Name: Johanna Marjo Kayhko

Title: Founder

Organisation: Miio

Professional female CTO/COO with a Business Degree and a University study program on strategies and strategic Leadership.

My natural interest in psychology and the human mind has led me to study Leadership for the past 10 years and as a result, I developed a Framework that compliments Agile Frameworks and takes into consideration roles such as Manager, Team/organisation Leader, the differences between management and leadership, recruitment and career paths.

My Management and Leadership Framework for Tech organisations provide very concrete tools on how anyone can increase productivity and job satisfaction in any Software Development team and other Tech teams. I plan to publish my work this year as soon as possible because I think finally Tech really needs to evolve the Leadership to next level.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Johanna's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Managing information flow in situations where I worked for a bigger public company who had a way of working where all important decisions where made by a small group of people behind closed doors and only after these decisions were final, they were communicated to us. I had to deliver these news to my team often in a situation where even I didn't agree with the decisions being made or was not given basically any reasoning or justifications what these decisions were based on.

In these kind of situations while you communicate with your team, you can't put up a fake smile and pretend that you're fully on board because people see immediately through you and you lose their respect. So when they asked me why these decisions where made, I had to honestly tell them that I don't know and patiently listen while the team was having a conversations and bringing up several (very valid) points. I know the people will do what's expected of them but I won't force them to buy everything that's being decided.

Often in these situations I have used my own creativity. I'm really good at being creative and seeing different outcomes of different solutions. So instead of ending the meeting on a sad note, I bring up new opportunities that these decisions bring to us.

As a result in one conversations like this, my team "took the matters on their own hands", rebuilt all Front End microservices that were in the plans for the next few years and gave them to the approriate teams for maintenance, This way we cut the delivery timeline of new architecture by a year and we were able to guarantee that these micro services all followed good practisies and were at a high quality. We did all these while we delivered a new igaming brand that we were expected to build on an old obsolete technology.

I'm sorry my answer is a bit tech heavy but these situations are the most difficult to handle and there's not always asilver lining that can make things easier. That's why I'm a very firm believerer in early communication, in tech organisations ideas and future decisions should be open for communication - i host twice a week a 10 minute coffee break where I ditch all the gossip and what's being diuscussed with Executives (hardly ever it's anything that can't honestly be shared). When I get feedback, good points and valid concerns from the team, my role becomes about represetation of their voice and I bring forward the valuable input I got.

It's just sometimes it's too late. I really can't understand why there are still so many Tech organisations who make all important decisions behind closed doors while leaving out the best innovators, people with most relevant knowledge, the ones who have the experience - because when those decisions are made, it's too late to start bringing in the feedback. In my organisations I avoid this at all cost. Communication is not just a word, it means a lot of concrete things in Leadership.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I think I have always been a leader in terms of my personality and who I am. So I was not surprised that in my first real Tech company I worked for, I started to reach out to new territories rather quickly that would eventually make me a leader.

At first, I was solely responsible to cater to our clients that were under maintenance contracts. When the customers contacted us, they often needed come minor changes or fixes that I took take care of. This gave me an opportunity to understand that just because they are under maintenance contracts doesn't mean you can't sell them additional projects. I decided to take a lead on that and managed to sell initially small and then bigger projects.

All of our clients had a Project Manager and I kept asking and asking to get a project of my own which would include a team. I was then given my first project and a half of a developer and it was my job to make sure the client was happy and things were done on time. Overtime I started to get bigger and bigger clients and therefore bigger teams. I also became known for my creativity and ability to get creative ideas, plus the clients really liked me so the company started to give me clients that were in full blown crisis.

Projects were late, they had serious quality problems, possible friction in relationships. When I started to take on these clients and fix the problems with the teams I had, I really found my inner leader. I was good at motivating people, I was genuinely interested in them and would provide support and recignition that was unique to them.

I always got along with people really well and I always had the balls to represent my teams towards executives when they really needed something or had to put their feet to the ground with impossible timelines and too good promises made to the client.

