thought, well, I've done this with this type of organization. I then wanted to go and get experience. And I think that the Lottoland role was, it was a key one, understanding something completely new. Like secondary, betting on lotteries and scraping lottery results from Hong Kong and using,, results to then make other types of games and building out, building out games and payment methods for Brazil.

Like all of that was like something I'd never done before with, with a business like Carla Corral. So it broadened my experience. And then it's then   📍 led on to the other things that I've done and get a really sort of holistic view of the industry, which has definitely helped.

Yeah, love it. I often call it T shaped   📍 knowledge. You know, T shaped where, where the kind of that bar, that kind of vertical bar is your, your in depth knowledge when it comes to your specific product area, in your case, right? And then the horizontal bar is your your width, your breadth of knowledge around how you, how that interacts with other functions of the business, which is, I think, absolutely because it helps you to understand Understand how you can actually shape an organization and apply your unique, you know, your unique understanding to it.

Okay. So,   📍 what's one of the most surprising lessons that you've learned over your career when it comes to leadership? What are some of the things that, you know, you perhaps a project that you ran or a decision that you had to make that was really surprising to you?

I think the surprising thing in a very fast paced industry, is actually being patient. and I think it took me a while. It's very natural for me as a person. I think within this industry that you want to, you want to rush, you want to get things done, you want to deliver, you want to be sort of proving that you can get stuff done and see results.

Um,   📍 think actually sort of one of the most. Surprising things is especially over the last couple of years is Learning how to be patient and learning how to, get that message across to the teams as well. That yes, we are doing what we can do to grow the business, to generate revenue to this. But in some regards you have to be patient and you have to, you have to wait, especially where regulation is involved and, licensing and, and other sort of, compliance factors, like being patient and learning how to. Lead teams through those challenging times when they all want to rush ahead at a million miles an hour and you really can't.

So it's like, how do you, how do you pass stuff back? How do you keep delivering what you need to deliver? How do you pivot and focus on the things that can happen whilst the bigger picture is. Let's be patient. Let's wait for this state to regulate. Let's wait for this to happen. Let's wait for this approval or whatever it might be. And I think that, that's really the thing that I've learned, over the last couple of years it, quick wins are probably less sustainable. And once you get into that sort of patience, careful planning, trust the process, then you really start to deliver bigger results.   📍 Coming back to the health and fitness discussion we've had, like trusting the process and, and, and making sure that it happens properly is the key to sustainability.

Yeah, love that. So I want to dive into that a little bit more, Rob, because one of the big issues and one of the big challenges, I suppose, in gaming in general, is that we're under a lot of pressure to perform, right? We're always, we're always, we are very, very short term industry when it comes to results and delivering, delivering impact.

So how do you, just to kind of, to maybe curtail that a bit, like one of the things that happens, I feel, is that especially when you're a little bit younger, perhaps you're not fully confident yet on standing your ground or, fighting for that patience. It can be very difficult to find that balance between actually having the patience for something to work out, but also having the pressure, , on bottom line performance, right?

So how do you, how would you advise somebody in that position to deal with something like that?

I think it's about always being authentic and always being yourself, and trusting that you are, you're in that role because,   📍 You've shown something great. You've got some level of knowledge and understanding. You've, led teams, you've managed people before, and actually the sort of the leadership function around you has put you in that place because they trust you, they believe in you. And I think when you are kind of. Under those short term pressures, the best thing and the right thing to do is be able to be yourself and clearly articulate that to the leadership function around you, whether that be a manager, the CEO, the board, whatever it might be. You need to be able to stand up and say, look, this is the reason this is happening. This is what I think we should do. Yes, we can absolutely go and try and get these quick wins and tick these boxes off and whatever the low hanging fruit is. And maybe there's a, maybe there's a balance and maybe it's a. Yes, we're working towards this, which is the longer term goal. And this is the right thing to do for the business.

But we can tick off a few of these other boxes at the same time. And it's about being confident enough to believe in yourself, to have that discussion with the leadership team around you. And I think definitely when I was, , in more junior roles and growing up through this. I probably didn't have those discussions and you're too scared to have them. And actually when you do have that discussion, the weight's lifted from your shoulders and, and I've always found that the key people that I've worked for, whether that's of Liron Snir or Per Widerström or Gavin Hamilton or whoever it might be.

