Darren Roos Chairman of IFS.ai | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:11Hello, my name is John Reynolds. Welcome to Extraordinary Life Stories. On this episode, I'm talking with global business leader Darren Roos. Darren is the back-to-back winner of the CEO of the Year Awards. He's now the chairman of IFS, a multinational enterprise software company. With a strong background in technology and digital transformation, Darren has been instrumental in driving the growth and innovation of IFS, positioning it as a leader in enterprise software solutions. Darren is recognised for his forward-thinking approach and deep understanding of how technology can drive business success in today's fast evolving market.

0:53I'm really looking forward to talking with Darren. So let's get into it. Darren, thank you for joining me. Thank you, John. We're looking forward to this. Me too. Tell me, who is Darren Rooz? South African born, been in the UK now for 12 odd years. CEO up until recently of a large software business and now chairman across three different software businesses, global businesses with a couple of billion in revenue and 10 ,000 employees. And awarded back-to-back CEO of the Year Award. I'll say that for you. I love this about you. There's, for someone that has got quite so much success attributed to you in the business world, there's a real lack of ego.

1:38How have you managed that? How has that something that you've sort of chosen to manage, it come naturally? to you? Well, I think, especially when you run a large business, as I've been privileged enough to do, it's always a massive team effort. And I think that the day that you go home and you go, the success is my success, you've got a bigger problem. So, you know, I think for me, it's always been about attracting great people around me and making sure that I can set a tone for them. And it's, you know, the success that we have is not my success. It is a success of a much bigger organisation and without them it would never have happened.

2:15So, you know, there's a term which is servant leadership, which I've never really liked. But, you know, I think it's true. You embrace it. Where did the kind of early influences for you, kind of who and what for your business and sort of life decisions? Tell me about that. As we've discussed before, you know, I started working quite young. My parents, you know, were very much blue collar workers. We grew up in an environment where we didn't have a lot. And I was introduced to work really young. And I guess that was my introduction to the business world. As young as 10 years old, this was in South Africa.

2:59You wouldn't have got away with this in health and safety rules in the UK. But at 10 years old in South Africa, I'd drive a tractor in the holiday resort that my parents ran, ferrying guests backwards and forwards in the day resort. And that seems crazy, but it was this little tractor with a trailer behind, and I'd be on it from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening, driving guests around for tups. You were interacting with the guests as well? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as you do when you're younger, it doesn't come naturally, but it comes with time. That's what I mean. Like, it's a life skill developing from such a young age, right?

3:32And a discipline. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's the key, is that you learn a bunch of discipline and a strong work ethic. And I think that was installed in me very early. And then, you know, I think like a lot of people that have been successful, I worked very hard and I got very lucky. And the intersection of those two things are the result. Do you believe you make your own luck? Because luck gets talked about a lot, right? But, I mean, you've got to put yourself in the right position. You've got to have that mindset and discipline to then put yourself in a position where potentially luck comes to you.

4:03Yeah, I think a lot of people are, not everybody, but a lot of people are presented with opportunities that they don't take because they might be too risk averse or they're in their comfort zone and they stay in their comfort zone. And I think something that I have done frequently, you know, from quite young is when those opportunities are presented, I've been comfortable to get out of my comfort zone and take those opportunities. And some of them worked and some of them hasn't worked, haven't worked. but I think that being comfortable to take the risks is important and that's been a factor. So that's basically being comfortable to put yourself in an uncomfortable position.

4:43So that's something that you've embraced early because that's, I know the saying, the comfort zone is where dreams go to die has caught me out before. Built a business, cookie cut and then the world changed around me and I had stood still. I wasn't the resilient person needed to be to them deal with things when certain things came along that were really tricky to deal with. So I think change is something that human beings are not comfortable with. We are creatures of habit. We're very comfortable with our comfort zone, the status quo. And nothing that I did, but my parents, as I said, ran holiday resorts.

5:19And they moved a lot because the nature of that job was that they would work in a resort. they would affect change. Once that change was affected, they'd move on to another resort. So, you know, as a child or as a youngster, I went to lots of different schools. You know, I think once we moved to the UK, I lived in the same house for four years. That was the longest I'd ever lived in one house in my entire life. So you were really used to that? I was very comfortable with change. Making new friends. Yeah, exactly. Interesting. And then you apply that, whether it's changing jobs, moving home, making friends, you adapt to being able to do that more easily and being more comfortable with the change.