I did this for the 8 first years of my career. I delivered dozens of projects for the biggest Finnish companies, Had a front row seat to learn how they build business and experienced every possible mistake, problem, misjudgement you can possibly do - and I learnt so much from all of them. It was the toughest possible school one can go through but afterwards I got my first CTO job at the age of 27. Becoming a female CTO would provide me the kind of challenges I never knew even existed but I was ready.

I was lucky to have been able to grow as a leader on my own terms. I was very hungry to get more responsibility and the company gave it to me when they saw I was managing well the previous ones. I grew into leadership in an environment where being a leader was not just about the team that I had, it was also about the success of our deliveries, it was about leading the clients to work with the team and delivering the best performing services. And that's how I got the basis of becoming the leader I am today.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

What an interesting questions. The first thing I do every single morning is to grab a coffee and check if Dragons Den has uploaded any new content on YouTube. I'm addicted to Dragons Den and have a dream that one day I will have a change to pitch my ideas to the dragons. Every morning I listen the pitch from the company and before the dragons get a change to provide feedback, I pause the video and provide mine to see if I was able to catch up on the main points in their business.

Which also means that I speak out loud while alone which can look a bit much crazy to outsiders. However This processs usually takes two cups of coffee. Then I quickly brush my hair, my teeth, do a fast make up, put on decent clothes and I'm ready to work. I'm using here an example I work from home. And yes, I were pants when I work from home because I'm the kind of person who would 100% flash something inappropriate by accident.

I often start my day by letting everyone know I'm present by saying Good Morning in our joint chat. I rarely book meetings for my first morning hours because I often have topics I wants to discuss with the team members and mornings - before their focus is fully on something else - are usually the best time. I rarely sit with people face to face or call them in for a face to face meeting.

The topics we discuss are business as usual, and I'm a firm believer in chat as a genius communication tool. People share much more their inner thoughts through a chat, it gives them time to think before they write something and it doesn't feel too formal.

When I tell someone good morning and how are they doing, I actually take the time to show that I care what they say and focus on few minute small talk about their lives. When I mentioned this out loud in one of my employers meeting with my colleagues, they all basically said they wish they had time to do this but they have "real work" to get to. Well, this is real work and I will show you why.

I want to know every single person who's on my team so I know how to support their growth - I have very concrete growth plans for each individual -, what are their strengths, weaknesses and how I can utilize those the best way. And I genuinely want to also support my employees mental health ( I hear those chuckles again) and that's more than real work. Mental Health is not something that's either on or off, it's a spectrum that changes for all of us all the time.

Mental health is the number one reason for sick leaves and biggest reason for performance problems with an individual who's performed earlier. So called people problems are the most expensive and disrupting problems according to Harvard Business Review and Mental health issues cost companies significant financial and strategical issues.

I do not ask people "how your mental health" but I provide the opportunity to share with my genuine "How are you". And you have no idea how many close relatives have passed away, relationships ended, I have tackled a difficult eating disorder, addiction to xanax and relationship issues - all without an ounce of shaming. If possible I might share some of my own experiences so they understand that we're all the same here, we have difficult times and we have better times.

I do this because the employees I lead are so called high value employees. I have a very specific recruitment process where I'm looking for certain set of personality traits and qualifications, then we put new people though a training program which is a big investment on our part and after that we join the person to a team that has a mind set of high performance, high quality, high everything.

If a "high value individual" is going through a personal crisis, I immediately cut back on the workload, shorten the workday (without making cuts on salary) and give them the space to heal while knowing their job is not at risk. Every-time I get back a person who's in much better mental state and welcomes the distraction of work. I honestly claim that by doing this I actually enable the team to continue high performance because untreated crisis can lead to months and months of performance issues that hinder other team members. So I spend my mornings in these chats.

Usually we chat about on going projects and possible frustrations. These bonding moments are important and give an employee a sense of importance as an individual. We all want our job to have a bigger impact and meaning, we all want to matter as individuals and I want to provide this. Also, how could I focus on growing my employees if I didn't talk to them regularly.