Those people, they get it and they want you to have that discussion with them. And suddenly the weight's lifted and, and the working environment is a lot better , both for you, but then for the teams working for you as well.   📍 So I think that's kind of the, advice that I'd give is be yourself, have those discussions.

You're there for a reason. And it's expected. People don't expect everything to go 100 percent right, or at the pace that someone demands all the time, right? Life happens, right? That's all part of the journey. Things go wrong, and it's how you communicate them, and it's how you move on, learn from it, and then do something else.

So let's talk about the other way around. So what do you look for in leaders that you perhaps work with? What are the things that the qualities and the skills that you really value? Maybe some of the behaviors that you find important for somebody to step up into a career and, and to, you know, to gain further, further positions or leadership roles they would work with you.

there's a little bit around, kind of, Mentorship there as well. And I think in terms of what, what do I look for? I look for, when I'm looking at, so who do I want to, who do I want to work for? Who do I want to work with? Who I don't want to engage with? It's someone who I can learn from.   📍 And I think always having that kind of that growth mindset of, I want to be able to go into this role and deliver in this role, but I want to work for someone who's going to help me. better and always be a better version of myself. that's something that I've always looked for., and being fortunate to work with some very good leaders and managers who I've mentioned a couple of them already. And then with, with people sort of working for me, So I'm a firm believer in not having proper job descriptions, not having bullet point lists of what someone needs to do. , and I'm a firm believer in hiring the person for the person and then them sort of adapting into the role and the role fitting that person and someone who is always curious, always wanting to learn themselves, always wanting to,, Grow what they're doing and always wanting to sort of deliver it in the right way and help grow the wider business.

That for me is someone who will move from being a team member to being, you know, sort of a, a leadership or management position within that team to then really going on and growing themselves into leadership roles. So it's a, it's a combination of sort of curiosity, growth mindset, and those things.

Right. but really being allowed the space to do it.

And I think if you, if you pigeonhole someone   📍 into this is your job title, and these are six bullet points, and you must have this educational background, and this, I think you're always going to fail, and you're never going to hire the right people into your team, and then they're not going to grow, and become what they can become.

Yeah, really completely agree with that. That must have changed over time as well for you though, right? Like moving from some of these big corporate giants to more of a startup vibe, I suppose, where you're in now. , that like where, where you're more agile, perhaps you have more.

Creativity and space to, allow you to do that. Whereas maybe in a bigger corporate environment, there's some more rigid processes and procedures that you have to follow. So, looking back now, then Rob, if you would, if you would have to, you know, I'm just thinking about the roles that you'd have companies that are now intain and flutter, I suppose, what would you do for people that are there in such a bigger corporate environment where.

You know, there are these procedures where perhaps that flexibility, they feel, people might feel that that flexibility isn't there, if that's even true.

yeah, I think, I think that last bit is, is, is key. And I think my experience, and I can't speak of the Flutter and the Entain today, but, but my experience, especially with, with GVC at the time, now Entain was, there was absolutely that, um, flexibility that yes, yes, there are. HR processes and there are other things that you have to do and and to make sure that you're hiring the right person have checks being done on them.

Are they going to need licenses? What is their kind of what are their credentials? And those things do happen. Yes, but still.   📍 I was part of a team that was highly creative in thinking and coming up with solutions as to how do we solve this problem. And that came from Chai and from Liran and from the wider, especially the product team there. but we absolutely as, as leaders within that had the flexibility to go and shape our teams in the way we wanted to, to basically go and yes, there's, there's budgetary constraints and you have to fit within sort of. A bucket there, but within that, you can, you can sort of prove that you can do whatever you need to do.

And it was a case of, okay, so I needed to fix this within the live casino space, or we had these challenges within, integrations and game launches, for example. So how do we go about and do that? And it's really about, it comes back to having that conversation with the right people and making sure that you get it done.

