Situational Background

Kristo Käärmann, Wise’s co-founder and CEO, is a steady builder who marries cost discipline with customer trust. He favours simple products, honest prices, and open metrics, adjusting course publicly when needed. Käärmann’s tone is direct and unpretentious; his standard is reliability over rhetoric. Distinctive for consistency and accountability, he shows how clarity, thrift, and responsibility compound across any enterprise.

Practical Leadership Principles

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1) Cost consciousness as respect.

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Efficiency protects customers and teams.

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Behaviours to model:

• Track unit costs visibly.
• Design processes to remove waste.
• Share savings with customers or staff.

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2) Straight metrics, straight talk.

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Say what’s true in numbers and plain words.

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Behaviours to model:

• Publish a simple scorecard.
• Explain misses and fixes without spin.
• Set dates and meet them.

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3) Own mistakes, improve systems.

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Accountability is a team sport.

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Behaviours to model:

• Run blameless reviews focused on causes.
• Implement one systemic fix per incident.
• Thank those who surfaced issues.

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Call to action

Pick one cost to remove, one metric to publish, and one improvement you’ll make after a recent miss—then communicate all three today.