Rather than having formal performance talks, I give my employees materials or articles to read, we talk about them. I might raise a topic about the company itself and use it as an example while propose a book about company strategies. For technical growth I organise pair coding for a particularly difficult task - I only hire people who enjoy helping others and are ready to teach them new things.

Growing my employees is not a quarterly thing i do, It's something I do all the time while also checking up on them and their wellbeing. I have a personal policy that every day after work the team leaving home hold more intellectual property than the same morning. I'd say that my mornings are time well spent. Besides, I also learn a lot myself in these conversations so it's definitely not one sided.

Around lunch time and after I tend to have meetings. The topic of a meeting can be pretty much anything. Either I have organised the meeting and I'm there to represent the team with new ideas they have, removal of obstacles, whatever. Or I'm seeing something going on with the company that's not being communicated with me and I want to find out more. I'm used to working for bigger companies with serious communication issues so you learn quickly how to find your answers.

I might also have meetings where I share my ideas with my colleagues or my supervisor, I have always had a gift of creativity and usually come up with plenty ideas, plans or things that we could do to improve what needs to be improved. I don't hesitate to share my voice, I'd like to think that's what I'm paid for.

Mostly the meetings are about some decisions and projects that are in the talks. This is where I have had most disagreements with my approach. I believe that software developers out of all people can be communicated things early on, they are used to constant change and they know that now all ideas will see the light of the day. I have however worked also with individuals who's entire job is to sit in these meetings and make the decisions. Communication is done only after all decisions are done.

I kept fighting for open communication about any on going discussion or planning because how can you lead innovation when you shut the innovation up because "decision is already done". In Tech you work with people who are incredibly smart, they are highly specialised in what they do and always better than you in their area of expertise. If you always make decisions in your own comfortable friend group, your decisions can never be as smart as they would be with involvement of all these incredible people.

I don't mean that everyone would sit in a zoom call and wait for their time to speak with dozens of participants. I have solved the problem by hosting this twice a week 10-15 afternoon coffee where I share all topics being discussed. Sometimes people want to talk about it there and then which means that I cut the conversation and book a meeting with these people involved. Sometimes people contact me afterwards and share their thoughs on how they think things could be done better.

So that's how I spend my days up until afternoon. First some chatting and then usually meetings. After the meetings I often have some more concrete tasks to do. I for example have a policy that if someone comes up with an innovation that could help the team or the company, they first pitch the idea to me. If I think it's a good one, I remove this person from all day to day work and have them fully focus on implementing a functional version of their idea that they then present to the team.

If it's really good, we will then represent that to other teams who can start using it if they want to. It's very simple format to lead innovation, yet I rarely see companies doing that. Innovations are the key to successful tech projects and enabling it is in my opinion a necessity. During this process I also coach the person a lot on what to say when representing their idea, how a good idea is pitched, they might have a presentation that I go though and give feedback until its what we want. I share my competence with the team and coach them. I never showcase their work, they do it themselves.

Before I can move anyone from their day to day work, I have to organise this with product owners and make possible adjustments. Rest of the day i might have to discuss with other teams to align with them better, organise joint "practises" - basically it can be anything. My role is there and then to represent my team externally.

After a work day I usually cook, I'm a very passionate home cook and have dreamt about my own cooking show on youtube. Cooking is my relaxation, my meditation and my fun. I spend time with my son who is also cooking with me, ever since he was a very small boy. I'm a sole single mother which I love but with a demanding job i have to hire some help with homework and other stuff.

I go to bed super early, like 9pm. I watch some youtube or cartoons with my son and fall asleep. I used to think my parents were so lame when they went to bed at 10pm, now I wonder how on earth did they manage to stay up so late!

