Episode #22
Alex is an internationally experienced CTO/CPTO leading diverse global technology teams for major companies. He has led seven technology transformations, achieving top quartile performance and accelerating profitable growth.
Starting in software development, Alex rose to head of Retail Banking technology at a leading UK internet startup bank. He later co-founded an eCommerce consultancy and led iconic CTO interim roles for 8 years.
He transformed Sainsbury’s online platform as eCommerce IT Director, and later led the digital transformation at Barclays Retail Bank in London as Multichannel IT Director.
In 2012, Alex joined Walmart Global eCommerce technology in California as the multichannel technology director. He led the world’s 2nd largest grocery home shopping platform, the UK’s fastest-growing fashion platform, and pioneered groundbreaking ‘click-and-collect’ initiatives. It was here that our paths first crossed.
Since then he’s also had senior roles at YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP in Italy and Emirates Group – where he was global CIO and global CTO respectively, overseeing the strategy and transformation of a 2,500-strong team to modernise the technology landscape, enabling business growth and innovation.
Alex is now on a mission to unlock the potential of product & tech teams by harnessing the power of data and AI.
“We’re infusing data and AI to assess and improve teams’ productivity index, enabling efficient and predictable delivery outcomes, helping our clients achieve their digital transformation goals faster. “
Alex feels in some ways, over the last decade or so, he’s been trying to solve the same challenges, but in different roles with different companies. And now he wants to have the opportunity to figure out how to solve this for every company, in every industry, so that they can measure the productivity of the tech teams, but can also improve it.
The second part of this is that he wants to really leverage the same platform, and his experience to create a new kind of tech community, bionic teams where productivity levels are off the charts. And he thinks technologies such as generative AI and blockchain are key to solving this.
Alex lends his expertise to startups, guiding them in product development best practices and the innovation applications of cutting-edge generative AI.
Alex holds a Statistics degree from University College London and an MBA.
SPEAKERS
Dom Burch and Alex Alexander.
Dom Burch:
Alex just revealed he’s had his second espresso. So we are ready to go Welcome back to the ubloquity podcast with me Dom
Alex Alexander:
Well, Dom, first of all, thanks very much for having me. I’m a real fan of your podcast, it’s a great pleasure to be here. I’ve been in the tech space for over two decades, leading technology teams for some of the world’s most renowned companies. And these roles have taken me to three continents, and it’s been a journey, you know, through consumer retail, and I think I’ve done every vertical of retail from food to fashion and luxury couldn’t be more contrasting. I’ve done retail banking, I’ve done aviation and online marketplaces amongst others. But what I would say, it’s been really exciting about my roles is that working with great teams to build great products. So another lens that you could put into what I do, or what I’ve done in the last two decades is that to get teams to outperform, to build products that customers want. And through this journey, most of the products that, you know, I’ve been involved with, as you know, are digital products, and I developed this obsession for E commerce from early 2000. So, you know, it’s been exciting, and I’m really grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had. And just let’s go back there then because I mean, technology Burch. This is the podcast where we get to speak to thought just moves at pace, but it’s sort of like I always think of it’s a bit like the dance is the you know, sort of a quick step. It’s quick, quick, slow, sometimes new, changes, new leaders from across the world about this wonderful world of developments arrive, whether that’s the Internet, whether it then becomes things like augmented reality, and more technology that we are in. And I’m delighted this week to recently, things like blockchain, and they sort of announce themselves, and we go, oh, my gosh, this is going to revolutionise absolutely everything. And then they sort of take a little bit of time to bed in. So what is it that as you look back on your career, what are those kind of moments those huge sort of revolutionary changes in the world of IT and tech that, that are still prevalent today? And actually, the, you know, as you look back, oh, gosh, that was really Yeah, I would say obviously, everything starts with the internet, that that really changed things. And you know, really got you so much closer to the customer, which at welcome onto the podcast, Alex Alexander. Now Alex and I go first is so intimidating that you know, there is no distance when you’re launching a digital product, there