The other day, I had a pretty engrossing breakfast meeting with a top executive of a large public company. It was engrossing because we started debating  – what turned out to be a really interesting –  topic. I would love to hear your views on this.

The central question was – What should be the perspective that a top executive in a company should have? That he/she is going to be in the company for a long time? Or that he/she is going to be around for some stipulated period of time (say 5-6 years)?

As we debated, we found a lot of pros and cons on both sides. Presumably, the executive has shown somewhere in the resume that he/she has held at least one job for a pretty long time (8-12 years, say). So, that, at least proves that he/she is not a job hopper or that he/she bailed out everytime the wind blew unfavorably.

After that what?

If the executive joins the company thinking “I will be here for 5-6 years. I need to bring in the maximum effect I possibly can in that time”, the advantage is that

(*) the executive will have a certain level of impatience that is required to continuously push the organization

(*) will have little sense of job protection and is therefore probably not going to be too shy of picking battles

(*) just like a doctor’s advise “you will die in 2 years” quickly sets priorities in one’s life, a sense of “end date” will push the executive to focus on the right priorities

On the other hand,

(*) the executive might come across as being “not loyal” to the company or the cause

Let’s take another executive who joins the company with the assumption he/she will be there for the long haul (or even retire from the company). Chances are that the executive

(*) will be more patient about bringing some larger changes which inherently take a long time (especially if they require culture change in the company)

(*) will be valued as loyal to the cause of the company and

(*) inherently will be interested in learning different aspects of the company (with the assumption that he/she will see a career path thru various different positions in the company)

On the flip side,

(*) a sense of job preservation may drive the executive to acquiesce/avoid uncomfortable decisions/situations

The truth is most executives overestimate their ability to drive what their “end date” will be (more often than not , I have seen companies drive this calendar for them). Still, it would be interesting to understand from the company and the individual’s point of view what would be the right strategy under what circumstances.

Most importantly, the question is what perspective should they have? In reality, they may land up staying longer or shorter depending upon many other variables.

In an interesting twist to the debate, we also wondered, if we were the CEO of the company, which kind of executives would we hire? For what kind of positions?

Thoughts?

I realize the apparent implication of the subject line – that you have to choose between customer or innovation makes little sense – in fact, they are inextricably intertwined. All innovation needs to be driven for the customers and preferably with the customers. In fact, I have often held the belief that most innovation happens at the edges of the system. (where your system and the customer system intersect).

That said, imagine that you have just taken over a team or division or company and you realize that there is a grounds up rebuilding of culture you need to do. Across most industries, most companies and most teams, it is safe to say customer focus and growth thru innovation are going to be two of a few underpinnings on which you are likely to rebuild your organization.

If you have tried culture changes in any large situations, you also know the danger of pushing too many levers at the same time. Culture change is less about words, powerpoints and dashboards – and more about sustained example setting, public reward and penalty system and above all driving clarity on why change. Such efforts require both focus and perseverance.

Where would you put your relatively larger focus on – make the organization customer focused and enable innovation to happen thru that or put larger focus on accentuating growth thru innovation and use the customer as the litmus test thru the process?

I first faced this problem thirteen years back when I had to rebuild up a whole technology organization which had to fight the inertia of the existing players (who had been successful for some period of time). While it is dangerous to draw generalizations, I have tilted towards focusing on building the customer oriented culture first. And innovation was an inevitable result (needed work and processes to channelize it though). I will probably do the same again.

Thoughts?

Over the years, if there is one thing I have changed a lot on, it probably is this – how close I choose to become with my direct reports on the personal front. If you know me, you probably know that I am one of those gregarious persons who loves to talk and have been accused of fairly capable of listening to the interests of the other party. My personal Rolodex of about 10,000 people that I carry with me (about 2,000 of them get birthday wishes from me – handwritten emails – none of the automated ecards etc) is a reasonably good testimony to how quickly I can make friends.

For most of the early part of my career, I built great personal relationships with my direct reports. Our families would be close and we would share a lot of social events together. I have seen that model work for a lot of people too. In fact, I have observed how one of the CEOs that I admire a lot takes time over the weekend often to golf or hunt or what have you with his direct reports and sometimes with people deeper in the organization. I have no doubt in my mind that this has resulted in not only a great rapport but also a deep commitment from the people. In fact, most people that I know who still report to the CEO have the greatest loyalty.