And I, I've had a, Great relationship with, with Leron and, and could basically, shape the team in the way that I wanted to. So yes, huge organization, even at that time, we were buying lots of companies. We were doing platform migration off the platform migration. We were delivering as much as we could as quickly as possible, but still there was the space for that creative thinking for bringing the right people into the team, who I believed in and then helping those people grow. And within that organization and others, I, I've been a really strong believer. And I think actually in every organization I've worked in from, from Paddy power to NetEnt to White Hat, the number of people who I've believed in from a customer support, from a payments team, from, those types of roles, sort of entry, let's call them entry level roles into, into iGaming for a lot of people that the number of people who. You've seen something in them and said, well, let's bring that person from, the, the customer support role into, an iGaming operations role, whether it be on the casino game launch team or marketing executive or whatever it might be, and then follow their career and help them and basically see their journey.

And the number of people who've gone from those types of roles now into leadership roles who are sort of peers of mine absolutely incredible to see. And I've been happy to support a number of people along that way. And I think it, I think that's something that we're good at as an industry.   📍 And it's something that sort of, if there's leaders out there in this industry who haven't come across that and haven't done it, then jump on it now, make sure that people are flowing from those types of roles into, into others.

, I think that's absolutely right. You know, it's a fast paced game. Industry, but also an industry full of opportunities, right? We grow very quickly, limited talent pool. So just working hard, doing the right things and making sure you, like you've said a few times now, authentic, is key there.

So, so you must have had, you must've made some, some really difficult decisions throughout your career as well. Tell me about something that's been really hard and that maybe even kept you up at How did that work out? What was some of the biggest challenges you faced?

There's a very Simple answer, like the hardest parts that I've been involved in were at NetEnt in sort of 2018, 2009, 2019, sorry, when we were going through, rounds of redundancies, 📍  we, we were sort of streamlining the organization. , NetEnt had sort of been, been up there as a, as a number one game provider for, for a good few years and, and games like Starburst and it was still living off those. There'd been a new management. And so myself, Andy Whitworth, Brian Upton have been there a while. And then we had to go through rounds of, redundancies.

And I think for me to that scale, I'd never experienced it before, and I've never been in a, in a leadership position. So those were definitely the most difficult. sort of times off like processing it, getting through those and and sort of rationally rationally coming to these are the people who will remain and these are the people who will go and I think within this industry is I can't speak for others, really.

But I have a lot of friends in the organizations I was working in and people that I'd worked with for years and people that I'd hired into my teams because of personal relationships, then, when you, when you look at the data and when you look at the reasons why we need to do this, what's the bigger picture for, for this organisation I needed to let those people go. that was that sort of coincided, with COVID lockdowns, and people of different nationalities living in different countries. We're about to go into this very, like, like whatever it was, March, 2020, no one really knew what was happening with the world, did they? And suddenly we're going through rounds of redundancies whilst, governments are making announcements and lockdowns are happening.

I think those were definitely the toughest times. Um, It taught me that you need to constantly communicate with people. And I think probably most people out there who are, who are listening to this, I've seen the, the Facebook and the Tik TOK streams of the, of the two guys who are reading out the WhatsApp messages between, sort of employees and, and managers and what makes a bad manager.

And I think I have a conversation with that person, have a conversation early, like let people know the reasons why the bigger picture, I think the worst thing that I. Seen and experienced is. Redundancies being made by a messaging, people being told in a blanket format. And there are definitely companies within the gaming sector who sort of fallen foul of that and, sort of had some negative PR because of it. But I think for me, it was all about, especially those people that you're close to, but anybody in the team have those conversations early, discuss it, be open, be authentic. Cause I keep saying, let people know, I think those, those are probably the hardest times. And then the bits to answer the second part, the bits that split into two questions, even though you didn't ask two

questions, the bit about authenticity, this is something that I really learned over the last few years, and sort of staying true to your values. I will be one of the first to admit it, I've been called out and there's been a certain person who I worked with closely at NetEnt, and in my early days at NetEnt, I tried to play both sides. I tried to play kind of the, yes, we're going to deliver this as a team. And yes, I'm going to Friends with you.