is no distance between you and the customer. And of course, that’s been with back to our Walmart days, but he is a CPTO to a CTO and Ned, a us. And then that evolved into from a world of retail, it cutting edge what we were doing 20 years ago? evolved into omni channel and everybody was trying to figure out well, how do we do omni channel and of course, then eventually figured this out. And of course, you know, these days, we talked about generative AI, but actually, the foundation was digital transformation, retail and consumer and fintech specialist, Alex, you’re so skilled, I don’t know how you AI itself. It has been around for a number of years. And I remember some of the first AI initiatives that I was working fit it all on your business card? on, you know, six or seven years ago, and it’s evolved into this breakthrough generative AI, just because, you know, everybody can relate to it. It’s no longer this, you know, tech that, you know, only tech people can use. Generative AI is about, you know, vision is about pictures it’s about images it’s about text. And you can actually have a dialogue with it. And it actually becomes real because it brings technology to everyday people for everyday activities. And then I would say another big milestone was blockchain. And what blockchain did, really brought this possibilities of authenticity, where does something come from, and how do I know it’s authentic, so anything from talent, so is this person that says they’ve done all these wonderful things in their CV, or they’re really as authentic as they say they are. The food that I’m eating is it really says, what it says on the tin or where it’s come from? And many, many other applications. So I would say, you know, groundbreaking technologies, I would say are blockchain and AI? And of course, we’ve seen the new evolution of AI with generative AI.
Dom Burch:
Yeah. And, you know, let’s go back to that that kind of internet where at the start, you know, web pages were very wallpaper, weren’t they, they were just their functional pages, then we had this kind of web to where you could start to as a user, you could create your own content that became dynamic and social media could be embedded and people started blogging and all that kind of stuff. Through to the kind of Tiktok generation where you really do have millions of people now who have huge reach and impact and influence by creating content that people like them and the algorithm just you know, goes around and it serves you this stuff that you want to see. So your for you page really is, you know, learning about what do you like to be entertained by? What do you want to read? You know, what do you want to see? And then we’re sort of moving now into this world where chat GPT, you know, people are beginning to realise that you no longer have to start with a blank sheet of paper. And if you can get the command, right, and you can be thoughtful about the question you’re asking and how you’re posing it, and what persona you want to adopt in order to get the answer through in a matter of milliseconds, now, you’ve got a page full of pretty good content, be that content that you want to share on the web, or actually quite technical content. So, you know, this is huge advances, isn’t it?
Alex Alexander:
It certainly is. And I think, you know, it’s about personalising everything for the individual. And, you know, at milliseconds, as you said, it’s like having a personal concierge. And I remember you used to talk about this concept, as something in the future, six or seven years ago, but it’s not the reality because with, you know, generative AI, effectively, you’re, you’ve got a personal
Dom Burch:
You love data, don’t you and you love insight you concierge that can tell you, you can do your shopping across many websites, by just one command, don’t even actually have to go to the specific websites. So you could say you want to buy some theatre tickets, and find me the best tickets for these times. And generative AI I could actually do all the heavy lifting for you, or I fancy eating some, some food and I want the ingredients. And effectively, it’s really the concept of personal consiege, that at your fingertips in the moment, it’s now possible. And you combine that with Blockchain, because then you know exactly how authentic that thing is. And of course, in the world of fashion and luxury, where I spent four years in, that’s so important. You want to know that that Gucci bag that you’re buying actually genuinely Gucci, or that theatre tickets that you’ve got a genuinely genuine. So I think all of that has been made possible at a much faster pace that I hadn’t had imagine. And I’m in tech, love finding out what’s working, what’s not working. And then that allows you then to streamline and be more efficient and actually to build teams of real people. But make sure you’ve got the right talent in the right place, doing the right stuff. Just talk me through some of that, because some of that learning you’ve brought now into the present day, which we’ll move on to in a moment.
