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This is just a background to what this blog is really all about.   I thought I would reflect on the top 10 things that I have learned in my first year as CLO and my first year after 20+ of being in a customer facing consulting leadership role.   So here we go…

10.  You gain a much deeper understanding of the issues by seeing them from more perspectives.

I saw the world from an Americas' perspective.   I saw the world from a P&L customer facing perspective.   I did not fully understand nor appreciate the challenges and interplay of the global Avanade business or the importance of our core functions (like HR, finance, ITS, etc.) that support our front-line org.   Now being part of the centralized function, albeit a new one in CLO, and clearly having a global agenda, I can see the challenges in time zone, culture, market dynamics, and cooperation that are imperative to our agenda of "One Avanade".    It has been eye opening.  We all need to have a more global P-POV (perspective and point of view).

 

  9.  You learn the importance of influence over mandating.

As you read more and more about leadership, one concept keeps on coming through.  It is the power of influence.  It is easy to manage, it is easy to lead, when you have the power of the organization behind you because of your place on the organization chart.    Your leadership team can make good decisions and we can implement them by mandate.  It is a classic command and control environment.   Now, try getting something done when you do not have the organizational power entitlement.   That is leading through influence.   There are numerous references to this in the leadership research.    It is the key to advancing to senior executive status.    Think of our new global service line model and how that implies a matrix organization.  Without being able to effectively influence, how are you able to get a speedy correct strategy or action complete?   Very challenging.  So, we live in a world now where we all need to develop our influencing skills.  

 

  8.  You realize that Adam's "a global role will be less travel" comment was wishful thinking.

In my old role I traveled every week.   I tried to commit to being home either on a Friday or a Monday so that I would sleep in my bed 3 nights per week, and I also tried a commitment of working out of the local office 1 week per month.   Both of those commitments never really held as the business dynamics over-ruled.    When discussing this CLO role with Adam, he communicated that in this role, my travel would be more deterministic and manageable.   Well, this fiscal year I have been to Japan, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, as well as various places in North America.  These are longer trips that you typically lose a weekend over and so, the promise of a more manageable travel schedule did not come true--sorry, Susan (my wife of 35 years)!

 

  7.  Your pace of decision-making slows because you no longer "know the unknowns".

When you have been working in the same sand-box year after year, you really develop a tremendous innate understanding.   Your intuition and analysis skills get finely tuned.   You see a new problem or issue, and you can quickly pattern match this to a similar scenario in the past and develop a proper approach.    In short, you become a master.  You then pass that domain mastery onto the next wave of leaders.   In my new role, there is no predecessor.   I am not a domain expert.  I do not understand the subtleties of the role or frankly of literature or research of leadership development in the consulting business.   Therefore, that quick and accurate decision making ability that I had in my last role has taken a huge step back.  The decisions that we make in a global centralized role have to work everywhere.   They have to be right since they are difficult to reverse.   Therefore, making decisions now is more challenging,  requires more research, and takes more time to insure you got it right. 

 

  6.  You also move more slowly because you are forced to really think through the impacts and consequences of decisions.

I mention this one briefly in the point above.   The decisions that we have to make in a global central function have to work in every place that Avanade has a business.   These are very impactful decisions and you want to minimize any unintended consequences and disruption to the local business.  In short, you want to be additive to the local business.  This is the quickest path to change. 

 

  5.  You realize how fast your "street cred" fades – a good ego-check.

I knew this was going to happen when I embarked on this CLO journey.   In my old role, when I sent an email, people responded quickly.   Well, let's just say that sometimes now when I send an email it reminds me of the parable "When a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, does it make a sound?"   All kidding aside, it is amazing how fast our business moves forward and people re-align to the new order.   But, I am well on the way to building new street credentials and having a reason for people to respond (see influence skills above). 

 

  4.  You appreciate the value of trusting your peers/replacement and letting go.

You have to move ahead and not keep one foot in the past.   I have worked with the Americas' team for many years.  I have many deep relationships and a solid success of helping people accelerate their careers.   It was time for me to move on to my next experience, and time for Americas to re-align to a new leader.   The net-net is we are both doing fine.

