Category: Leadership

How to Lead Across Cultures: Global Insights from Top Exec Chris Hummel

How to Lead Across Cultures: Global Insights from Top Exec Chris Hummel

Chris Hummel is a one-of-a-kind international executive. He has years of experience leading global organizations in places as far-flung from his hometown of Boston as Kazakhstan and Singapore.

Chris is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of United Rentals and has also served as the chief marketing officer of Schneider Electric SE. Chris has more than two decades of executive leadership experience in senior sales and marketing positions at Unify, SAP and Oracle. Over 13 years in a number of senior roles at Oracle, Chris helped Oracle’s customer service organization earn certification from J.D. Power and Associates for its “outstanding customer service.”

Chris’ success is proof that anyone can define his or her own unique path. He started on a track to become a U.S. diplomat. And he soon found himself traveling and working with some of the greatest tech companies in the world. Here’s how he built Oracle’s office in Kazakhstan from the ground up:

Great leaders don’t all march out of prestigious business school doors. Chris learned early that being different from the rest could become one of his strongest assets.

Leadership, for Chris, is more than a title — it’s a mindset. Chris looks for these three defining characteristics that all great leaders share.

For the rest of my conversation with Chris Hummel, check out DaveCarvajal.com/videos. You’ll find more insights from some of my favorite leaders on the planet.

Global insights with top executive Chris Hummel

Global insights with top executive Chris Hummel

Chris Hummel is a one-of-a-kind executive leader with experience at the helm of global organizations in places as far-flung from his hometown of Boston as Kazakhstan and Singapore.

He is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of United Rentals and has also served as the chief marketing officer of Schneider Electric SE. Chris has more than two decades of executive leadership experience in senior sales and marketing positions at Unify, SAP and Oracle. Over 13 years in a number of senior roles at Oracle, Chris helped Oracle’s customer service organization earn certification from J.D. Power and Associates for its “outstanding customer service.”

Chris’ success is proof that anyone can define his or her own unique path. He started on a track to become a U.S. diplomat. And he soon found himself traveling and working with some of the greatest tech companies in the world. Here’s how he built Oracle’s office in Kazakhstan from the ground up:

 

Great leaders don’t all march out of prestigious business school doors. Chris learned early that being different from the rest could become one of his strongest assets.

 

Leadership, for Chris, is more than a title – it’s a mindset. Chris looks for these three defining characteristics that all great leaders share.

 

 

For the rest of my conversation with Chris Hummel, check out DaveCarvajal.com/videos. You’ll find more insights from some of my favorite leaders on the planet.

Insights with Y&R CEO David Sable: Why You Don’t Need the Corner Office

Insights with Y&R CEO David Sable: Why You Don’t Need the Corner Office

David Sable is a world traveler, a gamer, a die-hard Doors fan, and a self-proclaimed hippie at heart. I had a lot of fun talking with David – who is also the Global CEO of Y&R, one of the world’s leading global marketing communications companies. David was an early digital entrepreneur, and he is still tapped for marketing and digital expertise around the world.

David is a distinguished leader in several realms – business, marketing, digital, and philanthropy (he serves as Chair of UNICEF’s New York Board and was named one of the 10 Most Generous Marketing Geniuses by Fast Company in 2013). Here’s what he says it takes to become a leader of leaders.

 

Leadership isn’t inherited – it’s learned from great mentors. David discovered that learnings could come from unexpected mentors, and he found how much there is to gain from keeping yourself open to every side of an argument. The most important lesson he learned – you don’t need the corner office to get big things done. Here’s why:

 

Leadership is also forged from adversity. David talks about the most important trait a leader must possess in order to learn from a difficult situation.

 

For more of my conversation with David Sable, check out DaveCarvajal.com/videos. You’ll also find other insights from some of my favorite leaders on the planet. And, David has an active presence in the blogosphere – you can read his blog at www.weeklyramble.com.

Insights with World-Class Executive Jim Madej

Insights with World-Class Executive Jim Madej

Jim Madej has nearly three decades of experience leading and learning from some of the greatest Fortune 50 companies in the United States. Jim served as Chief Customer Officer for National Grid, Director of National Sales & Service at Hess, and Chief Commercial Officer for General Electric before forming his own strategic growth consulting firm, Madej Core. I had the opportunity to talk with Jim about the insights he’s gained on business and leadership over the years.