All I can say that my days are always different, full of surprises and new challenges. Every single day when I go to sleep, I have learnt something new and that's really exciting to me. Everyday I'm learning to become a better leader and by being a better leader, I can create better jobs where people can thrive and help creating better businesses with more innovation.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

I wasn't planning to spill the tea in this interview but at the same time I do want to share my story because at that time of my career with the credentials I had, with my level of an education and several deliveries that made significant strategic impact on the company, I did not expect to face the level of a sexism that I did. Sharing this story is scary, I don't want to blacklist myself especially now when I'm looking for the next step in my career but at the same time maybe there's employers out there who are ready to shake the dusty idea of a CTO and bring some new ideas and expectations on the role as well as inclusivity.

Kindred blacklisted me as well, when I resigned, I got the highest reviews and in the system i was "possible rehire". But when I approached the company about the treatment that I got, suddenly they were not able to recommend me anymore.

Only 8,3% of CTOs are women which is absolutely insane. And if the few of us get the treatment I got at Kindred, I'm not surprised that his number isn't getting any better in nea future.

I have fought for this career path with everything I had and It has not been easy. I have worked three timed harder than many of my colleagues, I have sacrificed my life in order for me to study business, business models, strategies, Leadership. I have a flawless trackrecord from all of my employers and have them all (well, except Kindred) recommending me. At Kindred I delivered, I delivered everything that I was expected to deliver and then some.

I made two major strategic changes on how the global tech operated. I was the only woman in my team, most of us had been CTOs of acquired companies and had now new departments and responsibilities. I was the only one with formal education on Business, strategies and strategic leadership. There were also few of us who had a significant amount of years of experience.

I was lucky in terms of employers up until i started to work for Kindred group in 2017. My previous employers had been encouraging, respectful, open minded and overall fantastic so I was actually excited to join Kindred and to be given new opportunities to learn and do something different.

My initial job was to establish a new Software development organisation in Malta where they didn't have any Tech people. I had only six moths time to start until I was given another role on top of it, the CTO of Unibet France had resigned and someone with the right kind of experience had to take over until we I find them a new CTO.

Unibet France was the biggest gaming site in France and they had completely independent Tech set up from everyone else. When I did my audit, I found many critical thinhgs to change and fix which is what I did, I hired new people and eventually a new CTO too all while establishing my department in Malta from the hotel room in Paris. I had a double role and Kindred refused to pay me any extra from this responsibility.

After I finished with Paris, the Kindred group CTO came to congratulate me from a very good job. This doesn't happen often and I was really proud of myself. Things were also going incredibly well with my newly established depertmanent and many people over seas were impressed how senior people I was able to find from Malta. Eventually I got invited to upcoming "Future Leaders of Kindred" program and given stock options as a rewards from a goob job.

Things moved forward, my department continued to grow and started to have very good reputation globally. People loved to work with us and we always wanted to go the extra mile to show that we could take more responsibility. Soon we were tasked to deliver a new gaming brand using the old legacy architecture that will be changed once this group pf people have made a plan and decided everything. Eventually my department build all the front end microservices according to the new architectural plan.

I had the only department with only senior developers and this way we were also able to quarantee consistent quality and good practises. Most of all we managed to cut over a year away from the initial plan to change the architecture. My manager never said thank you or anything at all about this.

Another big innovation my QA team built under my Innovation Leadership was a replacement of inhouse built test automation framework. with the help of the team, they modernised our pipeline and used new 3rd party framework that took only a fraction of the time than the old one. We worked on the presentation for fee weeks until my team went to Sweden to present it. As a result, one of my QAs became an architect and their testing practises became a global norm.

The first problem I experienced was that the two men who had the same title as me but had been with the company much longer were located in Stockholm. I started to notice that I was rarely invited in meetings where decisions were being made about my job. I was merely informed about these decisions at the same time with the rest of people.

I brough this up more than once, it fixed the problem maybe for a month and then the same continued. I was obvious that they wanted to handle things on their own and did not welcome any change in the way they were working. Second problem I had had to do with salary, i was paid less than my male colleagues with less experience and deliveries. This really upset me, especially since I did the Paris job for free, something I would never do today.

