Checkatrade CEO Jambu Palaniappan took on his first leadership role at an early age. When he was 26, he moved from San Francisco to Dubai to head up Uber’s operations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He claims the experience shaped his leadership philosophy and, although he may not have realised it at the time, he’s now a firm believer that people’s capacity to lead is “often far greater than people think”.
Now, a year into his role as chief executive of Checkatrade, a platform that helps connect tradespeople and homeowners, he hopes his background working in technology can help to modernise what he describes as “one of the last undigitised sectors in the world”.
Here, Palaniappan explains how Checkatrade is addressing the talent shortage in the trade sector, the lessons he learnt from his time at Uber and why good leaders need to be talent magnets.
What’s the biggest lesson you learnt from your time working at Uber?
I was leading Uber’s business across Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, from its inception through to its first two years of scale.
In constructing a business that is quickly internationalising, you have to make sure you retain a really deep sense of local knowledge in your customer base and the areas that you operate in.
There’s a lot of parallels with the work we’re doing at Checkatrade. We want to ensure the new products we’re building are relevant for our customers. To do that you have to have a low ego and understand that your view is never more important than the customer’s. That’s a core principle – when things went well at Uber, we were really true to this idea.
What has been one of your career highlights?
My parents are originally from India and they emigrated to the US to study, with no safety net. While I was at Uber, I led the team that brought Uber to my parent’s hometown in India, which was really an amazing full-circle moment. My parents actually came to the launch party that we had there as well.
A huge part of my philosophy as a leader comes from my parents and I’m so grateful to them for the work ethic they’ve instilled in me. They’ve played an important role in my development as a leader and as a person as well.
What do you think makes a good leader?
The number one principle is having high emotional intelligence and empathy for your team members. This means trying to understand the challenges they’re facing, the problems they’re trying to solve and their commitments outside of work. You have to really be in touch with what motivates them.
As a leader, I also want to empower my team, to allow them to make their own decisions and take accountability for the impact they have. The best leaders I’ve worked for have been able to take those two principles to create environments where people can do their best work.
What are you looking for when you hire a leadership team?
The best executives are talent magnets. They’re the ones that people follow from organisation to organisation. That’s a really important principle in terms of how you can bring the best talent to the business and evaluate who has the right leadership capabilities.
What is the best bit of business advice you’ve ever been given?
Early in your career, it’s very easy to be focused on your trajectory and your path to promotion. The best piece of advice I got was to focus on the thing you’re doing now and do it really well because, if you do that, those opportunities will naturally come.
That’s what happened to me at Uber, where I went from leading a small expansion team to running a 500-person business in 26 countries over a two-year period. If you’re doing your job well and you’re in the right environment, opportunities will come to you.
What’s the biggest business challenge you’re facing at the moment?
There’s a really acute talent shortage in the trade sector right now and it’s a problem right across the world. A big part of our focus is encouraging people, particularly young people, to understand the potential of a career in the trades. It’s a really compelling career, which allows you to to build your own business, earn a high income and have your own autonomy.
We partner with over 500 schools across the UK to help share opportunities of how to enter the trade sector. We’ve supported various apprenticeship levies and training provider partnerships. Our business can help create the next generation of tradespeople across the UK and beyond.
What’s been your proudest achievement in your current role?
The thing I’m most proud of is seeing my colleagues and the people in my team go on to do great things and use the experience we had working together as the foundation.
It’s really rewarding to see those people go on to be amazing founders and CEOs in their own right.
What book do you think every business leader should read at least once?
One of my favourite books is by Andy Grove, the founder of Intel. It’s called Only the Paranoid Survive and it taught me how to harness that feeling of paranoia in an effective way. What I really took away from that book was the importance of finding where you have the most management leverage and where you can have the biggest impact.
Another book I really love is The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz. If you’re a founder or a CEO, or if you’re really leading any kind of team, there is an intensity that comes with that. But, no matter how intense your work becomes, you always have to be the most optimistic person in the room and the most forward-looking. I have taken a lot of practical lessons from those two books.
What do you do outside of work to protect yourself against burnout?
It’s an intense job that requires a high degree of focus. I’ve got two young daughters that keep me really grounded. I took my youngest to her first day of nursery school yesterday. No matter how tough my day was, it’s amazing to spend time with them and see how they evolve.
Fitness is really important to me and I think there’s a direct relationship between my level of fitness, overall mood and ability to do this job well. I really enjoy tennis, because it requires a lot of focus. There’s a part of your brain that’s activated when you play racket sports that’s very difficult to activate in other ways.
What are your DIY skills like?
My DIY skills are moderately improving but it’s important to know when a task is beyond your own skills.