Alex Alexander:
Yeah, as I said before, I mean, one common denominator in all of my roles has been about people, you know, how do you get the team best out of the team. And you know, in early days of my career, I used to think about, okay, that’s got to be about the tech strategy that’s going to be about the overall strategy. But one of the things that I learned probably over a decade ago, that it’s actually no, it’s about the human side of it. It’s the cornerstone of every successful productive team. And every successful launch, whatever that launch may have been, you know, across any of the industries that I’ve worked in, is to get everybody to believe in that shared purpose. And if everybody was really passionate about it, you know, as you face setbacks, failures, which we know with any big launches, you’re going to hate those setbacks and difficulties. And if you don’t have that you give up because it is hard, it is hard to do some of those difficult things. And, and this purpose always needs to be contagious. Because everybody at all levels in the team really need to feel it, and they can connect to it. And I always look back to this famous story about JFK, visiting NASA during the Apollo programme. And it’s amazing, because he struck up a conversation with the janitor at Mission Control. And he asked him what he was doing. And the janitor replied, I’m putting a man on the moon. I think that sums it up that once you’ve got that shared vision, everything is possible. The second ingredient is you know, for getting the best out of the team is to make sure they’ve got the right skills, and they know what to do in terms of the context of the job. And the last thing is that, get them to do what they’re good at. And leave them alone and don’t interfere with them and give them autonomy in what they’re doing. And I still don’t understand that, in some of the organisations that I’ve come across, they still tell people how to do things. And you shouldn’t because clever people, they will figure it out. You just need to give them the shared purpose. You need to make sure they’ve got the right skills, and really set them loose to do the magic.
Dom Burch:
Love that absolutely love that. Now, you know, I’m working in a technology company. It’s funny, isn’t it? Like our paths have sort of gone away and diverged? And then here we go back at this intersection. So I’m working at a blockchain company one of the things you know, we’re a startup, right? And we’re kind of in that scale up sort of zone where we’re beginning to, I mean, there’s almost too many opportunities coming our way. So we’re having to be really, really focused on which ones we go after. But we know we’re quite a small team. And we’ve we’ve had a setback. And it’s really interesting to see in that moment of, you know, distress how people show up. And actually the importance of having culture and the importance of having shared values and a purpose. You just see the best of people and you see the best of an organisation, it was always the way wasn’t it at Asda when we had a crisis? We we’re often at our very best in a crisis, funnily enough.
Alex Alexander:
Yes.
Dom Burch:
Talk to me about what you’re up to now then, because you know, you’re based over in Italy, you know, you are a truly a sort of a global citizen in many ways. But talk to me about your your new venture, because it’s really exciting.
Alex Alexander:
If I go back, if you asked me the same question Dom, six months ago, I would have definitely said to you, I’m going to get into something a bit more complex, even bigger than the previous things put together. But, you know, life has got this knack of throwing curveballs at you doesn’t it? We’ve all experienced that. And a Family Health Emergency last year, give me a moment to you know, stop and reflect and ask myself, what is it that I really want to do, and what really matters to me? Right now I’ve reached the stage, I’m genuinely excited about the future. And I want to really carve out something which is new and something which is uniquely mine, based on, you know, the journey that I’ve had, you know, everybody’s journey is unique. And, and in some ways, my journey has shaped me as a person that I’m in today. So I would like to turn my passion for people, and building great teams, which is really essentially, if you know, take the technology part of it out is that that’s what I’ve done for the last two decades, you know, creating teams that are outperform, and I want to build a product or platform, however we want to put it to improve the productivity of tech teams, but also address something that I’m really, really passionate about. And that’s sustainability of digital products, because we have a huge footprint, carbon footprint when it comes to digital products. And I’m curious, I’m passionate about both of these challenges. And really, ever since I came up with this idea, I haven’t really been able to stop thinking about it. And I feel in some ways, over the last decade or so, I’ve been trying to solve the same two challenges, but in different roles with different companies. And now I want to have the opportunity to figure out how to solve this for every company, in every industry, so that they can measure the productivity of the tech teams, but it can also improve it. I mean, aligned to this. The second part of this is that I want to really leverage the same platform, really my experience to create sort of a new kind of tech community, if you like the bionic teams that are teams that our productivity levels are off the charts. And if we go back to our earlier conversations just a couple of minutes ago, I think technologies such as generative AI and blockchain are key to solving this. And, you know, you may ask me the question, well, why Italy, why I decided to do this venture in Italy. And for me, the timing of the launch is September. And the reason it is Italy, because I’ve had some fantastic work experiences, fantastic life experiences, having lived and work in Italy for about four years. And I still know so many people, you know, friends, mentors, and how I have a special connection to Italy. So I see great opportunities in Italy as well. So I think this is really my path, my journey. And it is going to be both a personal journey and a business journey. Because, you know, Italy is not my home town. So I’m moving, you know, everything from UK to Italy. But what is what really I’m determined, I’ve thought about this long and hard I want to share my experience of building a startup, i.e. by building a public approach, and I want to share it with everyone. So I would like to inspire anyone with a dream, like my dream. And I want to give something back to all of those people that throughout my career have helped me to get here.
