Each month we turn the spotlight on the leadership teams in our portfolio to find out what drives them, who inspires them and the biggest lessons they’ve learnt.
This month, we’re delighted to welcome Ciphr’s Sion Lewis. Ciphr is a specialist provider of SaaS HR, payroll, recruitment and learning software. Their cloud-based solutions help HR teams to streamline their processes, simplify time consuming tasks and spend more time working strategically.
With a 25-year track record of building and scaling successful B2B software businesses, Sion has been driving growth and innovation at Ciphr since February 2023. You can find out more about Ciphr’s excellent H1, and Sion’s reflections on the first half of the year here.
Q: Which one rule do you expect your employees to abide by?
Working at salesforce.com taught me to always put the customer first, and it also taught me the power of being accountable. I expect all my team to be accountable. My job is to provide the environment to allow this to happen.
Q: What motivates you?
Ensuring my friends and family are happy. If they are happy, I am happy.
Q: What are you most proud of in your career?
Being part of the deal team at IRIS when we went through a successful exit. The whole experience provided me with a new understanding of “team”. I learned a huge amount about myself and those around me in a very hectic six month period!
Q: Who do you admire / who inspires you?
My wife Helen. She consistently provides unconditional love for our family and quite frankly is amazing!
Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt?
Find the data! My time working in private equity forced the development of a whole new ‘data-muscle’, bringing a new dimension to the way I look at problems and has been a core part of my approach to business ever since.
Q: What do you think makes a good leader?
Teaching people to fish and not fish for them. An old CEO of mine told me to stop fishing for others and teach them how to do it themselves. I think it is such a simple and effective leadership skill. Thank you, Kev!
Q: Why did you choose Ciphr?
I chose Ciphr as I wanted to help make a UK business great. I knew the Ciphr proposition had so much potential, and I really liked Stephen Roberts (ECI Partner) and Ken Hills (Ciphr Chairman). Working with a great PE partner was mandatory so I did my homework and heard only great things about ECI.
Q: What do you do to relax?
I love the tv show “Would I Lie To You” so watching a few clips from the show or reading about my beloved Liverpool FC.
Q: Night in or night out?
I do love wine and there’s nothing better after a long week than a Friday night takeaway with the family and some easy watching TV. Dominos, Curry or Nando’s becomes a key question on a Friday afternoon.
Q: Favourite film?
A few Good Men. I will watch it at least once a year. Considering it was first released in 1993, that is a lot of times!
Curriculum Vitae
- Age: 54.
- Family: Helen, Josh (22) & Ollie (19). Two dogs – Bettie and Billie.
- University & qualification: Humberside Polytechnic (now Hull University). BA(Hons) Business Information Systems.
- Career summary: After university, I worked for Oracle Australia in their Business Intelligence team. Coming back to the UK, I moved into sales and had various sales roles before moving into senior EMEA leadership roles at Clarus Software, Salesforce.com & BMC Software. In 2010 I joined IRIS software where I worked for 8+ years initially as CSO before moving to a divisional CEO role running the Accountancy and Education divisions. Immediately prior to Ciphr, I was the General Manager Europe for GoTo.com.