However, for me, I had a change of heart probably sometime 7 or 8 years back. While it was great to know that we were a committed team, I started getting severe doubts on inherent human weakness of letting liking or not liking shrouding professional judgment of a person. I take great pride in my ability to differentiate these two. But I started reminding myself that I would be fooling myself if I thought I was above being human.  I also started thinking hard about whether this style of leadership might give rise to too much of  “conformance”. As a side story, I had an almost instinctive reaction to this from that time – anybody who has worked with me for the last 7-8 years will agree on one thing – I impulsively take the opposing view – regardless of what the arguer’s view is. (It has stood me in good stead – but that is a story of another day).

I remember having read a book around that time – cannot recollect the name – about true leaders looking for “performance, not conformance”.

And that is when I started the process of slowly weaning myself away from getting too close to my new direct reports on a personal front. It is very difficult for me to tell you – without running a control experiment whether I am better off or not. But I can tell you that I feel very comfortable that I have stonewalled some amount of the human fallacies. Of course, on the personal front, I missed getting to know some really great human beings closely. And as the 10,000 Rolodex entries shows you, personal relationships far outlive professional relationships.

Have you ever faced this conundrum? If so, what did you do? And why?

Rajib

This evening I got this email from an old colleague of mine who lost his job. The reason he wrote the email was to tell his old friends that he was able to get a great job – even in these tough times – and he is having a great time – professionally and personally.

That was a great story. Something most of us can relate to. We don’t like to get outside our zone of comfort. And yet, when we get kicked out of it, we often find that we can do even better in the new circumstances.

We build our zones of comfort and like staying there because that is where we can drive most value – or so we perceive. We believe we are an expert and have experience in that area. But above all, we hate change. There is nothing like getting “settled down” that makes us feel that we “know what we are doing”. (BTW, as an aside, we all believe that we personally love change – it is just that everybody else in the world hates changes).

I am sure you can think of a few cases in your life when you got pushed out of that zone – suddenly and definitely not following your calendar. And most of the time you look back and say – Wow, that was the best thing ever happened to me. I learnt lot more. I now understand lot more. No doubt, when the change happened we felt very uncomfortable, to say the least.

Of course, we do not want the environment to create the changes for us always. The trick is how do we incrementally but surely, keep pushing ourselves outside our zone of comfort? So as not to let us settle down. So as to make sure we are learning continuously and adapting to the environment. So as to keep our reflexes and judgment as sharp as ever.

I suspect it is tougher than it sounds. But I guess the best leaders make a practice of pushing themselves beyond their current “boxes” – so to speak.

Rajib

This evening I got this email from an old colleague of mine who lost his job. The reason he wrote the email was to tell his old friends that he was able to get a great job – even in these tough times – and he is having a great time – professionally and personally.

That was a great story. Something most of us can relate to. We don’t like to get outside our zone of comfort. And yet, when we get kicked out of it, we often find that we can do even better in the new circumstances.

We build our zones of comfort and like staying there because that is where we can drive most value – or so we perceive. We believe we are an expert and have experience in that area. But above all, we hate change. There is nothing like getting “settled down” that makes us feel that we “know what we are doing”. (BTW, as an aside, we all believe that we personally love change – it is just that everybody else in the world hates changes).

I am sure you can think of a few cases in your life when you got pushed out of that zone – suddenly and definitely not following your calendar. And most of the time you look back and say – Wow, that was the best thing ever happened to me. I learnt lot more. I now understand lot more. No doubt, when the change happened we felt very uncomfortable, to say the least.

Of course, we do not want the environment to create the changes for us always. The trick is how do we incrementally but surely, keep pushing ourselves outside our zone of comfort? So as not to let us settle down. So as to make sure we are learning continuously and adapting to the environment. So as to keep our reflexes and judgment as sharp as ever.

I suspect it is tougher than it sounds. But I guess the best leaders make a practice of pushing themselves beyond their current “boxes” – so to speak.

Rajib

This story of an unbelievable “winning against all odds” is an inspiration in our personal lives as well as our professional lives. For many of us who are wincing at the current economic headwinds and trying to figure out how to deal with it, there cannot be a better “pick-me-upper” than this. What a great story!! What a perspective it sets for us!!