It was a privilege talking with Jim about the three keys to GE’s long-term success. In our conversation, Jim opened up about the company’s three most important business practices.

One of the greatest marks of a leader is humility, and Jim understands the importance of measuring victory by the success of the entire team.

 

Every good company keeps track of KPIs, but here’s Jim’s argument for why you might be focusing too much on output metrics – along with other advice for achieving high performance in your career.

One of the biggest insights along the journey of professional development is distinguishing between management and leadership skills. Jim talked with me about what makes someone a true leader.

You can see more of my conversation with Jim Madej on the Insights page of DaveCarvajal.com. You’ll also find more interviews with some of my favorite leaders on the planet.

 

Insights with VC Legend Itzhak Fisher

Insights with VC Legend Itzhak Fisher

I had the pleasure of sitting down with serial entrepreneur and investor, Itzhak Fisher, for an interview. Itzhak is Founder and General Partner of Pereg Ventures, a Nielsen backed private equity fund. He also served as Executive Vice President, Global Business Development for Nielsen.

Itzhak has a long track record creating new companies and developing them into operationally excellent businesses. As Co-founder and Chairman of Trendum, he took the technologies of this small internet data mining company joined them with VNU, Intelliseek and BuzzMetrics, and sold the new entity to the Nielsen company. In the nineties, Itzhak founded and headed RSL Communications (NASDAQ: RSLC) a Telco company operating in over 20 countries across four continents with over $1.5 billion in revenues.

In our talk, Itzhak opened up about the most important lessons he’s learned on leadership, business and investing.

Every great executive seeks out mentorship. Itzhak Fisher’s mentor just happens to be one of the most influential leaders in the world.

Itzhak also talked candidly about an early business failure. After that experience, he made one rule for himself that he follows to this day. Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth (he invested in a horse farm).

 

Itzhak is a world-class leader, and he’s wise enough to know that when it comes to hiring and investing — the last thing he wants to be is the smartest person in the room.

A bonus from my conversation with Itzhak was learning about his history and his vision for the future. It was humbling to learn about his heritage as the son of Holocaust survivors and hear about the incredible work he’s doing to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.

 

See my full conversation with Itzhak Fisher on the Insights page of DaveCarvajal.com. You’ll also find more interviews with some of my favorite leaders on the planet.

CEO Spotlight: What To Do When Performance Numbers Suck

CEO Spotlight: What To Do When Performance Numbers Suck

CEOs are responsible for driving the highest possible performance results. Of course, this task is much easier said than done. Teams miss their KPIs and MBOs for any number of reasons. Sometimes, despite the strength of your leadership, you know your own expertise in making it better is limited.

So how do you get performance back on track fast? Skillful leaders are able to achieve results through their team the same way a good coach builds team performance by leveraging individual talents and filling the gaps. Sometimes CEOs and coaches feel torn about what to do when it comes to making tough calls on talent. Here are your options:

  1. Train: You can send someone to get the training they need to improve individual and team performance. It’s a good idea to develop the skills in your team, but this option takes a significant investment in time. In the months that it takes for this person to learn new skills, he or she might have the theoretical or academic understanding of how to solve a problem – but the person will still lack the the years it takes to develop mastery. If your business is in high growth mode, any individual’s capacity to learn – no matter how strong a team member he or she might be – will likely be outpaced by the needs of your company.
  2. Outsource: You could outsource a problem area to a consulting firm. This might be a good plan for skills that are not strategic to your vision and goals. Keep in mind that this option is expensive and you are not guaranteed quality. If you need to increase performance in an area that is strategic to your mission and vision, then you need to build the capacity internally.
  3. Recruit: That leaves a CEO with the best option for developing capacity in a high-growth company. Recruit and hire a world champion to fill the gap your team is missing. And remember that hiring must be done with mastery. Dabbling in recruiting and making the wrong hire will only add to whatever problems you’re already facing.
  4. Nothing: The last option is to do nothing. CEOs do this all the time by choosing not to hire an expert. Sometimes it’s worse and they take on yet another set of responsibilities for themselves to prove their personal significance. This is the most painful option that often causes the kind of skull-crushing brain damage that creates suffering for everyone involved.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Make the right executive decision and remember that the best utilization of venture capital is to acquire the right human capital.

