Martin Axelsson: Managing a diverse team

Martin’s unit consists of a little over 50 colleagues, who mainly work in teams of 7-9 people.

- They all work in distributed teams from different units, meaning that in theory a team can have members with six different managers. That’s why all managers emphasize good teamwork – both within and between teams. I have a background from hockey and football, which has taught me a thing or two about playing on each other’s strengths.

Martin’s days as a developer are over, and now all his time is devoted to helping his colleagues.

- All my time is spent on coaching my colleagues and asking questions so that they can solve the problems themselves. Either that, or I help them find others who can assist.  

Value driven management

In a big company like Tietoevry, it’s important to have managers who follow similar principles. The values are a strong guide.

- Our values are openness, trust and diversity – and to us they are anything but clichés. When you work together in teams you must be open to other members. You have to be open to help and be helped and open the floor to constructive criticism.  

Building trust is another key to great teamwork.

- I don’t have the time to follow up all my unit members every day, so I trust them to take initiative and help each other. But I stress that whenever they need help, I’m there. It’s a balance between freedom and support.  

A diverse group of people 

The third Tietoevry value Martin and other managers steer by is diversity. At the Karlstad office alone, there are 34 nationalities among the 370 employees.

- We represent different cultures and view that as a strength. Having people looking at a technical issue from various angles is a big plus – it increases the chance of solving the problem in a good way. If everyone thinks the same, you only get one perspective.  

Studies of the different teams at Tietoevry has shown that heterogenous teams perform better than homogenous ones.

- The performance isn’t linked to the individual competence of each team member, but their combined experience.  

Martin has assembled a truly diverse group of people when it comes to their background.

- We obviously have a lot of colleagues with a typical IT background, from programming and data engineers. But we also have a psychiatrist, a teacher and a former banker – to name a few. Opening to various backgrounds has had the added benefit of attracting more women to the company.  

Empowering women and bridging generations

This positive side effect is far from the only initiative Tietoevry has taken to attract women to the company.

- For the second year running we are part of the “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” here in Sweden, where we invite girls from the ages of 13-19 to our office to explore with us. When women apply for positions, we go beyond reading their CV, to get a thorough understanding of who they are. More often than not, that includes an interview to really get to know them. This effort has helped our gender balance.  

As for managing employees from different generations, Martin approaches this with curiosity.

- The colleagues in my unit are mostly young, with many of them having 0-5 years of work experience. It hurts to admit it, but I’m among the older ones now. To me, the important thing is getting to know my colleagues, understand what their interests are – regardless of age really. It comes back to our values of openness and trust. We’re open with each other, and trust one another.  

As for the more experienced seniors, Martin expects a little more from them.

- I believe the older colleagues have a bigger responsibility to set the culture and be a great example to the newbies. Their role goes beyond the technical one. Setting this expectation is important to me – I believe it’s crucial to achieving our goals.  

Important infrastructure 

Martin and his unit work on the development of 5G software – both cloud-based and on prem solutions.

- It’s rewarding to work on projects that have such an impact on society – solutions that are crucial for our everyday life, be it the son who urgently needs to call home or someone finding their way when they’re lost.  

However crucial the solutions are, Martin sometimes finds it necessary to remind his colleagues of the impact they have.

- Many of my colleagues are highly invested in the technical solutions, to such an extent that they become completely obsessed with small details and forget the bigger picture. On one hand it’s great that they are technical nerds, great solutions are dependent on it. But when I remind them of what we do for people around the world, it’s as if I can see their pride growing.