Meet Seb Fitzjohn, general manager of ServiceNow EMEA North
Seb Fitzjohn became the group vice president and general manager of EMEA North in October 2023. We recently caught up with Seb to talk about his career, his goals for the region, and why he’s excited by the next phase of ServiceNow’s growth.
Tell us about your background.
Perhaps I can start with my home life. My wife and I have a daughter and a son, aged 17 and 15, respectively. We love being active in the great outdoors either in the countryside or by the sea.
From a career perspective, at ServiceNow, my learning curve feels as steep now as it did when I was in my 20s. I think this is partly due to the pace of change and the way technology continues to disrupt and offer new possibilities. I also think ServiceNow culture really unlocks the growth mindset in us all.
I think of my career in four chapters (so far):
- The Royal Air Force (RAF)
- Pre-sales and direct sales at Dell Technologies
- Partner sales at VMware and ServiceNow
- Go-to-market lead for EMEA North at ServiceNow
The RAF showed me the difference between leadership and management. It also introduced me to the principles of situational leadership and the power of aligning a team around a common purpose. I have continued to build upon and develop these early lessons in leadership.
In my business career, I have tried to gain experience across different customer-facing roles in fast-paced technology companies. This has helped me gain a rounded insight and perspective on leading multi-functional teams and the importance of team diversity.
Further, in my coaching and mentoring discussions, I often talk about a core belief that says the best years (of our career) are ahead, which is a mindset that can help unlock much energy and potential.
What are you bringing to the role?
My aim is to help position the team for the next phase of our accelerated growth by getting even closer to our customers and supporting their business transformation agendas.
This is about together building an engaged, inclusive, empowered, and purpose-driven culture that is laser-focused on customer success and the growth and wellbeing of our team. Empathy is a critical factor here both internally and externally.
What are the growth opportunities in the region?
Our region is made up of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland—some of the most vibrant and advanced economies and public sectors in the world. The region is also home to some of the world’s biggest global brands. I think we have one of the very best growth opportunities in the world, in the short, medium, and long term.
If you then add the ServiceNow® platform, as the AI-powered experience layer for digital business transformation, I don’t see any limits on our potential. Our next milestone is to double the size of our business in the next 36 to 48 months. It’s not just about revenue growth, but it's also about how we show up and how we develop our culture.
What challenges do you see in the region?
We must continue to embrace the unique cultural and economic nature of each country we operate in. At the same time, the macroeconomic market conditions dominate the overall outlook, and these conditions are pretty consistent across all Europe.
The Nordic and Benelux countries have always been early adopters of new technology. More and more customers are using the ServiceNow platform across their businesses to automate business processes and drive new levels of employee productivity, customer experience, and operational efficiency.
The pace of innovation has never been faster, and this can put our customers under even more internal and external pressure to digitally transform. Companies like ServiceNow have a duty to help customers adopt these technologies, whilst considering people, processes, and the core business.
This is why building trust-based, value-based, long-term partnership is so important. Generative AI (GenAI) is a great example. It has much potential to help our customers along their journey.
What are your priorities going forward?
The short answer is happy customers, a winning team, and ensuring that we have fun too. Life is short, and we should count our blessings. That should also fuel our ambition. I’d like to be part of the ongoing movement that continues to break down the barriers to diversity and inclusion.
Helping our customers extract maximum value from every dollar they invest in the ServiceNow platform is a top priority for me, and that starts with great implementations and ongoing platform health. ServiceNow and our partners play a critical role here.
Together, we help define joint strategic roadmaps with our customers to expand platform adoption across the enterprise into new functions and departments. We help customers break down the data, application, and departmental silos that so often act as a drag on transformation.
This single-pane-of-glass approach enables end-to-end intelligent process automation and integrates with customers' other technology investments and data models to help deliver a compelling ongoing return on investment.
We also plan to align our solutions to industry verticals. This will help us get closer to our customers in the commercial and public sectors and be even more business relevant. Natively embedding GenAI into all our platform use cases, and our operational technology solutions are just two examples of how we will continue to be strategic with our new and existing customers.
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