Niels Faché, Vice President and General Manager of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) business at Keysight and a member of the ESD Alliance’s Governing Council, has a diversified career that took him from an academic track to a technology startup to senior management positions at Hewlett Packard, Agilent, and Keysight.

Smith: How did you begin your career journey that led to you becoming a leader at Keysight?

Faché: I started on an academic career track. I was inspired by my parents, both college professors, and some of my engineering professors. I pursued a Ph.D. in electromagnetics focused on numerical analysis of high frequency transmission lines and circuits. I was the main author of a book based on my Ph.D. thesis, preparing for an academic career.

After receiving my Ph.D., I had the opportunity to work at Hewlett Packard in Santa Rosa, California. HP was interested in my research, and that is where I connected my theoretical background with practical applications.

HP supported my idea to start an EDA company in Belgium focused on electromagnetic simulation of planar circuits. I worked on the product for several years and launched the company with a sales and marketing agreement from HP.

The product was successful from the initial launch and it then made sense to move the company into HP. I transitioned to HP with an academic and small company background. I was living in Belgium and interested in learning more about how to operate in a large company. So I relocated to the U.S. to join HP with the intent to learn about how to work in a large company and take that background back to Belgium.

I had a vision for how the Belgium site could be expanded, which materialized over time. However, I saw opportunities at HP and stayed in the U.S., moving around the company in various roles and transitioning to the test and measurement side of the business for about two decades.

During this time, I managed some of our instrument product lines, worked in services and learned different facets of our business. Then a couple of years ago, I came full circle and returned to the EDA business at Keysight. The original business and team in Belgium are still part of Keysight EDA and continue to execute on the vision laid out over two decades ago.

Smith: How do you perceive leadership versus management?

Faché: Management is a practice. It’s about processes, tools, methodologies and leads to operational rigor, efficiency and predictability. Leadership is more about creating a clear purpose for the organization, a vision of the future, inspiring a team to go in a certain direction and making a difference for stakeholders, customers, partners, employees and investors.

A successful manager combines leadership and management skills. This begins with learning how the business operates and envisioning the future for the business. Then developing the plans and organizational capacity and capabilities that will enable that future. Ultimately, that defines how the business is going to operate to support growth and attract investments and leads to success for customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders. It is important for the leader to understand what an organization is capable of delivering and set the appropriate pace and stretch goals.

Smith: Who influenced you and how did you acquire your leadership skills?

Faché: Development of my leadership skills and interest in leadership goes back to my graduate studies. When I started my Ph.D. program in the engineering department at the University of Ghent in Belgium, I was interested in working with other students and became skilled at recruiting other students. During those days, our department had the best Ph.D. students in the engineering faculty. I realized that although I could do things on my own, I enjoyed being around other people and collaborating with them.

When I started my business, I had an opportunity to bring technology, product development and people together. I had deep expertise in the technology so to develop the product I focused on connecting technology with the right people including students.

Later on I was inspired by the HP culture as described in the book The HP Way by David Packard. I believe in practices including management by objectives, the value of teamwork, and business integrity. HP attracted good people and plenty of role models that I benefited from. I was also fortunate to have a mentor at the university who was a cofounder of my company.

The company I founded was bootstrapped with personal funds and support from the university. We needed to get the product to market before we ran out of resources – an intense experience. Our team worked constantly and leaned on the university and HP for support. HP supplied workstations and market know-how and we had a coalition of entities and people who supported the company. I learned first-hand about economic realities and how to make tradeoffs. It was a defining experience.

Over the years I have learned a lot from colleagues. More recently, Keysight’s first CEO Ron Nersesian developed the Keysight Leadership Model (KLM). When you look at that model, customer success is at the center. We exist to make our customers successful.

Making customers successful starts with a deep understanding of market dynamics, customer needs and acting on those insights by accelerating innovation. That means allocating resources by investing in R&D and acquisitions, bringing products to market first and continuing operations with excellence.

When Keysight spun out from Agilent, we doubled our R&D budget from $400 million to $800 million. We made 20 acquisitions, acting on insights into where the markets were going. It’s essential to do it in a way to be first to market which can be lucrative. Being first to market allows Keysight to engage with market makers, gain mindshare, learn and continually improve products.

We apply KLM to reflect on how we are doing. These insights guide me and tell me where we need to go as a business, where the opportunities are, and what we should invest in.

Smith: What specific leadership skills do you need for M&A activities?

Faché: M&A is a complex process. As a company with 20 acquisitions over the last decade, we developed an M&A playbook, all the way from how to manage a funnel of potential candidates, how to assess M&A opportunities and build acquisition business models.