5:57And I think it's an important skill set, being comfortable to get out of your comfort zone and embrace change is extremely important. And you had an early, that was given to you early through your parents' experience. If someone was watching and listening to this now and really wanted to change, they knew it was the right thing for them, but they don't know how to. Is there any advice you give to someone to taking those first steps to making those changes? I mean I haven't thought about it much but I think that being aware of it is probably just the first step. You know being aware that the feeling of anxiety that is natural to feel when you're going through change whether that is changing schools, whether that is moving home, going to a new job, any of these things are things that are going to happen many many times and in fact in a modern generation you're going to change jobs many more times than you would have if you were older.

6:51But recognising that that feeling of discomfort is normal and try and embrace it. Recognise that that discomfort is okay. And actually, if you fast forward to right now, so you could have effectively stayed at IFS if you'd wanted to because of the success you're having now and so on. You choose to change roles. Is that a deliberate conscious thing that goes back to the fact that you don't want to be sitting comfortably and marinating in stuff that becomes normal? Are you looking to always push yourself and grow? I think there's probably some of that. I think IFS is a slightly different situation where, you know, I've been CEO for six years.

7:31I'm a big believer that, you know, CEO 10 years shouldn't be much longer than that. I think that you come in with a bunch of energy and ideas. And after six years, I don't know that you're bringing a lot of energy and ideas anymore. and in fact my successor when he joined and you know I was part of recruiting him he you know he's a massive part of the success of the business now in his first hundred days he saw a hundred customers it was a mantra that he had I wasn't seeing hundred customers in a hundred days six years in you know I mean so you that change brings a level of energy and yes you you're facing some slightly different changes the continuity and so on but there's no question that it invigorates the business it brought new energy and ours was a very carefully planned transition but to answer your question i think part of it was that i felt it was the right thing for the business as a shareholder that was important to me but equally i did want to be able to challenge myself in different ways and you know when i left software ag i'd been there for nine years i'd gone from being an individual contributor salesperson to being running international sales, being a member of the board.

8:40And, you know, I left there in an extremely comfortable position, earning a lot of money in a place where I had a ton of credibility and went into SAP, which was a massive organisation, and like shark infested waters compared to Software AG. But a fresh challenge. But a fresh challenge. And I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and had a really good time at SAP. But again, left a very comfortable position there to move to IFS to challenge myself again. So I think being comfortable with that was an important part of it. You're probably the perfect person to ask this, but with the popularity of, say, the podcast, The Diary of a CEO, and the business side of life becoming a lot more, and rightly so, of interest to people in a world where celebrity could often be Love Island and so on, you know, so many people are aspirational in business now.

9:31What would you say makes a really good CEO? So I think it's interesting because there's so much desire, I guess, on people who would answer that question to paint a very glamorous picture and to give you a very, I guess, a sexy answer. But it really isn't. What makes a good CEO, I believe, is firstly, you have to work incredibly hard. It demands... You're not having a conversation about work-life balance often. You have to love what you do and your job needs to be, you know, everything. So passion and purpose is important, right? A hundred percent, because you're not going to put in that work without the passion and purpose.

10:13The passion and purpose become the reason that you're, or the way that you're able to apply yourself that consistently and work that hard. I think that building on the hard work, you have to be, I think, the most effective CEOs, and it's certainly been a way for me, is being to be very authentic. I think that some CEOs like to paint a picture of kind of perfection and talk a lot about vision and mission, but not on the how are we going to get there, rather just where are we headed. For me, I've always benefited hugely, and at IFS I think have been particularly effective by being authentic. And, you know, I weathered COVID in my time at IFS, and that was really hard.

10:54And I think that my time with the employees and my ratings by the employees were consistently high. But that meant that sometimes I had to give a bad message or a tough message. And at the time, when COVID hit, we had thousands of employees all over the world. People were scared. People were really uncertain. And rather than tell them what I thought they wanted to hear, I was honest. and I told them what we knew, I told them what we didn't know, I told them how we were going to weather the storm, what the consequences of that would be. That meant, in some cases, pay cuts and taking people on to not full-time work.

