What Makes Some Companies And CEO Tick?

I was recently asked to give a kick-off talk around the theme of 鈥淟eading change and Innovation鈥?to a great team of Emerging leaders in my organization. Having been involved in delivering these talks in conferences before, one of things that I was always looking to improve was to share the transcript of my speeches and presentation either in video or text form in my blog. This time I am trying to share the stuff more or less in the same flow as I spoke. I took sometime write it post the talk- that's when the thoughts are ripe in the mind. Though it looks like a bit longer (for a 20 min talk), I would appreciate your comments. When the Australian team was winning almost everything in the Cricket field from mid-90s through most of 2000s, their captain during the initial stages of its transformation Steve Waugh shared a secret of their success. 1, even though artificial one but deeply internalized one, helped them get better even when they won.

If they won by 10 runs, they did make sure to celebrate but more than that set themselves the goal to do win by a bigger margin in the next match. So this team remained emerging and constantly strived towards reaching great heights. There is another opposing example, again from the world of sport, which proves what happens if we believe that we have reached a level of accomplishment and expertise and we are devoid of any challenge. There was an England bowler named Monty Panesar, who was bowling in one of the Ashes tests. 鈥淚s Monty bowling in his 33rd test or the 1st test for the 33rd time? Monty probably stopped growing and probably he started to think of himself as having been an accomplished bowler after getting a break into England playing 11 and didn't improve as much as the situation demanded. I fully embrace this thinking I shared so here's an emerging leader talking to a group of emerging leaders.

Marc Andreessen as someone who is not only a genius in technology but also a master of history of computer science profession. This sense of history, Ben says, is quite important to have as such knowledge often helps give perspective on handling current problems, as much as it does to help to pave way for the future. I have been a student of learning about leading change. As much as I have thought in the past that I have mastered learning about the change, I have always fallen short as newer situations keep emerging. Having observed our industry quite closely for a considerable time, I can safely vouch that we live in a very dynamic industry in which no two days are the same. In this little talk, I would like my focus to be narrow. 鈥nd if we don't treat it as a skill we leave a gap open to become victims of change.

And one of the things that I often tell myself and my team is that we should not let ourselves be labeled as victims. Being a victim (and sometimes pretending to be one) is not one of the nicest and positive feelings at all. Our attitude should make us accountable to ourselves and own-up things. One the key events that we saw happen in our industry was the stepping down of John Chambers as Cisco CEO. I call it as a key event because he was at the helm of Cisco for considerable period, around 2 decades. We live in the times when companies find it hard to even survive for even 1/4th that tenure he spent as CEO. In our career times, we have seen some legendary companies like Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Digital Equipment etc. either merge with bigger companies or bite the dust altogether. What makes some companies and CEO tick? Recently, Chambers wrote a piece in Harvard Business Review on his/Cisco鈥檚 longevity and associated the same with his ability to stay ahead of technology shifts.

Did Chambers view the technology shifts and changes as a 鈥渢hreat鈥? 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e a large company with significant market share, it鈥檚 tempting to view market disruptions as a threat, but we view them as an opportunity. When a market isn鈥檛 in transition, gaining market share is hard鈥攜ou鈥檙e fighting to take one or two points of share from competitors. While describing how Chambers saw leading change as a skill, he considers listening to the customers are one of the key ways to gain insights about the trends. For Cisco, each transition required a decision about when to jump from selling a profitable product to a new technology鈥攐ften one that would cannibalize our existing product line. No one knew how to go small better than Steve Jobs. He was famously as proud of the products he didn't pursue as he was of the transformative products Apple created. In the two years after his return in 1999, he took the company from 350 products to ten. That's 340 nos, not counting anything else during that period. As a key learning, we should be ready to cannibalize something that's working for the sake of something better that you foresee coming. 鈥淭ruth is people don't like change. And the older you get, the less you like it. Change has to start here (pointing towards mind). You have to move mind before you move your bodies. Change is an intellectual process that you have to work to see it for what it is.