Kimmo Alkio, President and CEO of security specialist F-Secure Corporation shares his route to the top, and emphasises his belief that putting talent selection and development at the top of his agenda makes for a successful company.
You’ve been back at F-Secure just under a year. What is it like returning only 18 months after leaving to go to Nokia?
I really did not imagine leaving Nokia. Nokia is a company I really respect and value. But the opportunity to come back as President and CEO of F-Secure was just impossible to turn down.
My intention as CEO is for us to become globally a high growth company. I took on this role from Risto Siilasmaa, our founder and a strong leader for the first 18 years of company’s history. We have managed a very smooth managerial handover since last November and had a successful start for the year, with strong growth and healthy profitability.
As a company we have been ranked number one in revenue growth for 15 successive quarters among publicly listed anti-virus companies. Looking ahead, we’ll need to execute well in both the sales and marketing side as well as in new solution innovation to continue growing faster than the industry.
What did you learn at Nokia that you could apply career-wise as President and CEO at F-Secure?
I learned at Nokia that you have to be extremely focused and selective on the business you expect to excel in and you have to concentrate on getting the right talent and experience in the right places across the organisation. That means you have to have a clear focus on the breadth of the leadership team, and make people selection and development really important.
Why is that?
Because people with the right experience and attitude are the ones to make big things happen; these are the type of people that don’t take No for an answer. The people with the proper balance of experience, drive, ambition and interest to develop individuals in the organisation also tend to be the ones to deliver best results.
You’ve had a 20-year career in the ICT sector, including 14 years at Digital. What knowledge did you gain there in dealing with people and issues that you can apply now at F-Secure?
A big influence on my career was Bruce Claflin, who was Senior Vice-President for Sales and Marketing at Digital. I was 33 at the time and brought out to the US to join him as an Executive Assistant for a year.
I learned a number of things from Bruce that I’ve been able to adopt in my subsequent career. For example, I learned that personal skills-wise, you have to be a good coach and mentor, and you have to be both tough and gentle at times. At that level, you really have to be able to deal with a fast pace and enjoy it! One needs to be able to shift between highly strategic topics and very specific issues for any given function, country or customer.
You have to be a leader, and have belief in what you do: be focused, driven, mix tactical business needs with longer term strategic differentiation and be frank with people while inspiring and empowering the organisation.
How would you sum up your qualities that have enabled you to have a successful career across three different sectors: the ICT space with Digital and Compaq, the mobile world with Nokia, and the IT security arena with F-Secure?
There are three things that are part of my make-up that people tell me usually come across strongly. I am performance-driven to achieve results, and I also enjoy the strategic aspects of the business to drive longer term strategic differentiation.
The third point I strongly believe is active and inspiring leadership; to work closely with and through people, being a coach and mentor, and as applicable very much hands-on.
Working across the organisation, you need to have the interest to do what I call ‘deep dives’ on any relevant topic of the company’s business. Where necessary, have the interest and ability to dive into details of the given topic, which may require support across the organisation to achieve step function level improvements. This usually requires deep analysis, problem solving and execution skills to break out of the usual norms of the operation.
I believe that in the best run companies, there is a healthy balance of visionary thinking and operational management using techniques such as the ‘deep dives’. For any leader every day is an opportunity to improve on both of these.
Is the security software world unique, compared with life at Digital or Nokia? Or are the mechanics of producing security software products really no different from producing software/hardware/services anywhere else in the ICT sector?
You can look at it two ways. Sales and marketing is very similar across the IT industry, yes, but in the security industry, getting the latest information on threats is very important, and we see 7000 new threat samples on a daily basis. So there is a very strong technical focus involved in protecting our customers.
The nature of these threats to security means companies such as F-Secure also have a greater public purpose; in our case this is about protecting people and to warn of new threats as they relate to the Internet and malware.
Overall, I believe a company should seek to exhibit a role in the society which supports its mission, both to the employees and external constituents.
There are still an enormous number of insufficiently protected PCs around the world and the depth of knowledge by end users on Internet threats tends to vary a lot. The world of mobile security is in its infancy, while the requirements for protection are expected to become very similar to the PC world.
It is fair to say that the level of threats is intensifying, and there are new types of challenges, with ‘zero day attacks’ which means attacks are being made in a way which the traditional security applications (such as anti-virus) do not detect and tend to spread very rapidly. The involvement of organised crime means things are certainly getting worse, not better.
You benefited from gaining international experience with Digital Equipment and Compaq in Germany and the US. How important is international experience in the development of a ‘C’ level executive?
Having those skills as part of your development is very important Indeed, the importance of that international experience really cannot be over-emphasised in high growth companies. It’s exactly the sort of things we – and other companies – need.
In order for F-Secure to scale we need to continue to develop the organisation with global leadership skills.
One of the things we’re regularly hearing about is the need to get the work-life balance right. In such a high profile job, can you still manage to do that?
Yes, although it is an all-encompassing role for the CEO, keeping the work-life balance is important. It is very challenging for the CEO – and senior managers too – to get the balance right: work-family-fitness.
Although in a past life I used to play competitive tennis, these days I work out pretty actively whether at home or on the road. Today, I’m more likely to go out on longer bike rides and get some fresh air, or play a round of golf. The main thing is to keep yourself fit in a way that suits your business and family schedules.
Kimmo Alkio's Profile
Kimmo Alkio started as President and CEO of F-Secure in November 2006. He joined from Nokia where he was VP Consulting & Integration. Prior to Nokia, Mr. Alkio was COO with F-Secure. He spent 14 years with Digital Equipment Corporation and Compaq Computer in various management positions in Switzerland, Germany and the US.
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