Once an agreement is in place, the heavy lifting starts. When Keysight acquires a company, we integrate it and it becomes part of Keysight. We’re not managing a portfolio of companies – we are one company with a broad portfolio.

We emphasize building partnerships. It is critical to approach acquisitions with a partnership mindset. We’re open to self-assessing where we think we can do better and look for ways where we can make connections, work together and learn from each other.

What’s important is that the leadership team of an acquired company is part of the forward journey. With a mindset of moving best practices forward, creating a joint future state where both Keysight and the acquired company will evolve and get better. That’s a powerful outcome.

Smith: How do you differentiate between leading product lines that include hardware, software and services?

Faché: If you look at our HP roots, Keysight was a hardware company. If you look at the capabilities of our instruments, it was largely hardware. Of course, the instruments had some firmware and application software. That has evolved and most of our value resides in software although hardware is still very important and differentiated. We still build hardware and have our own fab and proprietary ICs that give our hardware the needed capabilities. We have standalone software like our EDA business, and our services include instrument repair and calibration that follow the product.

Keysight has a broad portfolio that is different and challenging as we consider how to manage it. The hardware business challenges are around building products and going through new product introductions. It can take three years to bring a new product to market.

Take 6G, for example. We are already building hardware, although the standard is not finalized. We know enough about the KPIs and have enough runway to deal with long product development. We must be good at understanding where the market is going because of the development time.

Software development might yield a few releases per year whereas hardware development can take a few years and has a complex supply chain. We need to manage that supply chain and manage costs because the bill of materials and manufacturing costs can be 20% to 40% of revenue. Other investments include R&D, sales, marketing and administration.

The software business is much more R&D intensive and more agile. Software products will have higher R&D as a percentage of revenue. A software business needs to have a product development process designed for an agile approach. Our EDA business, for example, has eight to10 releases per quarter. Our portfolio of major products will have three or more releases a year and we might have off-cycle releases for a specific customer request.

Keysight’s success is based on combining hardware, software, and services into a solution that meets the customers’ needs. It’s all about the solution – meaning having the right portfolio of hardware, software and services, and business models optimized for each.

Smith: What have been your biggest challenges building out that solution and what changes have you put in place?

Faché: People think about Keysight and go back in time and think test equipment. They may still be using instruments with an HP logo. Today we have a diversified portfolio. Our leaders have many ways to invest in the business and grow the company. We have found a good operating point that makes us a compelling place to invest.

Our core EDA portfolio is based on our RF microwave and high-speed digital business. We’re investing in new areas like quantum and photonics as well to keep the portfolio compelling. We also find ways to address new technologies and new use cases. One of my roles is to make a business case and ensure we can execute on it.

We may not be known as an EDA company and are a small part of a highly diversified portfolio. One of our challenges is to further develop our identity as an EDA player. Building that identity is about how we participate in our ecosystem, how we show up in the marketplace, and how we work with partners. My role in the ESD Alliance Governing Council helps to build our identity as a leading EDA player.

Smith: What key future trends are you seeing?

Faché: The pace of innovation is picking up. Products come to market fast and technologies evolve from one generation to the next. Product development teams must rethink how they develop products so they can keep up with fast moving markets.

A mega trend called shift left means more emphasis on virtual prototypes of the product as opposed to the classic prototype, test, measure, tweak and re-prototype cycle. This is a favorable megatrend as more companies build virtual representations of a product, their processes and workflows. We are working to enable that shift in our product portfolio.

Smith: What would be the best advice you would give someone on how they can grow into a leader? How can they acquire management skills?

Faché: I would encourage people to seek great mentors and role models. This can start in college or by gaining experience by working in a large company setting or even joining a startup. All of these paths can help develop management skills.

I’ve been fortunate to have great role models. Even today, I learn from the people that I work with. It’s not just the people I report to, it’s also the people I work with. I always look for ways to learn from others and I seek roles where I can bring added value.

Some things are going to work well but not all things will. Having the ability to reflect on what works, what doesn’t work, and what needs to change is key. Making course corrections and being able to admit mistakes is fundamental to growing as a leader and manager.

Leadership is situational. Everyone is different and will thrive in certain leadership roles and not necessarily in others. Being open to feedback from other people always makes me feel like I’m in a better place if I can act on it. Ultimately, how do I help others be successful as leaders and help them succeed?

About Niels Faché

Niels Faché is Vice President and General Manager of Electronic Design Automation at Keysight EDA. Prior to this, he was Vice President and General Manager of the Remarketing Solutions Division and the Keysight Services Portfolio Organization.

Faché holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering, both from the University of Ghent, Belgium, where he also served as a part-time professor from 1995 to 1997. He has a business degree from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and has completed coursework at the Stanford Center for Professional Development.