Endava CEO John Cotterell was running the one-year-old tech firm when he visited a client site in 2001. One of his employees, a software engineer, approached him with a question.
"Our customer has a problem," he told Cotterell, fishing around for the CEO to give him orders. "What do you want me to do about it?" "Fix it," Cotterell replied.
Cotterell wondered why the engineer felt a need to ask for direction from his boss. So he asked him.
"Everywhere else I've worked, we were supposed to go to the manager of the account and tell them that the client has a problem," the engineer explained. "Then we would see if we could use that as an opportunity to cross-sell our other services."
This led Cotterell to an epiphany: He never wanted to run a company in which his team treated a client's problem as what he calls "a commercial proposition." He also wants employees to feel empowered to solve problems on their own.
Let Employees Fix Their Own Problems Like The Endava CEO
"I want them to fix the problem, not have it affect how we operate," said Cotterell, chief executive of Endava, a U.K.-based global software and technology consulting company.
Focusing on solving clients' problems — and reimaging the relationship between how people use technology — has worked well for Cotterell. He founded the company in February 2000 that would grow into Endava.
And its growth has been impressive. Adjusted profit this fiscal year is on track to hit $2.54 a share, up 586% from 2017. That's more than 37% average annual compounded earnings growth in that time. Revenue is on pace to hit $900 million this fiscal year, analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence estimate. That's up more than 30% compounded annually in the past five years.
Keeping up with such fast growth takes solid management skills. Cotterell, 61, runs a company of more than 11,000 employees with offices in 55 cities in 25 countries. Its head count has increased roughly 36% from just a year ago.
Manage Fast Growth Like The Endava CEO
Given its fast growth, hiring the right people is a top priority. Those employees can then be developed further. Cotterell says a core purpose of Endava is "enabling our people to be the best that they can be." He says that requires a work environment that's conducive to attracting and retaining stars.
New Hires Pass The Culture-Fit Test First
When screening job candidates, the company vets them in two stages. "We do our cultural fit interviews before we do our technical fit interviews," Cotterell said. "We look for cultural alignment first."
An organization's culture often takes its cues from its leader. At Endava, the top dog is a cool cat.
"John is soft-spoken," said Bryan Bergin, managing director at Cowen. "Ego is not what I think of when I think of him."
Bergin recalls a presentation in which Cotterell let his team discuss their projects with a group of equity analysts. Cotterell kept a low profile while his employees took center stage.
"He was very prideful about their work and how they help clients," Bergin said. But Cotterell remained quiet and didn't try to steal their thunder.
When recruiting newcomers, Cotterell wants his hiring managers to assess candidates' attitudes and personalities.
"We look for a little humility, a mindset that revolves around other people and how they can make a quality impact on our team," he said. If interviewers detect any sign of what Cotterell calls "a nasty edge" in how they relate to others, that's a giant red flag.
Hold Your Company Values Dear
Endava also seeks candidates who embody the company's values. Examples include openness — being transparent about a problem and addressing it forthrightly with a client — and adaptability in embracing an agile approach as conditions change.
Adapting to change comes naturally to Cotterell. Born in London, his family moved to Hong Kong when he was three. He lived there for 10 years before moving to Kenya, where he spent the bulk of his teenage years before returning to London.
"It made me more cross-culturally aware," he said. "It gets into the way you think" about connecting with people with wide-ranging backgrounds.
For instance, he cites the concept of losing face in China as a key aspect of their culture. "We don't see that as much in the West," he said.
To save face, it's important to treat others with respect and handle criticism or conflict with extra care and sensitivity.
Endava CEO Gives Project Managers Autonomy To Thrive
Many entrepreneurs are controlling by nature. But while Cotterell sets standards and establishes structures for his team, he does not micromanage.
"The way he thinks of organizational design, he tries to strike a balance between the need for people to know what they're accountable for without limiting their capability to contribute," said Chris Hart, Endava's executive vice president of client success in North America. Hart was co-founder and chief executive of Levvel, a tech strategy and consulting firm, which Endava acquired in 2021.
Cotterell favors an internal system in which project managers oversee their own profit-and-loss numbers. They also manage client service. Every month, a project manager will meet with their boss to review their most recent results and adjust their forecast for their project.
"This enables someone to grow into their career and run their own little business," Cotterell said.
A risk of holding these monthly conversations is that higher-ups will express disappointment if managers underperform. But Cotterell encourages more coaching and less berating.
"We don't go heavy on 'You missed your numbers,' " he said. "Endava's culture is a more supportive, developmental one. It's that framework of clear ownership and strong coaching that enables people to develop."
Don't Call Employees 'Resources,' Says Endava CEO
To help clients harness innovation, Endava uses what Cotterell calls scrum teams. These teams propose new ideas, establish proof of concept and design prototypes that clients can test.
"It all comes out of agile methodology," he said. "A group of eight to 10 people — creatives, engineers, testers, subject matter experts — form a scrum team." They generate more ideas and innovate more effectively through close collaboration.
Hart, who met Cotterell in late 2020, admires how the Endava CEO uses language to reinforce certain values. If someone refers to employees as "resources," for instance, the CEO will speak up.
"John will gently correct that," Hart said. "He'll say, 'If you refer to them as resources, they will act like resources.' "
He also makes his presence felt in meetings without dominating them. He rarely holds court, preferring to listen and interject with piercing questions.
"In meetings when the team will be working on a challenge, John's input is often in the form of questions, not directives," Hart said. "It's the Socratic method of leadership. It's a nonconfrontational style, and it comes from a place of genuine intellectual curiosity."
John Cotterell's Keys:
- Founder and CEO of Endava, a U.K.-based global software and technology consulting company.
- Lesson: Focus on solving clients' problems, not using their problems as a springboard to cross-sell more products or services to them.
- "Endava's culture is a more supportive, developmental one. It's that framework of clear ownership and strong coaching that enables people to develop."