11:37But we weathered that storm together and it worked really well. So I think authenticity, hard work. And then I've always been a big believer that in any leadership position, our job is to make it clear where we're going, how we're going to get there and what's in it for the individual. why are they doing it and those three things have always been important to me. Brilliant there's clear communication there even if it's not good news I remember so though we've had some memorable conversations building up to this and getting to know you I actually read about how you handled Covid and I went a stage further and started to read about the employee feedback and you know it was it was very much people first which in business can be ruthless it can be hard right but it felt feels to me like that was your priority valuing people and trying to make sure you did the right thing by people.

12:24Well, it's interesting because there were a lot of, we're a software business, there were a lot of technology companies that came out and their brand of people first was simply to say we will not lay anybody off during the pandemic. And then obviously things dragged on and in different countries, you know, different kind of lockdowns and processes happened, which meant that not everybody who made those promises were able to stick to them. And I didn't do that. And I think that it became actually became a mantra for me when when I was doing those calls and we did. I was doing town hall meetings almost on a weekly basis through COVID just so the people could have a connection.

12:59They weren't able to go to the office anymore. So, you know, I was live streaming and just taking questions from whoever wanted to dial in on that day. So you weren't hiding from anything. Also, that's outside of what you were doing six months prior, six weeks prior. So you were pivoting. You were making sure you were moving with what felt right to do. Yeah, and look, what was interesting is that it was prior to the lockdown in the UK, by and large, not a lot of activity was happening. People were, companies weren't doing stuff yet. And I got sent a letter by one of my employees, and it was a letter from one of our customers, and it was a CEO letter to the employees about what they were going to do.

13:36And I remember sitting there, it was a Friday night, I remember thinking, we're not doing anything. Like, we need to get into action. And that night, I got my management team on a call. on a call, we worked virtually through the weekend, came up with a plan on a Monday morning, we rolled it out. And it was a plan which proved to be extremely successful. But it was importantly, and this was the point I was going to make, it was a plan that wasn't employee first, to be fair. It was a plan that recognised that we had three stakeholders. Those stakeholders were our employees, they were essential for our success, but we also had a load of customers and we have to be able to provide a service to those customers, otherwise those customers would leave and then I don't need employees.

14:15and we obviously have investors. And if I wasn't going to serve those investors, they would find another CEO. So it was a plan that really recognized that those three stakeholders needed to be considered and we needed to come up with a plan that was going to balance the needs of all three stakeholders. And part of it was explaining that to the employees, which was, look, I'm not going to make you empty promises that I can't fulfill, but here is what I can tell you. What I can tell you is that, and this was the plan we did, if at this point you go into a four-day week on 80 % pay, you're going to have more time to spend with your families because you're not coming into the office anyway at the moment.

14:50You're not going to need the money because you're not having to drive into the office. There'll be some cost saving for you. So you take a bit of pain. You have my commitment that we will not lay anyone off and we gave a specific period, which we knew we could get through based on the cost saving measures that we had taken. But at that point, honestly, if we didn't know whether the world was going to end, that's a stark reminder. Maybe you doubt what was in front of you. But the other thing that's, which is so sort of relevant to this is there's all the things you're doing. And again, almost like the Instagram versus reality of the CEO role, like what you put out there and what everyone saw, the late nights, the no sleep, the stress.

15:25Relating that to Darren and the CEO that's got to deal with that as an individual plus the husband, a father and time for yourself. how do you manage that and what do you do to fit in you know that important piece timeout gym whatever works for you to make time for that so I think the reality is at that point there was no Darren there was there was a peaks and troughs in time and that's part of it that's a hundred percent right and I think you know I think people people assume that that being CEOs is always a very glamorous thing and there are times when my job can be great or my my ex job could be great but but a lot of the time it's extremely demanding and and you know the the idea of flying in you know in business class or first class and and staying in nice hotels and so on is great for about a month but 20 years later it's not great anymore it's a by-product yeah and and when you're leaving home on on a Sunday and you're saying goodbye to your kids and you're not going to see them for another two weeks.

16:32That's hard. There's no glamour to that. But I think that you do have to learn to try and find some balance. And the way that I've always thought about it and the way that I've applied it over the 25 odd years that I've been doing this is that you have to, someone's always talked to me about the three or four legged chair. And you have to have three or four legs because the two legged chair is not going understand. And you've got work, you've got family. The third leg is then for yourself, that it has to be something that you find that you enjoy and that you are passionate about. And then for people who are religious, your religion becomes the fourth leg.

