Human on the Inside with Tidal’s David Colebatch
Maxme: We’re big believers in the power of human skills. But don’t just take our word for it - the evidence for excellence powered by human (‘soft’) skills is everywhere! In this engaging, ever-enlightening series, we speak with industry leaders, innovators and game-changers to learn a little about their personal career journeys, and how human-led strategies, philosophies and cultures are proving a force for good in their working worlds …
Welcome David, and thanks for stepping into the #SuccessIsHuman Spotlight!
You’re the Founder & CEO of Tidal - a cloud migration software platform that solves common problems in business case creation, application discovery, cloud readiness assessment, and migration planning throughout digital transformation.
In 1 sentence (ok, we’ll give you 3), what does your role entail?
David Colebatch: As the Founder of Tidal, my role is driving the company's vision and strategy, fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration, and ensuring our software consistently addresses clients' digital transformation needs.
As the CEO however, it means making sure the business is growing responsibly and in a way that allows us to develop, and then seize opportunities as they present.
M: You Founded Tidal in late 2016 but your career in IT, Software Engineering & Digital Transformation is of course much deeper. Starting out working as a freelancer while you studied, you followed with a couple of years consulting in your field of Software Engineering before heading ‘up & over’ to Toronto, Canada, where you’re still based today.
For ~5 years you had contract clients like the Government of Ontario, Apple, Monsanto and others while Co-Founding XN Logic - a specialist graph database application framework. Next up, you co-founded LightMesh CMDB - building on top of the XN Logic framework. As CEO there, you brought this product to market, providing customers with an intelligent approach to network and configuration management.
In parallel to all this, you’ve been on the Board of Directors for Aliter Technologies for seven years.
How does all this work speak to your personal purpose and what drives you as an individual?
DC: You have done your homework!
There’s a bit of personal history missing from my LinkedIn profile: my first experience in business was with my family’s plastics injection moulding company - Kemalex. Founded in 1947 by my grandfather and later run by my father, it was here that I learned the principles of Lean Manufacturing. As it happens, when I entered into the software and IT industry in the early 2000s, it too was adopting Lean and Agile practices: right place, right time.
My personal purpose is to drive efficiencies in business. I get great satisfaction in helping customers achieve more with less, outpace their competition and thrive in their respective niches. And so to this day, whether it’s in banking, retail, education or public service and defence, my core personal driver is in helping transform business processes by leveraging new technology.
M: Tell us a little about your personal education pathway/s - what led you to where you are now? How closely do your formal qualifications match your current career?
DC: I’ve never thought about that, but looking back, my education is almost a perfect match for where I am today.
I studied music at Adelaide University for a hot minute while in my senior year in high school, and then moved to Melbourne to study Software Engineering at RMIT. Performance arts meets engineering! While at RMIT, I took an elective in entrepreneurship and started research into coarse-grained versus fine-grained microservice architectures.
M: If you could share one piece of career advice to your 21 year old self it would be ...
DC: “Keep an open mind”, but 21 year old me wouldn’t really know how to interpret that. So I’ll rephrase: don’t rush to judge people, and be willing to be wrong. Use language that allows you to walk positions back if assumptions prove incorrect.
M: Maximising the potential of individuals, communities and businesses through the power of human skills is the reason Maxme exists. Can you tell us a little about the role and / or value of human skills in your workplace or industry right now?
DC: In my industry it’s common to solve business problems with technology, and to look at technology problems with purely technical solutions. But businesses are made up of people, who in turn create, follow and optimise processes that are increasingly enabled by technology.
That order is key: people, process then technology.
Human skills, such as empathy, adaptability, and creativity, complement technical expertise by enabling our team to better understand client needs today. Human skills is how we’re able to work backwards from client desired business outcomes and adapt to rapidly evolving technologies, while innovating bespoke solutions that drive successful digital transformations.
M: Self awareness sets the critical foundation for all Maxme learning experiences. What’s your strongest trait / personal super power?
DC: If I said humility would you let it print?
In all seriousness, I think it’s my self awareness of my own strengths, weaknesses and biases that allow me to execute. It didn’t come naturally, but by being increasingly open to feedback you can develop self-awareness. Seek out different viewpoints, and don’t shy from challenges.
Once I could identify my gaps in certain scenarios, I was in a much better position to pick the team that I required for my business in each stage of its growth. Those needs certainly change over time, you can’t sit still.
M: And on the flip side, what’s one human / ‘soft’ skill you’ve had to really work on improving over the course of your career?
DC: Being more empathetic to others has helped me a lot. As a young technologist, we tend to make quick decisions and can often lock ourselves into them without being open to change. I worked on my capacity to think from other points of view, and still work on it, by watching other successful smoother-operators in the business.
M: If you could share one piece of career advice with recent Uni graduates or candidates keen to work in a field like digital transformation &/or cloud based software what would it be?
DC: There’s no compression algorithm for experience.
If you want to get into digital transformation leadership roles, you need to learn both the old and the new.
If you’ve mastered the new technology skills in software and IT, keep them sharp on side projects while simultaneously getting a year or two of experience in a big enterprise. In a big enterprise, you’ll learn what bureaucracy and inefficiencies feel like pretty quickly. If you can’t find an opportunity to improve those processes in those organisations, leave and commit to finding a job where you can effect change.
M: You’ve been granted approval to add one Uni graduate to your business, but have 100 applicants, all with outstanding academic results. How do you find your perfect candidate - what are you looking for?
DC: Great question. I’m looking for passionate people who can collaborate and communicate effectively. On the software development roles, we screen for graduates who can demonstrate side projects, open source work or work-experience (all kinds) between semesters. This speaks to motivation.
We then screen for capabilities to contribute to an existing software project, with a small programming test that requires the applicant to demonstrate creating git pull requests. You can tell a lot about how someone views a codebase by how cohesive their commits are and how they are described.
M: What’s next on your #learning agenda?
DC: I’m currently learning how to teach better! I’m writing more and turning my customer workshops into online training courses - it’s quite a shift from writing code!
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