Last couple of weeks, we used metaphors from childhood life and teenager life to explain my lessons as a CEO. In this third and last lesson, I will take you all the way to old age.

Lesson 3: Get ready to be lonely

This hits you hard when you become the CEO the first time. Especially, if it is not a small start up kind of environment. Till the point that you became a CEO, you always had people you could “freely” chat with. There were some of your peers that you were close with. If you expressed a company-contrarian point of view over drinks with your direct reports, nobody thought the company was thinking of changing direction the next day.

What I learnt is that all that goes away the day you become a CEO.

It is truly – and the only – peerless job. When everything is said and done, it is you and you only who will carry the weight of having to make decisions. You can get all the opinions you want from everybody – and in an ideal world, you should get conflicting opinions – but then you have to close the door, close your eyes (or perhaps go for a long walk if that is your style) and make the decision. All by yourself.

Your ability to express your points of views will be severely curtailed. If you prematurely express your thoughts, it will unfortunately have the effect of shutting down everybody – well, most. The organization does not read your thoughts as merely thoughts. They read it as your commands/decisions. You can ask folks “What do you think if we did….” and rest assured that more often than not, there is a Chinese whisper going around in the organization the next day that “apparently we are headed in the direction of ….”. Communication is tough.

I have heard advise from others about forming a sounding board around myself with current or ex-CEOs from outside and Board members. I have found such folks either not having a great familiarity with the context or of very little operational experience to be of much use. It is good to hear their points of views but I am not sure there are silver bullets anybody will have for you.

So, like it or not, it is going to be you and you only. With often suppressed ability to be open.

Just like in old age, your life (work life at least) is going to be very lonely. You need to get ready for it.

If last week was about the childhood sea-saw, this week is all about teenager years. Specifically calculus! Yes, calculus!!

Lesson 2: Don’t forget your derivatives from the calculus class in high school

To quote the much hackneyed statement – change is a constant. As a leader, your worry is not change per se. Whether you like it or not, change will happen. Even if you or your company desire not to change, the market will, technology will, customers will and competition will. You simply have no option.

And chances are that as a CEO everywhere you look, you can see the writing on the wall about the changes that you need to bring or would like to bring. That is given.

Change of status is a first order algebraic equation. One of the lessons I have learnt as a CEO is to get a deeper understanding of the first derivative. What is the “right pace of bringing in change”? The rate of change, if you will. (First derivative, if you remember your calculus)

You cannot ride a speedboat like you are steering a ship. You will lose out on the potential progress and fun you could have had. On the other hand, you cannot steer a ship like you are riding a speedboat. A couple of hard turns and you are going to break the ship into pieces.

Setting the direction (change required) is relative easy. You can hire one of those management consulting firms and they will wax eloquent on what change you need. Figuring out at what pace you want to turn the ship and what is the speed you can push the organization to but no more requires a deep understanding of the company and its culture.

As a CEO, this can often be very frustrating. You know what you want and have a rough idea how to even get there. But you cannot dictate the speed. Turning organizations has as much angular momentum as rectilinear momentum. You do not want to spin it out of control – but you want to keep the force on.

You have to apply the right throttle and the right steering. All the while, trying to change the culture, re-equipping the talent inhouse to be able to deal with a little more throttle and a little faster steering.

You will not get all changes right all the time. That is okay. Going back to the ship metaphor – you will pivot and change directions multiple times. But if you pushed the ship beyond its limit of handling change and broke it in two pieces (or even some major component of it), that is irreversible. You will have no chance to pivot any more. Or make anymore forward progress, for that matter.

So, the key lesson is, it is not about the change. It is about the “rate of change”. Not the “delta”. The “d – d – t”, in your teenager math speak.

Compared to most veteran CEOs, I am still green behind the ears. Six years, two different companies and two different industries is still not enough experience to reflect on for wisdom. However, as the year draws to an end, I am forced to ask myself “What has been the three big learnings once the aperture to the world changed to be that of a CEO”

Lesson 1: Don’t forget how you enjoyed the see-saw as a child

The first lesson, I reckon, as I look back, is “it is all about balance”. No idea is purely good or purely bad. No one decision is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. No opinion is guaranteed to succeed or guaranteed to fail. You have to figure out how to balance out things. Competing points of views is good. Lack of opposing points of views is what you have to guard against.

Every individual’s bias is going to make the see-saw push towards one end. But you have to let it go. There will be conflicting interests. You have to protect investors’ interests, employees’ interests and customers’ interests. You have to figure out how to balance. You have to balance the need to have an environment that employees love to work in and then increase medical insurance costs on their paychecks given the realities of the world.

The strive for balance will ensure that the see-saw is not permanently stuck with one in the air and one in the ground. Next time you find yourself in the midst of a lot of conflicting pulls, restrain yourself from taking a position immediately. Remind yourself that it is a see-saw. You want the forces pulling you in different directions. Find out how to balance things.