Are women the greater sex?

Are women the greater sex?

Victor Hugo said “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” We are living in historic times. And the time for women to be in more executive, business and leadership roles is here now.

Female founders are the fastest growing segment of entrepreneurs, yet they receive less than three percent of venture capital funding. According to research by Korn Ferry, women hold just a quarter of the top jobs across the most prominent C-Suite titles. And that number is even smaller when it comes to the chief executive position. Women hold only 5% of CEO posts; the role that shows the lowest gender diversity in the entire C-suite.

Fortunately, tech and HR are slightly ahead of the curve. 1 in 3 leaders working in tech are women. And the chief human resources officer position is the only C-suite role where there is gender equality – 55 percent of CHROs across industries are women.

There is concrete evidence that in life and especially in business, for creating stronger communities and enterprise value, women are the greater sex.

Companies that fail to recognize this, are actually paying the price. At Twitter, only 13 percent of employees in tech roles are women – a point of embarrassment for the company as it has struggled to secure strategic options.

Research shows that female leadership creates a significantly higher ROI. Companies with a female founder saw 63 percent higher ROI than investments with all-male founding teams. Businesses with strong women leadership generated a return on equity of 10.1 percent per year compared to 7.4 percent for those without, according to a 2015 study by MSCI of more than 4,000 companies around the world.

Of the c-suite and board member positions my team of recruiters is asked to fill, close to half our clients are asking for diversity and inclusiveness in the search process. The ‘Mad Men’ era of doing business is a vestige of the industrial economy – when the domestic space was a woman’s queendom and a man’s ego battled in business. Entrepreneurship today is about building communities, tribes and the enterprise value that comes from network effects. The growing evidence is that diversity of thought creates the most value.

5 Awesome Brain Hacks for Making the Best of Every Situation

5 Awesome Brain Hacks for Making the Best of Every Situation

When life hands you lemons, be a lemonade maker. People who get stuck are the ones waiting for the perfect situation. The most effective people in the world are those who make the best of every situation.

If you feel inside that you are not enough, it becomes easy to think the solution is external. You might believe that the thing you are missing can be found in the right pair of shoes, the right mate, or the right job. You seek perfection outside of yourself to compensate for the imperfection inside.

When you become weary from your search for perfection you begin to feel sorry for yourself. But those who feel sorry for themselves won’t find the luck they’re looking for.

Lemonade makers create their own luck.

Lemonade makers have a better understanding of the big picture in life, instead of limiting themselves to a nearsighted perspective of personal survival. They lift themselves up. They look for silver linings. They find a way to win.

My good friend and coach, Dan Sullivan, said in a recent talk, “You have to have full consciousness to have luck.”

How do you achieve “a more full consciousness”? It starts with humility. Humility allows you to appreciate what you have in life and the cards you’ve been dealt. It primes the mind to be optimistic and seek the best outcome in any situation.

If your guiding question in life is, ‘How can I make the best of this?’ your brain will find all sorts of possibilities and prize-winning paths to a better outcome. Our brains are wired such that they cannot leave an unanswered question alone.

How do you become a lemonade maker? Here are five of my favorite brain hacks for making the best of every situation:

  1. Get your body moving! Feeling sorry for yourself is a low-energy state. Motion creates emotion. Get your heart rate pumping and force a smile on your face! Your mood will elevate, for sure.
  2. The problem is not the problem. How you react to the problem is the problem. Breathe. Meditate. Learn to change your brain chemistry from fear-based emotional triggers to calm, centered thinking focused on positive outcomes.
  3. Ask a better question. What are you grateful for right now? How can your smile, humor, and energy be weapons of mass production in your arsenal? Use these questions to push past your fear of failure. The brain is a liar and uses fear to keep you safe from saber-tooth tigers. Danger and fear are not the same. The chances of you getting eaten by a saber-tooth tiger are lower than you think.
  4. Excellence is more important than perfection. Appreciate and commit to seeking excellence. Excellence is an achievable standard.
  5. Be a contributor. Highly effective people are able to make an impact in the lives of others by sharing their knowledge and wisdom.

Now, how can you help me share this with as many people possible? If you think this can be useful to others, please share it with your network and recommend.

