#56 Stepping Aside: Nathalie Tindsjö is the New CEO at Ambition
– I can lead this company for five years. After that, someone else should take over.
In February 2021 Jane Murray, Cecilia Brunemark and I started Ambition. Offices were closed, all meetings were online, the pandemic had turned an entire industry upside down. Not entirely unlike October 2002, when my co-founders and I started inUse in the middle of the dot-com crash. A different kind of chaos.
I have no data to back this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if companies that start in difficult times turn out to be more resilient than those that don't. When you start in a crisis, you simply learn to do more with less.
Breathing life into an organization
Jane and I started first. We spent hundreds of hours figuring out what designers and leaders actually need to keep growing. We were convinced that professional development was broken. Traditional courses, a couple of days off work once a year, are inspiration at best. What people need is something continuous. A steady stream of curated knowledge and a community to grow alongside.
And we knew we could never understand what was really needed if we weren't living the same challenges ourselves. So Ambition would have to do both, consulting and training. And soon we realized that to do either well, we also had to help managers succeed at competence management in the broadest sense. Training, consulting, recruitment, and leadership development.
Ambition is not the result of a business plan, even though we have one (in dire need of an update). It is the result of passionate people deciding, one by one, what kind of place this should be.
Ambition is a movement. A genuine desire to strengthen everyone who works with developing digital products and services. The people inside the company. The clients and partners we meet in our work. And the wider community of designers and researchers and product people out there, many of whom we will never meet in person but still want to help grow, in confidence as much as in craft.
Ambition is a culture. Generosity, curiosity, openness. Psychological safety, which sounds like a buzzword until you've worked somewhere that doesn't have it. There are so many things I don't know. Ambition is the kind of place where I have never felt stupid for asking. Where you can grow and laugh at the same time.
Ambition is a drive. An ambition, if you like, to keep getting better. To DO things, not just talk about them. To experiment, to learn, to occasionally fail in interesting ways.
Everyone who has been here from the start, and everyone who comes after, are breathing life into this organization. These things are not something that you just decide, or write into a business plan.
What started as a few notes in Evernote has turned into 29 amazing people, over 500 curious Ambition Empower members, and 35 million SEK in annual revenue, with a healthy margin every single year. All this in a time when a lot of companies in our industry have either shrunk or shut down entirely.
I am really proud of what the team has built.
Nathalie Tindsjö takes over as CEO
I told everyone who joined that first year, Jane, Cecilia, Anders, Nathalie, Annelie and Jakob, the same thing:
– I can lead this company for five years. After that, someone else should take over.
It probably sounded strange. It still might. But I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to set direction, build culture, find the right people, establish a new brand, create something with a reason to exist. And then, when the time came, step aside. The time has come.
From June 1st, Nathalie Tindsjö takes over as CEO.
Nathalie has been with us since the start. She has often been the person I turned to when something genuinely important needed to get done. She delivers. People listen when she talks. And it is really fun to work with her. That last one is underrated. In my experience, it is one of the most reliable indicators of a good leader.
At the same time, the organization is also strengthened by Afra Noubarzadeh stepping in as Head of Professional Growth, and Pontus Wärnestål taking on the role of Head of Design. Both roles are crucial for where Ambition is heading.
In many ways, the leadership transition has already been happening. Nathalie, Cecilia, Jane and Jakob have been leading this company for quite some time. Over the last year I've deliberately stepped back, supporting rather than leading, letting the handover happen gradually rather than all at once.
Changing roles
I wrote about leaving inUse in an earlier issue of this newsletter. 134 colleagues, 17 years, a company I loved. How I kept pressing refresh and checking whether my email was actually working. How it takes time to find your place again when the daily rhythm you've built your life around simply stops.
This is different.
I am not leaving Ambition. I am changing roles. Chairman of the Board, which I already am, but now properly. I work on the boards of Touchtech, Vizcon and Styrelseakademien. I put real time and structure into that work. Ambition has always been the exception. The cobbler's children have no shoes. This is the perfect time to change that.
Nathalie runs the company. I support from the sidelines. It is a good division of labour.
Jane and Cecilia. Without you, Ambition would have been something quite different, if it had existed at all. Annelie, Nathalie, Anders and Jakob. You joined that first year, when everything was still new and uncertain and nobody really knew if this would work. That took courage. And to everyone who has been part of Ambition since then, colleagues, clients, partners, friends who have supported us along the way. You know who you are. Thank you.
…
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to Mike Monteiro. He said that knowing when to leave is its own kind of leadership. He didn't know what was about to happen.
But I smiled.
…
Nathalie. You've always had ambition. Now you have Ambition. I can't wait to see what you and the team do with it.
Love.