17:09I like that. I've not heard that before. Yeah. And so for me, it's always about trying to find something that is mine, that I can spend time with. And, you know, I have a couple of hobbies that have, you know. Well, elaborate because you've been a CEO for a long time now, chairman. So, and you look like you keep fit and you've got that sort of twinkle in your eye where you're sort of looking after yourself but it's amongst all sorts of busy schedules and even fitting and filming today right it's part of a very busy schedule so do you have a morning routine because that's almost like going back to that kind of CEO founder entrepreneur own the morning own the day does that work for you and what do you do it is yeah that's exactly what it is and it's funny because you and I chatted before about the how many CEOs so they wake up at four o 'clock in the morning and exercise no I wake up at 10 to 6 I go sit in the kitchen have a cup of tea with my wife sorry 10 to 7 not 10 to 6 10 to 7 have a cup of tea with my wife and then we both go to the gym and we go to separate gyms because she doesn't like me in the gym at the same time so but and then I go work out and then you know I'm kind of at my desk and showered and everything by 8 30 9 o 'clock yeah and and and that's the routine and then you know I'm my last meeting will be you know depending on the day will be at eight nine o 'clock and some days I'm not home and some days I am but that's normal and actually a great person to ask this actually again from an award-winning point of view as well and all the success you've had what's the difference between a CEO in terms of the role and a chairman yes I think lots of businesses are different in American businesses quite often you'll have a chairman and CEO my wife for example is chairman and CEO of the business that she runs but in Europe you tend to they tend to separate the roles generally and there's also a distinction between an executive chairman and the chairman so in my case I'm executive chairman and that means that I'm in the business a lot of the time you're involved yeah which would be a natural progression from zero I mean exactly my question I should have elaborated more you actually and thank you for clarifying that is more Darren Roo's version of So what's different for you on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis from CEO to executive chairman?

19:16So I could give you the politically correct answer. And the politically correct answer is that everybody in the company reports to Mark, who's the CEO now. And Mark effectively reports to me. And then I'm taking care of things around Mark and helping him to challenge himself and the team. In reality, my joking answer was going to be that I get to do the things that I want to do. and I don't any longer have to do the things that I don't want to do. I can delegate those to Mark now. But that is how it works. But you have the empathy and experience of the fact that you know what that bandwidth is and you've been there done that, right?

19:51But I think there's an important caveat, which is that when you love what you do, there tends to be a correlation between that being value-add and not. So if what I love to do was to go and have expensive dinners with the employees, there'd be no value-add in that, and then the novelty would wear off quickly. What I do love to do is I love to sponsor deals where I'm working with customers and the satisfaction of closing big transformational deals, and there's a huge amount of value for the company and me doing that. So I can still do that. I can still do that, and it doesn't step on anyone's toes, and I love to do that.

20:34And I'll be able to do that for another 10 years quite comfortably and never step on anyone's toes. But at the same time, given I was CEO for six years, I can coach Mark and make sure that when he's dealing with challenges with employees or he's thinking about where we take the business in the future or what the budget is for next year, then I can help him think through those things. There's a common theme all the way through this conversation of success. And with maturity and perspective and a certain amount of reflection, sitting here now, how would you define success? I mean, if I may, there's one thing I'd like to say, which is, and I was talking to my sons this week, and my daughter had gone back to boarding school.

21:09We dropped her, and I was talking to the boys, and I made the point that we talk about success a lot in our family because it is important. But what we probably don't talk about enough is how many times we've failed and whether those are investments that I've made that have failed or things that we've tried that have failed. I've failed a load of times, and that's okay because it's about bouncing back and the resilience of it. I think that if you never failed, maybe the success wouldn't feel so good anyway, because you wouldn't have a point of reference. It's the amplitude, really, I think, that gives you the satisfaction.

21:40Can you even succeed without failure? Because it's so funny, you chose to bring that up without knowing that my next kind of question, depending on how you answered your definition of success, was can you achieve success without failure? And almost what's your relationship with it? And you literally just, I mean, you're teaching your kids that. How invaluable is that? Well, I think that when you grow up in a world where everything you see on Instagram, everything you see on TikTok is all about success or mocking somebody who has failed, which is obviously particularly unhealthy. But when all you see is that, then what you don't see is the intersection of those things.