We're going to get stuff done. We're going to collaborate. And there was some lack of authenticity. There was me not staying true to my values. And one person in particular called me out. It's a lesson that I learned very, very clearly at that stage that you need to stick to what you're saying.

what You're going to stick to don't say the one thing to one person and say something to someone else. You quickly get. Caught out, called out. You need to be transparent. You need to have clear and honest comms throughout the whole thing. And I learned that lesson in a pretty harsh way.   📍 And I thought I'd, I thought I'd lost a, quite a close friend because of it.

And the conversation we had on the phone, I will never forget that. It triggered something. And I think from then on,, you have to be, , completely authentic.

Pivotal moments. They're always the best, aren't they? You know, they're very hard in the moment themselves, but they they change the trajectory that you're on. And that's so crucial. Hey, so Rob, I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into kind of those difficult moments. How has that affected you personally?

Like, I don't know what you're saying about you want to have those conversations. But before you actually have those conversations, when, like, especially with redundancies, we've all been there, we've all made people, had to make people redundant. The difficulty is that, you know, earlier than you can actually have that conversation, right?

So, and that's going to affect you personally, you're going to sit there at home, you know, or at your desk thinking about all these people that you've brought into the business, that you've worked closely with, that you respect as well, that respect you, that potentially are at risk of, you know, And then, you know, you start thinking about families and them, you know, having moved abroad, all those things.

So how has that affected you personally? And what are some of the things that have helped you battle through that?

it absolutely has affected me personally. And I think, I think you'd have to be a pretty sort of cold, heartless person if it didn't affect you. And I, these

are, these are people's lives, whether they're, whether, You just see them as a team member, which, which I think is, is the wrong way to view people anyway.

Or they are close colleagues, people who become your friends, who are then impacted. Yeah. They, they have families. They need to make a living, et cetera. They have mortgages to pay, whatever it might be. 📍  And I think, , it absolutely does affect me. And in some of those, okay. And there were sleepless nights.

There were, how are we going to do this? How am I going to have that conversation? I went through a phase of wanting to put things off until the last possible minute. And I think, I think that's probably like a natural reaction is how do we delay this? And that, that I learned from that, that that's the wrong thing to do.

That's why. Have those conversations as early as possible. Be as open and transparent and upfront as you can. Yes, especially when they're public listed companies, you probably can't have that level of discussion that early. But actually, like, do it in the best possible way. Um, and I think, like, Relating this back to kind of the previous discussion we had, like I went through and I've been been open with the whole industry about this, like you go through those times when you, you basically, you don't focus on yourself.

You don't have the ability to, you know, you're sat up, like drinking, like most nights, you're basically using tactics to try and sort of, like not think about it. And then the whole time you're, you're not doing the right thing for you, for your family, or for, for the people who are going to be impacted.

yeah, I think it's been very difficult times.  But what it's taught me is that you, you need to sort of have that. that balance, between, your life, and what you're doing with work. And I think getting that right really helps things. And it gives you a better perspective. It gives you a sort of a more grounded approach and it allows you to have the right conversations with the right people at the right time.

Thank you very much, Rob. It's. One of the biggest things is that is exactly what you said, right? Very often when we have those difficult moments, whatever that is, it doesn't have to be redundancies, but whenever, whenever we have to have difficult conversations or there are things that we just don't want to do because they're uncomfortable, the easy option is to hide away from it and, you know, compromise on your own personal health and wellbeing so that you can delay the thing that you inevitably have to do anyway.

So how has that changed over the years for you? And I'd first like you to talk a little bit about kind of what life was before. As we've talked about in a previous recording that we've done, what life was before and how you deal with high pressure situations now.

I think the thing that I've realized, especially over the last sort of, Four or five years. And probably sort of from the GVC days onwards where I think that's really where I went from being a manager into leader, Is setbacks are all part of growth and like things will fail and it's how you learn from those setbacks, failures, like whatever, wherever they sit on the scale of things not going quite right.

  📍 it's, it's, it's how you learn from those and how you take those and how you, how you grow from it. But not just yourself personally, but how do you bring a team along? How do you sort of. Face those things on head on. That's really the main difference of sort of my combining kind of leadership roles plus my change in my personal lifestyle, health and fitness and everything is I did use to hide away from it.