If that is not hard enough, wait for this: perfect balance is a terrible thing too. Imagine two of you – absolutely equal in weight, at the exact same distance from the fulcrum on the see-saw. Both of you are going to sit up in the air with no movement. That is not how you enjoy a see-saw. Similarly, as a CEO, once you feel you are reaching balance, introduce some chaos.

I realize that is confusing. Balance or not? My answer is – just remember your childhood see-saw. Having somebody much lighter or heavier than you never got you anywhere. And when you two were reasonably similar and the see-saw was not swinging enough to give you fun, one of you heaved hard to the ground to give it some momentum.

That is exactly what you want when you are in a CEO position. Strive for balance. Till it starts getting balanced. Then you introduce some chaos. Growth in a business is much like the thrill of a see-saw – the fun is in the movement – not in the static end state – either completely unbalanced or completely balanced.

That journey – that swinging on either side of the see-saw – is what business is all about.

(second part will be coming next Thursday)

The new year will soon be upon us. Which can only mean one thing – more New Year’s Resolutions (including that cheesy – “my resolution is to have no more resolutions”). Truth be told, all of us think of New Year’s as an opportunity for a “Restart”, as it were.

And usually, those resolutions start off well. Till they peter out. Research gym membership sign ups for the month of January versus any other month to get an idea for this.

So why do those goals wane? It is not like we feel they were wrong goals to begin with. Inevitably, it boils down to other priorities taking over. We could not make time for our goals.

The fallacy, in my opinion, is to take up new goals without understanding what we are going to NOT do. There are still only 24 hours in our days. Unless we stop doing something, it would be difficult to make space for the new things. It is like the Yin and the Yang.

I am sure I am going to have new goals for the new year. And for that, I need to give up on something that consumes time. Would love to hear about your experiences… what have you given up in the past to make space for your new goals? I am hoping to get some tips and ideas from what has worked for you…

QSI is hosting its Acquisition partners from all over the globe. Originally planned to be a 40 participant event, it has grown to 75 participants. The excitement in the partner community is palpable.

You probably get deluged by Linkedin invites much more than I do. But whatever little I get is enough to make me tear my hair from my head. Well, if I had anything left, that is. Every Saturday I sit down and go through the invites. For each one of them, I look at the face and try to figure out if I know this person….. have met before…. should be knowing at all and so on. Many times I try to read their profiles – which often confuses me more than helps me.

What I cannot understand is an answer to a simple question – “Why are you trying to connect with me?”.

“I would like to connect” makes no more sense than all those emails in my inbox from people wanting a phone call – only 15 minutes – to save us so much money that all our employees put together could not somehow think about. Or for that matter all those Nigerian princes. At least the Nigerian princes are very clear what they are seeking.

So, here is a tip – why not just drop a line or two – maybe a small paragraph on who you are and why are you interested in a connection with somebody. And care about it. It is okay to say “I was wondering if you could help me with my job search” or “I was wondering if you had a job in your company” or “Hey, we are in the same field. Just wanted to stay in touch with you” or “I have nothing to ask but I felt with your experience you can help me some day. This is who I am…. Would you mind staying connected?”.

People will help you if they can. People want to accept you in their fold. But people also relate to a little personal touch than those standard mindless Linkedin provided default text that one might be tempted to short cut thru…

Of course, if you know the person for quite some time or is your childhood friend or you just had dinner with that person the previous night, that courtesy would be superfluous.

On my flight to Dallas, I opened up the USA Today online and went to the Tech section to see what might be interesting. There was an interesting article about “8 things you are still doing wrong with your email”. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/saltzman/2015/05/16/email-mistakes/27243937/

Here are a couple of suggestions from the author:
1. Set your email system to send mails to your boss very late at night so that (s)he thinks you are burning the midnight oil. Smilarly set times of delivery of your emails so that everybody thinks you are working when you are really on the beach.

2. If you are late on delivery, change the time on your computer, send the email (it will carry the wrong date stamp) so your boss would think you did it on time – there were some server issues only.

Good God! Have values like general ethics and integrity completely escaped from Corporate America?

I have half a mind of sending that article to all my employees with one rejoinder: nobody cares about the hours – only what you get done and if you are slipping, talk to your team and manager and ask for help – ask them to have your back – they will respond. Whatever you do, don’t start cheating. You will be amazed how those small ones quickly snowball into big ones.