22:11You don't see that the people who have succeeded, every single one of them without failure will have failed many times before. But they don't talk about that. Generally, they don't talk about that. I find it fascinating. In fact, Surinder Arora, who connected us, to go through his life story and the hardship and, you know, the time away from his family and so on to then become a billionaire, which is, of course, in anyone's world of talking about success, it's successful, but that's not what he talks about. But, well, the other thing is, the thing that strikes me about Surinder, and, you know, I know this isn't about him, but the thing that strikes me about Surinder is just what a lovely person he is, a generous, kind, humble person, not that he's a billionaire.

22:54That would come very low on my list of descriptors. Something that would join you. Yeah, absolutely. But you're both super resilient if you need to be because you've come through so much. And I think that's really the point you're making to your kids is I can sit here and I can be glowing and we can talk about success. But don't think for one second it was a walk in the park or easy. I think it's about the complacency. In order to be outstanding at anything, you have to be aware of the potential for failure. That is a prerequisite. Maybe be prepared for it as well. Yeah, 100%. Because you're going to fail.

23:29I saw Andy Murray speak last night at an event and he referenced that Roger Federer had mentioned that throughout his career, and he was the number one player in the world for many, many years, that he only won 54 % of his games. And he was talking about Alcaraz's career this year where he played in many, many tournaments and had only won four of them. So, you know, the business world is the same. Life is the same, never mind the business world. Not every relationship that you have is going to work. Not every friendship you have is going to work. Not every job that you do is going to work. You are going to fail many more times than you will succeed.

24:13And being able to bounce back from that and be resilient is, you know, it's an extremely important skill because if you can't master that, you've got a huge problem. but dare I say you can only learn it by experiencing it you cannot learn that in a book you cannot learn that from a podcast you've got to get out there and try and actually it might be very similar to what you just told your your your children but sitting here now there'll be people potentially listening and watching a super aspirational motivated and ambitious to be successful in business so it's kind of like a question that what would you what What advice would you give to a young Darren stroke, a sort of late teens, early 20s aspiring businessman?

24:52What advice would you give them? Yes, I think developing that resilience and developing a strong work ethic because the two go together. If you're going to work hard, you will give yourself a better chance. The more times you get up, the more chance you are of being successful. and I think that that hard work and resilience and getting comfortable with the idea of failure is extremely important. We touched on the physical side of things. I just wanted to end on the mental side of things because I've read and listened to a number of podcasts and sort of self-development books and business books where it often refers to how many successful CEOs read and consume and are just trying to be the best version of themselves.

25:38Does that apply to you? Yeah, I read a lot and I tend to read a lot of biographies and super interested in people's life experiences. The thing is that it is remarkable how many people don't write a true reflection of what happened in their life. It's crazy how rose-tinted those people's life stories tend to be. I think that we'd all benefit from a bit more authenticity and honesty. Yeah. And I'd like to finish on you giving back in the wings with your wife, Melissa. Tell me why you set that up and what the mission is there. So look, we live in a world where, you know, even in 2024 and maybe in the UK, it's not as obvious to people.

26:26But around the world, there is a massive disparity between men and women still with that's voting rights in some countries. but even in most countries in the world the disparity on pay and senior women in leadership roles is massive. So as the executive of a business and Melissa as the CEO of her business we kind of thought about how do we fix this problem and there's a lot of work happening with young adults and with women in the workplace trying to solve the problem once people are in the workplace or about to hit the workplace but what we know from the science is that the problem is created when young girls are in their tweens to early teens.

27:09And that's when they start to believe that they can only be, and I say this with no offence to teachers and nurses, but they should be a nurse or a teacher, not an astronaut or a doctor. And so what Inner Wings does is we go into schools and we run programs teaching young people to find their voice, to build confidence, bravery in young girls so that they they understand that they can be anything they want to be and you know hopefully lots of boys and girls going to be teachers and nurses that we need lots of great teachers and nurses but what we don't want is people growing up believing that because they're a specific gender they should have to do something specific so that's what inner wings does no it's been great I can see from your face just the way talking about all the accolades all the success and financial kind of reward you've had from countless different things you've done that fires you up that's a that's a real that's fulfillment that's satisfaction but also it's it's you're never going to reach a goal with that that's a journey you've got a long way to go but i hope anyone watching or listening if they can think of any way of helping you with that yeah innerwings.org yeah no darren you're an absolutely brilliant person to talk with and learn from thank you very much for making thank you