I did use to pretend there wasn't an issue. I did use to, worry about it, but pretend you're not worrying about it. And I think the main change is whether it's the cumulative effect of all those learnings over the years, or whether it's those kind of key pivotal moments and the key trigger, it's all of that coming together and you go, actually, I do need to face this head on. It is better to discuss this as soon as possible. It is better to take that time to,, like sort out my nutrition, to book the time in to go to the gym. And I think I did really sort of, focus too much on the wrong things, which then gives you no time for those other things. Suddenly when you switch it and you start to go, well, I'm going to block out my calendar for an hour and a half this morning because I am going to go and like, spend time with my wife and kids, or I am going to go and do that run session or that strength session in the gym or whatever it might be.

  📍 Like suddenly then you, you free up so much more mental capacity, but time as well. to get stuff done. So I think the, the key message here is that that flip from like shying away from things, right. And, and then to, to, to facing things head on and just attacking and, and going and getting it done.

That's one of the big things, isn't it? It gives you mental clarity, like making space. It creates space in your brain so that you can solve problems more effectively and you will get more done in less time by actually taking care of yourself. And I think that's one of the big things that both you and I didn't realize for a long time, because Drinking seems like the better solution when you're stressed and there's absolutely a time and a place for that, but it's, facing your problems head on to, to actually create space and to be able to solve problems quickly.

And then making sure that you have a full tank taking care of yourself and your own mental energy and performance.

okay. So, uh, you've talked about mentors quite a bit. Tell me a little bit about some of the, some of the key people in your career. the people that you've looked up to and the qualities that you feel they had and how you embody those qualities or try to embody those qualities in your own leadership role now.

The key people in my career have been the people who have wanted to spend time with me as a manager, as a junior leader, growing through sort of the various roles I've had, wanted to help me, help me understand the bigger picture, help me understand sort of their leadership styles, where they're coming from. And, and, and really they've been the people who've questions.  They haven't been. You need to do it in this way. They haven't been kind of, you need to go and read Stephen Covey and do this and do that and being highly theoretical and whatever. It's been people. And I think, you know, The first person I really came across who, who sort of called me in, and helped me understand was Per VidaStrom.

And, and I, for

me, I, I went to a gala in a, kind of junior product role in the, in the Gala casino team, and for Per to call me in and to say, Rob, take me through this. I help me understand why this is happening. Help me understand why this is a good thing. Getting me to articulate and to explain to him sort of what we're doing, why we're doing it.

And I think he fully understood what we're doing and why we're doing it, but it was drawing it out of me and it was helping me grow, from being a product manager to being a product leader within that organization. I think The things that sort of really mean a lot to me is someone wanting to spend that time and someone wanting to help understand.

I think that's something that I've then translated into, working with teams and growing teams over the last number of years is, is really going and spending time with people, sitting down with them and understanding why and how. And I think if you, if you look at, Someone like Gavin Hamilton as well, like when, um, when NetEnt acquired Red Tiger, I I'd known Gavin for years.

We'd worked together briefly in Paddy Power in 2011, on a few projects, but I didn't really know him. And sitting down with him when NetEnt acquired Red Tiger, seeing how he approached things, how analytical, data driven, sort of from a, an accounting background. And, and that really helped me. And, and it's, it's those people, those moments, those interactions that when you piece all that together and you've got Per with one set of qualities, you've got Gavin with another, and then you've got like Leron, I think those three people that have helped shape my career.

There's many others. But those three people, and you've got Leron who would demand. A thousand things from me. And he'd be like, come into my room. Let's whiteboard this. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. It was constant. It was like, it was like constant energy and flow of ideas and deliverables. And then on the other hand, you've got someone who's much more measured and, and, and sort of let's talk about this. Let's figure it out. And then someone who's highly analytical. And I think piecing all those bits together, you get a picture of kind of like, why do I think like I do? It's because I've taken all these influences, and pieced them together.

Those are probably some of the key bits. And for anyone becoming, a leader in this industry and growing through roles, like grab those moments, like everyone will work with somebody within their organization or in their network. And basically utilize those people's experience and then, and then figure out what works for you and piece those bits together, and I think you only grow and you become.

Who you are by taking influences from various different sources.