 

  3.  You are forced to re-tool your workday rhythm.

When you are doing a significant command and control role, your calendar establishes a definite rhythm.   You have various aspects of the role that require time and your time becomes very structured and deterministic.  In short, you are in the center of the action.    In my new role, for me to be effective, I need to drive change across the global organization.   This change was not a formal part of our business rhythm.   So, the challenge at the beginning of the year was looking at my calendar and finding that there is nothing automatically populating it.   I had to bring my game to where the action is.  

 

  2.  You may have to re-learn how to "do" versus delegate.

I went from being responsible for 1,800 plus people in North America and maybe 60% of the GDN populations activities to a being responsible for about 10 people.   We have a major agenda in FY12 and it looks like we are going to accomplish everything we committed to.   The only way to do this, is through an all-hands-on-deck approach.   We all became doers.    There was not a lot of delegation around, since who are you going to delegate to?    It has been awhile since I got this close to a committed deliverable business.  I know most of you live this every day, but as an Area President, you tend to touch a lot of things, but not personally deliver and be part of a small delivery based team.  It is been refreshing, demanding, and fun. 

 

1.  Reinvention is good for you and good for the company.

The final lesson I would like to pass on to you is about career growth.   Your  career is nothing more than a continuous set of professional experiences.  Hopefully these experiences force us to learn new skills and explore new arenas.   This is how we keep excited, motivated, and growing as professionals.  In fact, I believe that there is direct proportion to the rate of professional advancement to the size of the gap between our base knowledge and the skills required to be successful in the next experiential challenge.   In the literature they call these "big-gap" challenges, crucible experiences.    I am now in a crucible experience,  I am working hard, I am learning, I have doubts about my effectiveness and the overall success.   My learning curve this year is significantly greater than it has been for many years   This is good for me, it is good for the Americas' team having new leadership and focus, and ultimately it is good for Avanade.  So, my advice to those people reading this blog that have been doing the same role for many years and are looking for excitement,  try finding a crucible experience here at Avanade.   We have them and it will make all the difference.

It has 9 months since I assumed the newly created Chief Leadership Officer role in Avanade.   I thought I would use this blog post to discuss what I have learned so far.    For those of you that do not know me, I arrived early at Avanade.  I came over from Microsoft and MCS.   Prior to Microsoft, I worked in the systems integration consulting business of Digital Equipment Corporation (I know that I am dating myself nowJ).  I began my career as a software developer on process control systems at Eastman Kodak which led to Unix communication driver development at Bell Laboratories.  In summary, I have been at this career now for 38 years, with the last 26 in consulting.   All of that consulting work, up to the CLO appointment, has been in the customer facing portion of the business.    Over the years my business portfolio grew and that part of my career came to a planned and smooth end with the transition of the Americas' President Role to Aziz.   I am proud to say that the Americas' business is continuing to grow and expand as the Americas' leadership has discovered some new energy sources and revised focus that always comes with a new strong leader like Aziz.   It is only natural that the learning curve flattens out over time when you are in the same experience sand-box.   That sand-box is the role you are currently doing and the leader/coach with whom you are working.   Even when the business continues to grow and the business challenges become more complex, if the role and leader/coach remain the same, then over time, the learning is proportionately less every year.    There is a good book that I recently read and I would recommend it here.   It is Great Leaders GROW, by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller.   There are two main points to the book.  The first is the core tenet that we have at Avanade that our leaders are "teachers".   The second point is that if you want to be a great leader, then you have to constantly re-invent yourself and grow.  Otherwise you succumb to the daily grind and fail to re-sharpen the saw, as Covey so aptly states. This then results in your influence and leadership stagnating, with your team not developing as quickly as they should.   So after 20+ years of running consulting P&Ls and 11+ years of working in the Americas for Avanade, it was time for me to venture to another challenge and thereby open up this tremendous learning opportunity.   This benefits me, the new leader, the Americas' leadership team by having a different leader refine/redefine the strategy and approach, and ultimately Avanade.

Reflections on my CLO Journey