I also had a big issue with my manager, at Kindred you were supposed to fill in this performance form from your people once every quarter and have a conversation with them about their performance. My manager tried to do this for the first few years but often skipped the meetings and didn't fill in the questionnaire.

Failing to Filling in the questionaire really upset me because the stock options were reliant on them and he couldn't even bother to spend the extra 5 seconds on this form. My last year at Kindred was the worst, my manager spoke to me once the whole time and didn't hold any of the compulsory meetings. I had become fed up asking for them so I just let that slide.

Besides I had an eye for a new role that was built in the organisation. Kindred had a rule that all internal roles must be open for 5 days for all applicants and applicants must be treated fairly but most of the time this was just a show and most roles had been agreed before hand.

I knew that several women had left the company because the senior management under executives, mainly men, had a habit of taking young, inexperienced men under their wing and promise them roles. I saw many incredibly competent women leaving because a man with no experience was chosen for promotion. There was even a small protest in Malta office in Affiliate team but no one cared. Executives knew about it but continued to support such practises.

I never though this would happen to me. Twice in fact. There were several things that went down on a few month period of time that forced my resignation. First, the role I applied for went for a man who was promised this role already a year prior - i knew about it because he told me about it. However the worst was happening in Stockholm.

A man who had merely managerial experience with variety of success had first been promoted to our team and given the same title as rest of us. He had never been more than a manager, no experience in leadership, no understanding of business models, money, strategies and when he finally became the leader he was the worst kind.

I gave him 4 of my best employees and he managed to lose 3 of them in few months. His merits were personal, he had been years and yeards the best friend of one of the other guys in Stockholm and he was promoting him. My manager took him immediately under his wing. One of the things that really got to me when I found out that my manager had managed to drop me out of the "Future leaders of Kindred" program that had just started and that I had earned with hard hard work. He dropped me out of it without a word and gave it to his new favourite.

Then my manager announced that there's going to be changes in our organisation. He opened up 3 new roles and one of the roles was announced would immediately go to his new favourite. My manager knew how hungry I was for promotion and somehow had managed to open up a role without the generic rule of having roles available for 5 days for internal candidates.

So basically there were no candidates, he was simply handed this role over which really confused people. At the same time, my role was being demoted and my manager had failed to say anything to me. The demotion I know had nothing to do with me, it just fit more nicely in the new organisation diagram but for me it was just the last straw.

This was a company who openly supported Women in Tech Sweden and had said multiple times how they support female employees so they would get more female leaders. In reality women were resigning left and right because there were no career paths to women. In Tech. I was the only woman at that level in the organisation, if the company really supported women, they should have given me a fair honest change to apply for this role.

And the man who got it was by no means not even distantly competent compared to his team mates. Even I held Speeches at Women in Tech Sweden, promoting the company - something I severely regret this day.

I was forced to resign. I could not work for this company, I could not look myself in the mirror and work for them, I had more self respect than that. I think one of the worst things happened when the company refused to give me my shares. Kindred had a three year strategy periods and those who worked throughout the three year period, were given company shares.

I worked through this period and resigned way after it, and although my resignation was not your regular "got a new job, I will miss you so much" resignation but a forced one because I was humiliated to my core, I was not given these shares.

I shared my story because I felt that It needed to be heard. I approached Kindred with my story and all they did was to refuse to ever recommend me to any job which was just incredible. The least I would expect is a public apology and those shares that belong to me.

The lesson I learned was that even as a seasoned female CTO, who had delivered her every promise and made significant contributions strategically, you can end up humiliated and abused. So far this is the only experience Ive had and Im by no means sensitive to "sexist" jokes or harmless banter.

What. happened in this company is serious and I do not know if there's anything I can do about it. All I can say that it changed me, up until those experienced i really believed that hard work will get me places and it was a bitter lesson to swallow that hard work and great competence can mean nothing if the company is prone to promote this kind of behavior.