Yeah. It's never, it's never about a management book, right?  It's always about what you've, the styles you see in others and the things that you see in others and how you then incorporate that in your own or your own personal journey. Okay. So last thing really from, from me here, around kind of your leadership.

 What does that look like now? What does that look like in your role now? What does your future hold? What are some of the things that you aspire? Towards and things that you would like to, you know, see and grow towards when it comes to your leadership role.

if we look at kind of leadership evolution, I was really lucky that I left school. and before I got into iGaming, I went to Sandhurst and I did officer training and was a junior officer in the British army for, for a number of years.

  The reason why I'm saying this is one of the key concepts that, we were taught and sort of key part of British military doctrine is a thing called mission command. and and that's about, , understanding your commander's intent so really understanding the vision, the mission, the values and the intent. And then having a team who have a framework, have the tools, training and understanding of how to get to the goals that they need to achieve. So. That was ingrained in me from a, age of about 18, 19. Um, and it's something that I truly believe in. So there's obviously clear boundaries and there are budgetary constraints.

There are, you can't cross these lines. There is in our sector regulation and compliance, but having that kind of level of mission command and having. Autonomous teams, who can fully understand mission, vision, values, intent, and then go on to be able to deliver things. I think for me as a continually growing leader within this industry, that's the sort of teams that I want to, to build the culture that I want to foster. And I really see it as sort of. My part of being an effective leader is helping these, environments grow, inspiring people to want to be better for themselves, to deliver the right things for the company, to sort of, have diverse perspectives and all those sorts of things. And I think a lot of that stems from the true belief in, in mission command, which is a underlying sort of fundamental for me.

So I think for me, that's kind of, Where I am right now, I'm obviously part of a startup organization. We are growing very, very quickly. We have people in multiple locations. We have, Challenges like anyone else in the, in the industry does, but,, we've got a great culture and a great team who are overcoming those challenges as quickly as possible and delivering exceptional results., I'm very lucky to have a good,, sort of right hand person, amazing right hand person who is, Building that sort of culture within the team in Bulgaria. And together we can grow this, to be an exceptional organization. So I think for me, that's kind of where we are now. And for me in the future, it's about continual learning. It's about like having. these sorts of discussions where you, you do have that retrospective and you go, Oh yeah, we've talked about this. I've learned this. Let's go and apply it. And I think really it's about how do we, take this to the, to the next level? How do I make it, an even more high performing organization than it is right now? One final bit that sort of, as I've been talking and thinking of a key sort of fundamental part of it is, Making some decision for me is better than making no decision. And this is kind of a mantra that I've lived by, throughout my career there's probably a lot of people are going to call me out on this and go, you can't make that decision.

That's a really stupid one. But, but actually if you procrastinate and you don't make a decision, that is worse for the organization, for the teams, for the cohesiveness than making some decision. Typically, if you make some decision. And there's parts of it that need improving. You can improve on those, but actually making no decision and being paralyzed is far worse than making no decision at all.

 And I think Taking that culture, the bits around mission command, the bits around sort of what I've learned, the bits I've scraped from various different leaders, Gets you to where you are now and then like you need to continue to improve to become a better leader,

love that Rob, because, and it all kind of ties together what you're saying, right? Because I think it's  one of the key things in most organizations, we want to create autonomous teams. Very often we find it really difficult because we feel that the team is maybe not up to scratch yet and they, perhaps they're not, not high enough quality, but very often they're not high enough quality because we haven't developed autonomous teams.

We haven't been delegating well enough, right? And we haven't been delegating decisions. We've just been delegating tasks. And therefore these, you know, allowing people to make decisions in a way that maybe you even disagree with as their manager is absolutely crucial for you having more time and being less operational in your role. 

So I really love that. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think I had a discussion recently with, someone sort of a mentor within the industry. And we were discussing a company had some specific issue we had this discussion and it basically comes down to 80 percent of the problems are usually due to culture and communication. 

