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James Dening is a former executive at both Amazon and Google, and led Automation Anywhere’s entry into the European market, setting up their London office in 2016. A former software engineer, James has been creating and leading successful commercial teams for the last 15 years, along with planning and executing commercial strategies for hypergrowth – to double/triple revenue year on year.
We took some time to talk to James about playing to your strengths to make the best decisions…
1. How important is it for senior business people to hear the experiences of others to shape their own decision making?
Massively important. However far your career has taken you, there’s always a lot more to learn. The most useful thing you can ever have around decision making is a variety of perspectives – those data points are invaluable in letting you make decisions well. And if you can ever possibly not make a decision – i.e. delegate it to your team – do it!
2. How has knowledge sharing about experiences helped you and the decisions you have made in your career?
Yes, knowing the journeys that other people have taken bolsters your own experience. You can learn from their success and failures equally to make the right decisions for yourself.
3. How important is the information you receive as a Board member from the FD to assist you in making a commercial decision?
I’ve always seen Finance absolutely as the backbone of any business, and in the absence of good, sound data-driven advice you make decisions blindly and at your peril. Colin Oakman at Red Gate was a great FD, and Michael Black, whom I worked with at AlertMe was a brilliant person to work alongside.
4. What has inspired you to make the best decisions?
Seeing the collaborative and meritocratic way that many decisions were taken at Amazon. It made me focus as a leader on not making the right decision myself, but making sure the right decision was made, no matter where the idea or plan came from in the first place – i.e. what are the things I can do as a leader that puts the structures in place to enable correct decision making.
5. What was your earliest ambition?
To be a vet.
6. What ambitions do you still have?
To be a gamekeeper. And to keep my health.
7. What are your key learnings from your career so far?
It’s always personal – people do what works for them personally. And ultimately, you need to be able to hold your head up and think you’ve done the right thing – life is too short not to be a decent person.
8. What is the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?
Several, some of the key ones for me were:
9. What makes a good leader?
The ability to extract the best from those around you – which sometimes involves tucking your ego away; protecting your team; giving credit and praise where it’s due, and taking ultimate responsibility for what happens. And, whatever the constraints are, figuring out how to hit your targets.
10. What’s next for you?
There’s still lots to do at Automation Anywhere in our hypergrowth phase, so I’m not really thinking about the next challenge at all yet. I’m enjoying the Evangelism aspect of my role, so it will be interesting to see how that pans out. I’m also doing a lot of work in the PE/VC community – that operator model is something I’d like to explore more in the future.
James joins our exclusive CFO Club speaker alumni. If you are a finance professional and would like to attend, please take a look at the event page.
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