business
‘‘
TALKING
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“
EGO CANNOT BE
BROUGHT INTO
THIS EQUATION
. . . YOU HAVE
TWO EARS AND
ONE MOUTH FOR
A GOOD REASON.
great people who know the markets and
then we can execute accordingly.
How do you build trust within
an organisation?
You build trust by doing what you say, being
consistent, being predictable and ensuring
people are very clear about what you stand
for. I have a mantra from the Army: ‘serve to
lead’. You serve your people to lead.
Is your background a technical or a
business background?
I wanted to join the Army from a young
age and I wasn’t going into IT. I was going
to go into something like banking. I joined
Coca Cola and then I joined Cisco, EMC and
then came here. I kind of fell into it but it’s
about the management and the leadership
qualities, making sure people know where
they are going and showing that vision, is the
reason I’ve done what I’ve done. I enjoy it.
How do you ensure clear
communication when you’re talking
about IT out of the office?
I always use the analogy of talking to my
13-year-old son and I’m trying to explain
to him what we do in IT, how it benefits
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INTELLIGENTCIO
him and what is the outcome that we
are looking for. If you can do that you’re
probably halfway there. I just keep it very
simple and grounded.
Let me give you an example of NVMe (Non-
Volatile Memory Express). In most worlds,
people would have no idea of what you are
talking about. I use an analogy of being in
a football stadium with 64,000 people. In
the legacy world everyone of those people
would have to go through one exit out of that
football stadium and you’ve got a bottleneck.
With NVMe every person in that stadium has
the option of taking 64,000 routes out of it
that are dedicated to them so they can get
out whenever and however they want. So
it’s that sort of analogy I use with my kids to
explain what I do.
If you’re making a change how
important is it for you to make
absolutely clear why you are making
it to your team?
It’s critical. It’s getting back to the course
correction. If I don’t get the buy-in from
my team it doesn’t work. You have to make
sure they understand the problem, specify
what that problem is, break it down into its
component parts, and then establish how
we’re going to address those component
parts and the vision we are going to put
around it to ensure everybody is clear where
we are going. It’s critical to get buy-in from
your team. Always include your teams.
What advice would you give to
someone that wanted to follow in
your footsteps?
Again I would use the analogy ‘serve your
people to lead them’; keep it simple, humour
is one of the critical factors I think a leader
has to have. Being an ex-military guy I’m
used to hardship and humour was one of the
things that got us through.
Do you believe that arrogance and
leadership don’t go together?
Totally. It’s not about me and I am really
particular; if we win something as an EMEA
region it’s for the team and you almost have
to reject praise and push it on to your team
members, they’re the guys on the ground
doing it. You might create the environment,
but they are doing it. That’s really important,
you can’t be arrogant as you get found out.
If you’re egotistical what happens when you
lose your job? Your ego has gone and you’ve
got no respect, so you’ve got to be humble,
it’s a team effort. n
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