Dom Burch:
I mean, it’s well known in the circles I operate in that Alex Alexander is one of the nicest people you’re likely to bump into, not just in the tech industry, but in the world. Right. So I mean, that just goes without saying. Tell me what it means to be a pre-lancer, right? Because that’s one of the things that, you know, you’re setting apart and you’re you’re beginning to put this focus on talent in a different way. What does that mean to be a pre-lancer?
Alex Alexander:
I think it’s about freedom. It’s about freedom to choose what you want to do. And I think the idea of freelancing, combined with portfolio career is really maximising that freedom that anybody could have in terms of choosing what they want to do and perhaps having more than one job. Maybe they’re working on something for four days a week and maybe they want to do one day something else. And that flexibility means that there is opportunities for development opportunities to learn new things. And I think freedom is really important because it is linked to productivity. And I think if you have the freedom of thinking, freedom of mind, and excitement about what are the things that you choose, and you want to do, I think it’s contributes to the productivity. So that’s what I mean by combining freelancing with portfolio career to, you know, to create what are called pre-lancing.
Dom Burch:
And you know, this world of blockchain then because when we were chatting before with with Rob our CEO, well, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about this notion of how do you create this really, I mean, it can be like a micro community, right of CTOs from around the globe, who have experience and knowledge and know how and all of that kind of power that they have. But also combining that with then a blockchain platform that allows you to validate. Or the teams that they’re recruiting, you know, the the engineers and the sort of DevOps people that they might be recruiting from all around the world, who they might not meet in person, really do have the skills and the capacity and the capability to do the job. And blockchain is a sort of an enabler, isn’t it to validate that and then build that sort of trusted network?
Alex Alexander:
Correct? Absolutely. And I think it’s about that authenticity, because it’s so hard to find the right talent, obviously, everybody’s CV is their perception of, you know, what they’ve done, and, you know, their experiences and the level of depth of that experience. But of course, you know, you got to test that to make sure that they have the same skills, as they say, when they say they are, you know, senior DevOps engineer, are they really senior or are they junior, and that really using Blockchain to validate that actually, there are genuinely senior DevOps engineer or software engineer, it’s key, and being able to really even certify and authenticate that these are the different courses or different levels of learning that they have done. It’s the key to make sure that, you know, everybody is confident that the individuals are, can deliver the level of productivity that they say they can do. And it’s also true that, you know, when I talk about for companies to be able to measure the productivity of the teams, or even the sustainability of the products, to be able to authenticate that I should say, this is the source of information. This is, you know, at this point in time, this was a level of productivity or this was level of sustainability. Again, that can only be possible with Blockchain. So this is a very important use case for blockchain.
Dom Burch:
So, Alex, tell me about this passion for E commerce then and I guess it probably was ignited to some extent when we were together at Asda, because that was a time of huge change, but also real excitement, embedding, amazing technology, and and also leveraging the whole Walmart thing, too, right?