All I regret is not speaking about this sooner. I wish this will reach Kindred and i will get my apology and shares - that I more then deserve also because I worked for free in Paris for them. This experience did not make me bitter or scared, I now know that if a company is willing to hire a female CTO, that company is also willing to look into the future and move forward.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

I'm a huge fan of Simon Sinek, I have read a lot of his work and listened to his lectures. He has a very deep understanding what it truly means to Lead people and his teachings never get old.

My favourite has been the "start with why". With age I have become more and more I wouldn't say brutal but very decisive on focus and that the works being done, is serving the companys mission and strategy. I have seen so many companies that are all over the place, without any understanding how the items on their backlog impact their revenue streams and profits.

Start with why was not only about being able to know what work is important but how to lead people with a stark mission in mind. How to deep learn with your team what your mission is, what's delivering on that mission and whats the overall value of work. Being able to lead people and make sure their everyday work is impacted, directed and supported by company mission, the key strategy and the value we want to deliver, is just fantastic. Easier said than done though, looks like I'm going to utilize chat even more to get this books teachings to come across.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Believe in yourself. Make mistakes, and learn from them. Always apply for significantly better jobs than you think you can get, even when you're happily employed. You'd be surprised how many interviews you get and those interviews are going you teach you so much. Wanting to advance your career can be incredibly frustrating but getting the right next job is a numbers game.

The more you send applications, the more likely it is that you're hired. When I was young, it took me years worth of applications to get where I wanted to go but oh boy did I have some interesting interviews for jobs I had 0 change or getting. Of course mainly apply for the jobs you CAN get and you want to be the next step of your career. Just apply apply apply, eventually you will get hired, I promise.

There will be times when you're alone your biggest fan. But you cannot stop ever believing in yourself. As long as you grow and learn, you will make it.

And most importantly. As a leader you need two main interest areas. You need to look around and understand the market your company is in, the competitors and overall landscape. Study the business basics, learn how to make a business model and learn how to fill in Business Model Canvas. Learn about mission, vision and strategy.

Don't become a leader if you can't get along with people because thats the other interest area. Getting along with people will be your typical day and if you don't genuinely like people, you will be miserable. You know what even Steve Jobs said? That the greatest product he ever built was the team. Im sure Steve was miserable dealing with people every day.

If you're the kind of person who's genuinely interested to learn about people, you naturally get along with them, you simply LIKE people, then yes you can become a leader. And finally, every attempt a human kind has tried to measure social construct has failed. If you give people something their performance is measured by, they will only seek to make this number better and you can say goodbye to all your hard work when teaching people about value and purpose..

A great leader knows when he's/she's done a Good job. If you're a woman and want to become a CTO, please do it!! This industry desperately needs to change from this "one profile model fits all" approach to more modern, human centric Tech Leadership. And we need more women, we DESPERATELY need more women. It will be super hard but the most rewarding career path ever.

That was definitely more than one advice. If I would choose only one, I'd say Do it if you like people. Don't do it if you dont or you'll be miserable every day. Everything else is built on top of this.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

While working at Kindred group I took over teams that were struggling, once I took over a team that had three prior managers and all of them failed to make it work. It was the most toxic team I have ever seen and during our one on one calls people were crying and pouring their heart out.

I took over the team and I think it took me two weeks to make it functional again without any drama. The problem with previous managers was that they didn't understand their role and tried to get too involved with things that are not part of leadership.

Leadership is a role like every other role. You're not above people, you work with people and you just happen to have a different job description. I'm not saying that it's easy and there are no guides how Tech leadership should look like. Agile gave so mnay good principles, role definitions and definitions of responsibilities that it has helped millions and millions of team to perform.

But Agile doesn't take into consideration roles like Manager, team Leader, it doesn't say anything about recruitment or career paths. This is why I have developed a framework for Tech leadership and this interview and my policies are based on this framework.

I can't wait to publish my work this year and my biggest dream is to be able to help as many teams as Agile has. You have to have dreams and aim high, this way you will have the most interesting and exciting leadership experience in Tech.