Nordic Software Summit 2025 – Part 3: The leadership journey for scale-ups
- Marie-Louise Cleeren
- Sep 16
- 3 min read
The leadership journey – Evolving beyond functional expertise
R. Michael Anderson, a former Inc. 5000 software entrepreneur and leadership expert, recently addressed the Nordic Software Summit 2025 in Stockholm, emphasizing that leadership must evolve as companies scale.
He outlined three critical challenges leaders often face during this journey:
Identity: Embracing the Leader's Role. Leaders frequently cling to their functional expertise (e.g., engineering, product development, sales), leading to procrastination on vital scaling tasks they might feel less confident about. The crucial shift is from being a functional expert to an overarching leader.
Role: The Art of Strategic Delegation. As a company expands, the sheer volume of work increases. A leader's effectiveness then hinges on doing less operational work personally, focusing instead on high-impact activities, and effectively delegating or outsourcing the rest.
Mindset: Building Trust and Direction. Many leaders feel pressured to know every detail. However, sustainable growth requires building trust in the team, clearly defining company values and culture, and setting a precise strategic direction that the organization can execute on. This enables leaders to rely on their team's expertise rather than trying to master everything themselves.
Navigating leadership transitions in scale-ups: Supporting CEOs and sales & marketing leaders
For CEOs and sales and marketing leaders who are steering their scale-ups through different growth phases, navigating these leadership challenges is crucial.
SUNMICO offers targeted B2B marketing, customer experience and Interim Management support to help leaders successfully make these transitions and build robust, scalable organizations and an effective marketing machine.
Let's highlight some critical areas:
Enabling strategic focus and execution capacity
We provide interim management expertise to bridge strategic gaps, allowing existing leaders to step away from operational details and focus on high-impact initiatives. By expertly sourcing and managing external partners for critical functions like branding, web, and digital marketing, we free up valuable leadership time. We also offer hands-on operational support, managing tasks such as content creation, digital marketing, event and PR planning, to offload internal teams and ensure consistent execution.
Client engagements include:
Interim Management assignments for Pley, Foxway and Capgemini
Project management and agency sourcing for Cleura, Pley, Sivers Semiconductors
Content creation for Capgemini, Combient, Esri Sweden, Evertiq, Foxway, Pley, Sivers Semiconductors
Laying strong brand & marketing foundations for increased marketing effectiveness
We work with management teams to define strategic marketing plans, priorities, and objectives that directly align with corporate strategy. This involves developing clear positioning, vision, mission, brand values, target audience analysis and value proposition as a foundation for internal and external communications. We help your marketing function to effectively drive market presence and growth, enabling the management team to delegate with confidence. SUNMICO also conducts customer and employee surveys to help you gain valuable insights on how your company can drive customer and brand loyalty.
Client work includes:
Strategic marketing advisory to executive management for Cleura and Sivers Semiconductors, including brand awareness, go-to-market planning and messaging
Refined vision, mission, brand values and wanted position for Comintelli and Pley
Marketing and customer engagement strategy for Comintelli
Fostering transformation and trust
SUNMICO has solid experience leading transformation and change, from internal digital shifts to comprehensive company re-positioning. We strengthen internal B2B marketing and communications teams through coaching and skills development, cultivating an environment where leaders can more confidently rely on their team's expertise. We ensure transparent communication and bridging gaps across stakeholder groups, building a foundation of trust essential to scale.
Client examples:
Through these efforts, SUNMICO can help strengthen leadership in scale-ups, facilitating their evolution beyond old identities and roles towards a more resilient and trusting organizational structure, and more effective marketing execution of company strategy.
Contact us to discuss how we can support your scale-up journey.
About Nordic Software Summit
Nordic Software Summit gathered some 1200+ SaaS founders and executives on August 20, 2025 for a full-day event at Stockholm Waterfront Congress Center, beautifully located with great views over Stockholm City Hall and Riddarfjärden.
Below are some more photos from the event.
Text and photos: Mimmis Cleeren
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