Thoughts on Leadership and Management

I had an opportunity to discuss leadership and management with a group of senior managers from a Fortune 500 company. Here are some of the points I made in the discussion:

(1) On what we do not like in our responsibilities: There are occasions or situations we do not like. When I see such a situation or occasion, my first thought is always why I do not like it, and I will do some analysis. In most of cases, I will find out that that is because of my shortcomings or weak points, or it is because that I am just trying to dwell in the comfortable zone. With this analysis as the foundation, usually what end up for me is that I will take it as a challenge, or as an opportunity to extend my horizon? After hard work or putting efforts, the shortcomings are overcome, and the weak points are strengthened, what I originally do not like at the end becomes something I enjoy very much.
(2) On evangelization: People in technology profession usually believe they have something that is good and should be welcome by all the people. While this is in most cases are the case, but the attitude behind evangelization is fine in the academic circle, when such an attitude appears in business or industry, we should be cautioned. Computing industry has been in existence for more than 50 years and customers have already accumulated a lot of experiences in applying technological advances in business operation. The dynamics between technology providers and the general business community has changed dramatically. The time when technology companies define business requirements for customers are pretty much gone. Actually, customer feedbacks are gradually becoming a very important input for technical decisions. Companies that are detached from the market realities will not be successful. This was one of the reasons IBM failed in the early 90’s, based on Louis Gerstner’s account. With this said, yes technology is by essence an innovation driven industry, there are definitely opportunities when evangelization is essential. In those cases, the best way to judge is that we, as technical people, put our feet in the customers’ shoes. If our conclusion is that the technology will benefit the customers, we need do some evangelizations. But generally, the relation between technology companies and the larger business community is getting closer, two-way communications are the norm instead of exceptions.
(3) On large enterprise and startup: There are sound reasons why large enterprises are doing things general slower than startups. I think the ultimate judgment is the overall performance in the market. Large enterprises have their competitive advantages that startups do not have; quick response to market requirements is the advantage startups employ to compete with the large enterprises. Different market segments may particularly favor some competitive advantages such as speed. But speed is not everything. What I believe is that, in a large enterprise, different line of business may have different requirement on how fast things should be done; I also believe we, as leaders and managers in large enterprises, should intentionally create and protect those groups for which quick response and entrepreneurship are critical to compete successfully in the market.
(4) On communication: there are four factors in communication, the sender, the receiver, the channel and the message. Effective communication must take all of them into consideration. In technological term, the issue is to understand the protocol. But at the end, it is the message itself that speaks the loudest. The quality of the content is the most important.
(5) On a career in large enterprise. Omitted.
(6) On change agent. Omitted.