They're not normally due to developers being awful or this person being wrong or this strategy being wrong, whatever it might be. It's usually down to a cross team communication, not existing, poor culture within the company. And it, It really does boil down to things that are that simple and whether it's a lack of understanding between a product team and a compliance team or a legal team and whatever it might be, it's normally just down to teams being too siloed, not understanding the bigger picture and sort of the broader reason why. And when you sort of distill it down to that and you get to a point where actually, and these things are far easier said than done. When you get to a point where like, well, if you just talk to each other, if you get on the same page, and coming back to the comment I made when I called out for sort of, not being true to myself and being an authentic, it was, it was my area of the business and this guy's area of the business.

And we weren't on the same page and we were, we were fighting against each other because we weren't. As soon as you fix those issues. Things become much more cohesive.  So I completely agree and I, I genuinely think that a lot of reasons why things fail are lack of communication and the poor culture with an organization rather than. Poor quality of people,

even fear of judgment, right? Very often when we feel that kind of imposter syndrome, perhaps we feel that we're fearful of making the wrong decision because we feel like an imposter for being in that role and therefore we involve all these other people so that we don't have to make a decision and we get decisions by committee, which is the easiest way to have a mediocre product, right?

I think the, the divide a bit on that is when you first go from especially when you sort of grow with the industry when you, I think the first time that you're responsible for hiring people, for me, that was, that was one of the most scary things in this industry, and I'm sure there's other people out there and just related about to what you just said. I suddenly like I've been trusted in this organization. I'd been given a budget and I've been told to go and hire people. I was like. I've never, I've never hired anyone before. I, I understand how a recruitment process works. I understand these things. I can, I can probably Google at that time or get some training on like what, what interview questions should I ask? But actually that was the scariest bit of going from. Being in a team to managing a team to leading a team is the scaling a team hiring is the first hurdle you have to jump over. And then you then get into like, how do I inspire these people? How do I, get the right culture? How do I do this? But, but yeah, when you first make that jump, like even, even the simplest thing or like sending out a job offer and going, well, is this the right part?

Am I going to cost the business money? Have I chosen the right person? And yeah, making that decision is pretty tough. And I think others will probably, will probably bind to that as well.

Yeah, love it. Okay, very last question for you, Rob.  If we go back to young old Rob being in his product manager role, what's the one bit of advice that you would have given yourself if you teleport  back to the past?

I can say this with hindsight and I've kind of followed this is so embrace, embrace the learning curve. And really sort of go with the flow. Get as many experiences as you can and speak to as many people as you can. I think I, I probably. That four or five years into my gaming career, that the things that I spoke about and the sort of the leveraging the experience of, of those people and taking on that sort of mentorship from, from others. I think embrace that early embrace that as soon luck definitely as you can., there are so many. And I this industry who have so much great experience and are willing to share that. So to a younger Rob, get that earlier. There were some key people, especially in the early days back at Paddy Power, who I could have learned a lot more from, and I was so focused on doing the tasks. 

Am I doing this right? How do I deliver as much as possible that you don't take that step back and learn as much as you can. So embrace the learning curve and figure out the complexities as soon as you can.

Thank you very much, Rob. Thank you for, uh, this this great podcast and being so open and honest. Always really enjoyed talking to you and thanks for sharing.

Thank you, Leo. That's been great.

📍 📍

  📍 📍 So that was my interview with Rob. I hope you found it as inspiring as I did. It really left me with three key takeaways. And the first one is that leadership really isn't about having it all figured out.

It's actually about the journey and continuous growth and growing together with your team. The second is that there is so much power in patience very often in this fast paced industry. We're almost forced to make short-term decisions that, you know, kind of compromise long-term results. So patience is key. And the third one is how important authenticity really is.

It's not just a buzzword. It's about making sure that you live and lead in a way that is true to your values, to who you really are. Now, if you found some value in this episode, please leave a rating and review. It helps other gaming leaders, just like you find this, episode in this podcast,

And if you've already done that, you're awesome. Just send it over to somebody that you feel might benefit from this episode as well. Now I hope to see you next week. Next week, we are actually interviewing. Petra, who has gone from being at McKinsey to moving to a diplomat, to going into leadership roles where she's gone all the way to the top.

She shares important lessons about diversity. The challenges that she's faced as a woman. Moving all the way to the top. And she talks about her journey to where she is today. So please join me next week for our very next episode. And I hope to see you there. Take care. 📍