Christopher Nowell

Vice President, Professional Services EMEA

Born:
Hampshire, England

Prior Experience:
RightNow Technologies, VP Professional Services EMEA
Mastercard Advisors, Solution Delivery Director
Maritz, Head of IT and Consulting Services Director
PA Consulting, Senior Programme Manager

Education:
Leeds University, BSc, Mathematics and Computer Science

What I like to do outside of work:
Playing sport (swimming, tennis, squash). Designing and building houses. Pursuing my interest in modern architecture.

Q: Where in your background did you learn the most?
A: I feel really lucky as a I genuinely think I've learned a huge amount in almost every role I've taken since graduating, both positive and negative. Everything I learned before graduating seems a bit of a blur now, probably because it's just such a long time ago!

I can't single out any individual learning, but I'm the kind of person who learns most in terms of approach and attitude from an inspiring and visionary leader, and I'm in absolutely no doubt that we have such a person at SuccessFactors.

Q: If you could meet one person in history, who would you meet and why?
A: Leonardo da Vinci.

Why? Because I'd love to get inside the head of someone who was hundreds of years ahead of his time and whose ideas and inventions inspired so much that is in our society today. He's also someone who, in relation to his achievements and ideas, is under-recognized today as all most of us know of him is his renaissance art and his most famous works such as the Mona Lisa.

I also happen to be a frustrated architect with an interest in all forms of modern architecture. As a result, I'd love to listen to the philosophies and ideas of someone who himself was an architect of the highest caliber, albeit around 500 years ago.

Q: What's been your biggest surprise during your time at SuccessFactors?
A: I think that, once you understand the essence of our leader, very little of our behavior as individuals and in teams and our values/culture is a surprise. Open communication, no bulls**t, customer first, no blind copying and lots more besides epitomizes his leadership and operating style. Our behavior and values are in this image.

Q: If you had 20 seconds to tell a new client about why they should use SuccessFactors, what would you say?
A: Fundamentally, your people drive your success or failure as a business. Driving their engagement, motivation and therefore their performance is the single most important thing you can do as a leader to have a serious positive impact on your top line and bottom line. Our products and services provide the perfect way to drive this engagement, motivation, productivity and performance, and what's more, they do so in an extremely cost-effective way and in a way which delivers time to value extremely rapidly.

Q: Why are you proud to work at SuccessFactors?
A: I personally thrive on having a clear mission (and am therefore proud of what I do and engaged when this mission is clear). To me, our mission is not only extremely clear but is also extremely compelling for almost every kind of organization on our planet, from the US Government to the Mom and Pop store at the end of our street.