Living in Atlanta, Delta is my natural airlines of choice. And airlines do not exactly make the whole experience very enjoyable these days – what with all the ever increasing extra charges and ever shrinking legrooms – not to talk about all the confusion about seat up or seat inclined :-). However, most airlines do very well by their frequent flyers.
Certainly, from the vantage point of being a very frequent flyer, I have had many experiences which have made me admire Delta. Their whisking away elite passengers in waiting Porsches 🙂 and free drinks at the club immediately come to mind. Then there was the time I flew with the CEO of Delta and was stunned to see him go straight to the coach class and sit in the last row. (I was flying first class). Let’s also not forget that one time when the pilot on our way back from a family vacation left a lovely hand written note on the backside of his business card on my seat.
Today was a very unique experience with Delta. And I was nowhere near an airport. I actually had called up their call center for a simple, quick help. I am sure they take special care of the frequent flyers – and this was no different. But the real interesting thing happened after the lady (who I found out during the call hailed from Samoa.. yeah yeah yeah.. I try to create “intersection points” over the phone too 🙂 ) was done with me. An automated message came on asking if I would take a one question survey.
Normally, I would keep the phone down. This once, for whatever reason, I said “Ok”. Want to take a guess what that question was?
I could have never guessed it. The survey asked me “On a scale of 1-5, 5 being highest, what is the likelihood that you would hire the person you talked to if your business had a customer support call center”?
I pressed 5, put the phone down and started thinking about what just happened. That was the weirdest survey question, I thought.
And then I started getting it. Not sure if Delta changes the question up but certainly, it is a safe bet that the most traveled passengers are business people and are likely to give an answer from experience. So they hit the right segment of customers.
But the real brilliance was in the question itself. Delta nailed one truth – it is seldom about how the problem was solved. It is always about how was I treated. That is what I remember the most. And there is no such thing as a company called “Delta” that I really interact it. That is an abstract construct. I interact with a real human being. How I felt with the whole experience absolutely reflects on and is totally influenced by how I felt about the person during the interaction.
And what better – and business-wise astute – way of judging that by simply asking – not “did you like the interaction?”, not “was he/she knowledgeable?” – but “would you hire him/her?”.

Very well done, Delta!
#Respect

All throughout my life, I have tried my level best to keep a perspective on life. What is important and what is not important. If you read the book by the Australian palliative nurse in a hospice, you will notice that no dying person ever regretted not having worked some more. And so, I always keep telling myself “It is just a job”. There are more important things in life.

Indeed, “it is just a job”. Except that, it isn’t. The way my DNA is built up, a job has never been a mechanism to make more money – I think of that as merely an outcome; a job has never been about rising an organizational ladder – my current business card says I am “Executive Pusher of the Envelope” and certainly a job has never been about striving for the corner office – I have not had an office for a long time – instead choosing to work with my teams in Starbucks, cafeterias, meeting rooms and bars. For sure, a job has never been my sole pursuit in life – I run, practice humor, play the tabla, make cocktails, write the first draft of the history of my future – all at arguably terrible levels – and in general choose to border on the ridiculous just to explore life!

But I will tell you what a job has always been to me – it has been yet another chance to create a mosaic of relationships, another opportunity to create “intersection points”, another opportunity to get to know a few more human beings that I got a chance to cross paths with in this short thing we choose to call “life” – all the while professionally doing something I love and hopefully creating some more value in the world.

And that is why it is never just a job. Long after I will forget the numbers and the product details and the contract negotiations, I will remember the people – the team members, the peers, my manager, our customers, our partners. Thru every interactions I have had with them, I have learnt a little more. About myself and about life in general.

And the sum total of those interactions have made me grow up so much in the last seven years. Those emails, those hallway conversations, those intense differences in opinions, those heartfelt laughters, those dreaming sessions, those Starbucks team meetings, those uncomfortable conflict resolutions, those going to a bar to let it all out… every piece of those interactions has made me a better executive, a better team member and a better human being.

As I get off the Equifax bus and board the Quantum Spatial bus, I certainly appreciate the opportunity life has presented to me. It is not often that somebody gets a chance to lead a bright and promising team in a very fast growing market. Let alone twice in succession!!! But more than anything else, I appreciate and acknowledge the influence each and every Equifax team member had on me. Without the Equifax team accepting me and helping me grow before dropping me at my stop seven years later, I would have never been worthy of stepping onto the QSI bus. I understand that deeply.

No journey in life is done in straight lines. If our paths intersected once, they will certainly intersect again. With that hope to run into you around the corner some day soon, here is a heartfelt Thank You to all my Equifax friends from myself, my ever supporting wife Sharmila and our two beautiful daughters – Natasha and Nikita. We seek your best wishes as we embark on our next journey.

Before, I sign off, as is my wont, “I wish you enough” … (See the following post to understand the context http://www.rajibroy.com/?p=5693 )

Was a panel speaker at Armed Forces Communication and Electronics Association event (“Big Data and Predictive Analytics in Fraud”) in DC today. I was the only person from the industry and this was absolutely my first time speaking at a government conference.
Learnt the hard way that you should always wear a national flag pin when you are a speaker at a government event.
Fortunately, one of my colleagues had one to spare!!!