Alex Alexander:
Absolutely. And I think he was the scale of it. And I got hooked and obsessed with E commerce, because bigger the scale and of course, Walmart, everything was large scale was, the more exciting and thrilling it was. And I traced that back, why is it that I’m so obsessed with it, and it really comes back to the launch day. So picture this, it’s one or two o’clock in the morning, everyone is asleep. But your team is buzzing with excitement, because by 6am, you know, the website needs to be up, the app needs to be up because customers, you know, across the globe are going to use it. And imagine, you know, working for a year, sometimes couple of years to launch a product. And then all of the effort is going to be put to test during that four hour window. And if things are not up and running by 6am, it was usually me ringing the CEO or COO, and on a couple of times I had to do that. To say, can we have a bit more time to launch the product. So it is high stakes, it’s intense. And honestly, for me, it was addictive. It reminds me of something as you know, I’m a runner. And he reminds me of something that my inspiration Usain Bolt said is that you train for four years to run nine seconds and people give up when they don’t see results after two months. And I think this is exactly it with ecommerce launches is that it’s like a training, you train for this big race. There’s no compromising shortcuts, and it is tough. And you need to show resilience, and to get there. And I think the human side of it is quite important. And of course, if you haven’t got that human side of it, you know, aligned in terms of the passion that people give up. So I think this was a really important lesson for me.
Dom Burch:
What’s next, then? What’s the future hold? Obviously, you’ve got this announcement, this launch happening. In fact, this podcast is almost the launch for it to some extent. So so. So what’s your what’s your sort of near term ambition? Because it’s always hard, isn’t it? When you’re starting a new business? You kind of have to go where the action is, but what what’s your sort of hope and aspiration for the, for the months ahead?
Alex Alexander:
Yeah, I mean, always people used to say to me, being a CTO is a lonely place to be. And I think being a founder is a much lonelier place to be. Because, you know, you come up with this idea that at first, you’ve got to, you know, validate in your own mind, whether you’ve got that fire in your tummy to really be passionate about it, and actually then convince everybody else that is not such a crazy idea. And that actually could be done. And we’ve got to figure out how to do it. And that always reminds me of one of the fantastic things that I heard Jeff Bezos say that if your idea doesn’t create misunderstanding it is not innovative enough. So my idea, maybe creating misunderstanding, so I’ve got to really explain that in a way that everybody can understand it. And I like to join up with some like minded individuals that actually have the same passion to want to do this, and go this journey together. And of course, you know, I want to share my journey. Everything, the good, bad, ugly, the things that I’ve learned along the way. So I want to do that I’ve got to figure out the best way that I can share my journey with everybody, as I, you know, go through my personal and business journey from UK to Italy. So maybe, maybe a podcast is the best approach, maybe some other ways to share that. But really starting to build a team starting to really building some of the foundation for the business. And, you know, for me, I’m in no rush to get to any destinations. Because for me, what is key is the journey of what I’m learning along the way, which is important learning about how I can use generative AI, in achieving this objective how I can use blockchain to achieve these objectives.
Dom Burch:
And where can people find out more Alex? So you’ve got a website launched, give people the details, where can they go? And if they want to get, you know, start joining in that journey?
Alex Alexander:
First of all, follow me on LinkedIn. So I think that’s the first thing I would say. Because all the launch details will be will provide that in September when things are ready. And of course, when everybody’s back from holidays, because that’s another thing right now in Italy that, you know, everybody’s on holiday. So I think in September, all will be revealed, but, you know, connect with me, because I want to really make sure that I can share more information with everybody about this, what I call exciting idea, and something that is innovative as well. But yeah, connect with me, follow me and, and I really I like to tell my story to everybody. And I like to excite everybody else about what I’m excited about.
Dom Burch:
Alex, it’s been a pleasure catching up with you. I’m sure we can check in again, and have another podcast in three months time, six months time, and just see how far you’ve got down that journey. But for the time being, thank you so much for coming on to the ubloquity podcast.
Alex Alexander:
My pleasure. And I have to return the compliment as well as that said to you, I mean, you’ve been an inspiration to me as well. And I’ve learned so much from you as well, both as a friend, former colleague, so thank you for the great thing that you’re doing as well. And I love your podcast, and it’s a pleasure to be part of it now.
Dom Burch:
Thanks Alex. I’m blushing even the dogs joining in in the background but for the time being. Thanks so much for coming on.
Alex Alexander:
Thank you.
