'It's going to be the easiest transition in history' - Softcat bosses open up on leadership change

Today, Softcat announced that its chief executive, Graeme Watt, will step down next year and move to a non-executive position as chairman. Current CFO, Graham Charlton, will become the reseller's new CEO as of 1 August 2023.

CRN caught up with the Softcat bosses to discuss the leadership change.

What was the main motivation for the change on your part, Graeme?

Graeme Watt: It's no indication of anything going on at Softcat, or anything going on with me personally. I love this role; we've had a lot of success together. I've got another year in the role, so I'm looking to continue to drive performance and excitement for everybody in the company really hard before I step down.

I'm 62 next year and there's not long left in my working life and I just want to try some other things. This is a chance for me to step on the board and to become a non-exec starting with chair of Softcat which is exciting for me and a new thing for me.

I don't know whether that will take me further into non-exec or not, only time will tell, but I start with a chair job at a company I love, in an industry I know really well.

And I get to continue my association with Softcat, which I think is important for Softcat as well as for me. With Martin stepping off the board, it's important that we continue to have somebody who knows the industry really well and knows Softcat really well. I get to continue working with fantastic people like Graham too for a while longer. So those are my main motivations.

How involved with you be in the Softcat business as non-exec chairman?

Watt: What you can't do is try and step in and continue to have your fingers in the day-to-day operations of the company. That will very clearly be transferred over to Graham on 1 August 2023.

And he and the team will be fully responsible for driving the business operationally and my focus will move to good governance of the company, strategic direction, making sure that we've got good people on the board. With Graham stepping down, we're in the market now for a CFO. We've got a process going that involves internal and external candidates and we're really interested to see what that will offer.

When I took over and Martin [Hellawell] did a similar move four years ago, we had a very clear code of conduct that we drew up between us; these were things that he could do, and things that he couldn't do and we made it very, very clear. Just so that we could preserve the integrity of our roles, and it's worked perfectly.

I have no concerns or fears that Graham and I won't be able to replicate the same arrangement.

I imagine the handover process for Graham will be minimal given his knowledge of the company?

Graham Charlton: The culture we have at Softcat is all about openness and transparency. The way that we work together already, there's very little that each of us hasn't been involved in and there's certainly not a big decision to make without talking to each other.

There's a lot of informal dialogue at Softcat, which I think is a real important part of our culture. People pulling in the same direction and talking to each other - that's what Softcat is. Between us, we have no concerns about how that transition will work because it's so collaborative anyway.

We've all got Softcat's best interests at heart, and that's why I want to do this job. It's about having a business that, more than anything else, values its employees. Because of that, they all pull in the same direction and go the extra mile because they want to drive it forward and because it's an important part of their life. I understood the power of that when I joined the business years ago, working with Martin, and having Graeme as exactly the right man to replace Martin and carry that forward.

Any advice for Graham or any words of wisdom as he moves into the CEO role?

Watt: That's a great question. Nothing that he doesn't know already. Graham is a great personality, he's a fantastic CFO, he's got great experience of Softcat and the IT industry.

This isn't advice, this is just what I know he's going to do: he's just going to be himself, he's going to make the right decisions, he'll see things - perhaps at times - differently as I would have, but that's fine. There's different ways of achieving the same or similar outcomes.

For me, it's just making sure you've got the right leadership team in place, and that its operating at its maximum potential and then good things come from that. We know how this company works; we know what makes us successful so it's not about looking for the gaps and looking for the weaknesses, it's about doubling down and investing in the things that make us successful. At the end of the day, as long as we remain very people-led and very customer-led as an organization then I'm sure good things will happen. It's going to be the easiest transition in history I think.

How do you reflect on your last four years at Softcat, Graeme?

Watt: It's been a blast. I'm not quite ready to start talking about my tenure here because I've still got 20 per cent of it left - next year I would've been here five years and I've still got one year of that to go. We've done a lot of good things; performance has been outstanding. We've grown the company substantially ahead of expectations, we've grown a multinational footprint that we're very proud of. We've become the number-one VAR in the UK thanks to the CRN publication for 2021. And we've done a lot of good things. But at the end of the day, we've just continued to be a great place to work and we've met and exceeded our customers' expectations. And that's what we're going to continue to do.

Any closing remarks, Graham?

Charlton: This is all about the company and not really about any individual. That's the way that we've always thought about it. We're making the announcement a year out just to give the organization the best chance to adjust to it. My motivations for doing the job are all about wanting to stay at and preserve a place that I love to work in. It's changed my life because it's different to cultures I've worked at in the past, where people aren't always treated in the right way, and nobody wins from that. The point of doing this job for me is to ensure that Softcat is first and foremost a place where employees enjoy working together, and that's a collective job. It's not just the job of a chief exec, it takes a team of people working together.