Are You Guilty of Committing the 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership?

Are You Guilty of Committing the 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership?

These are not the traditional ABCs of deadly sins (i.e., avarice, greed, lust). As humans and leaders, we know success and its opposite are complex parts of life, not cut-and-dried results of moral failure.

Exhibiting the following traits doesn’t make you a bad person. The fact that you are reading this means that you are a person who is actively working to become a better leader. Through a few silent behaviors, however, you may be contributing to an environment that stunts your organization’s promise.

As a C-suite executive leader, your colleagues take their cues from you. If you are mired in bad habits, you are closing yourself off to reality, misguiding your team, missing opportunities, and overall not enjoying your work. So use the following list as a checkpoint. If you commit these “sins” regularly, heed the words of Ice Cube himself and “check yourself before you wreck yourself.” It could be time to start shifting your perspective.

1. SELF- DOUBT

We grow up with a distorted sense of confidence: either we have too much or too little. In leadership, confidence is essential. Let’s compare the effects of confidence and doubt.

Confidence creates committed action, curiosity, creativity, cooperation and communication—all things CEOs must stand upon as the company’s rock. Confidence makes this possible because you have a healthy sense of your skills and experience, as well as your place among your team.

Doubt is distortion from which flows fear, anxiety, negativity, and isolation from the team. A company with ailing roots will never thrive.

Luckily, confidence can be inborn, and as discussed in my post on the fixed vs. growth mindset, it can be built. It is also your job to instill it in your employees. That’s what great leaders do—create certainty by putting aside nagging self-doubt in order to express positive clarity.

I don’t mean shooting positivity beams wildly in all directions. I mean setting achievable and challenging goals, praising what is going right, and giving honest feedback about what is not working. To remove self-doubt, remove the focus from yourself and tell your team how and why they are essential to the achievement of strategic outcomes.

2. AFFECTATION

Affectation is pretending to be someone you’re not. Masks are easy to see through because it’s obvious the person is focusing on the wrong things, like their appearance, over the team’s needs.

True leaders are genuine because they bring their own experience to the table. They meet experiences head-on, drawing conclusions and learning lessons they can share.

There will always be others who seem bigger, more successful, and with more presence than you. It’s great to take notes from highly successful executives, and put them into practice. If you’re copying verbatim from the big-name leadership gurus, you’re not leading…you’re following.

Nothing good comes from envy. Resources and inspiration are plentiful, and stillyou must be the one to interpret, to apply, to inspire, and to lead your unique organization.

3. ARROGANCE

Those dealing with self-doubt may think this isn’t their issue. And it is quite easy to swing to the extreme, especially when money, public image, and status are at stake. The key word to checking arrogance is respect—respect for other people’s tempo, boundaries, and knowledge.

Arrogance can lead you to believe you know better than the rest of the team, that you know better than everyone. If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. And if you’re talking more than you’re listening, you are blocking out valuable insights. Why even head an organization if you know how to do it all yourself? Leaders make work cohesive—not make work a vehicle for their egos.

4. MICROMANAGING

Micromanaging comes from a whole host of issues: arrogance of thinking that you can run an operation all by yourself, greed to flex your brain power and do every task yourself, and doubt in your team rolled into one. If you think you may be micro-managing, ask yourself about the last time you checked in with your employees. If you don’t ask them to define their own challenges and strategies for meeting them, you may want to give more trust.

5. ANGER

Anger should be rightful, not righteous. It is authentic to let yourself feel upset when things go awry. Blind, overwhelming anger is just emotion—pure force that controls you. Left unchecked, it wreaks havoc on your health and relationships. If your stress levels are through the roof, consider taking a step back and examining: Are you overly attached to winning at all costs? Is your self worth tied to some egocentric victory? Perhaps you fear criticism? The next time you feel gripped to take it out on your employees, go outside and take a few breaths. Take a vacation. Or consider yoga, meditation, coaching, and even therapy if your negative interactions at work outweigh the positive.

6. INDECISION

Leaders call the final shots on the best course of action for their organization. When you waffle between courses of action for too long, you may fall behind competition who is willing to take risks and roll with the consequences or miss out on market opportunity. Indecision and procrastination also waste the company’s time, lowering morale and progress—perhaps even revenue. You won’t grow if you’re not making some kind of progress every day.

7. SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS

Being a workaholic is a badge of commitment—long hours are often important to a company’s success, and executives should be the most passionate employees. But focusing too much on one thing, whether it’s immediate profits over culture, or hours rather than productivity, can lead to short-sightedness.

Conversely, taking time to learn about colleagues personal lives, celebrating progress, achievements, and recognizing the road ahead all contribute to loyalty, contentment, and working towards a common purpose. An enjoyable process focused on performance excellence makes results so much sweeter.

This is the greatest time in the history of the world to be a corporate leader. We’re all looking to conquer the world with what we are doing. We need good people to help us do it. People who want to achieve success for themselves and can help us do it as a team. Investing in our people, making culture our strategic advantage is the way to victory in our businesses and in our lives.

 

What You Need to Know About High Performance & the Science of Success

What You Need to Know About High Performance & the Science of Success

Dreams alone never took anyone anywhere. Dreams require massive action in order to become success stories.

I’m counting down to my third Ironman Triathlon. With just a few hours left before the race, what matters most now is the work I’ve put in for the past year to prepare. There are no shortcuts to high performance. There is no cramming for this physical, mental and spiritual test.

Fitness is a science, not an art. Nutrition is a science, not an art. They can be precisely measured, calculated, adjusted and improved. Research, data and strategy can be applied to optimize training and maximize power, performance and results.

The most important measures of athletic performance can easily be tracked—things like VO2 max: the measure of the maximum volume of oxygen an athlete can use, or your lactic threshold: how hard your body can work before it starts producing lactic acid. You can measure your body’s limits and set goals to improve.

Measuring base units of production for the purpose of elevating performance is key not only in sports, but also in business. What gets measured gets managed. What gets reported, improves. Success, too, should be approached as a science – it can be studied and advanced.

Here are some strategies, cool bio-hacks and tech I’ve discovered that have helped me optimize my own performance and Ironman training:

Nutritional Ketosis – Timothy Noakes, M.D., professor in the Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine at the University of Cape Town, teaches athletes to train their bodies to burn fat as a primary fuel source, a physiological process known as ketosis. His teaching is gaining traction around the world. The biggest change I’ve made in my training regimen for my 3rd ironman is how I refuel. This time around, I’ve altered my body to burn fat instead of carbs – based on research by Noakes and doctors Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney. Modeling the diet and training of Bevan McKinnon, I’ve increased my intake of coconut oil, fish oils, avocados and olives while reducing carb intake. This has allowed my body to become fat-adapted and access a source of fuel that is exponentially more available and sustainable than the common practice of carb-loading and sugar-burning. An aerobic metabolic assessment can measure your breath to calculate how much fat you’re burning versus how many carbohydrates in order to design an endurance performance plan that burns 50/50 fat and carbs during racing.  Ben Greenfield also touts nutritional ketosis for endurance racing since fat is a much cleaner fuel for the human body to burn and it burns longer, more efficiently and with less waste left over. Nutritional ketosis is the future of all endurance sports.

23andMe & DNAFit  – There has been a significant amount of research done that confirms the influence of genes on human physical performance and athletic ability. Through 23andMe, you can have your saliva tested to learn your genetic makeup. It gives incredible insights into your genetic ancestry as it relates to fitness, diet and sport. The DNAFit test goes one step further to tell you if your genetic makeup is better served by power workouts or endurance workouts. By understanding your genetic predispositions, you can optimize your workout and increase your performance gains exponentially. Based on my DNAFit assessment, I’m 37.5% power, 62.5% endurance—and that has very real implications on how I train.

Tanita RD-901 Body Composition Monitor – This is one of the most advanced tools to measure changes in your body composition—including important metrics like total body water, metabolic age, muscle mass and muscle quality. I love this thing and closely monitor my water intake and the affect it has on body fat and muscle mass.

Garmin Fenix3 HR Watch – This is the coolest and most versatile watch! At home, in the gym or at the office, I can monitor all my important metrics and activities—including triathlon, swimming, cycling, running, climbing, skiing, hiking, rowing, and even golf. I can keep track of all my health stats, including heart rate throughout the day, VO2, LT,  and activity including sleep patterns. It syncs up with the Garmin app which includes even more rich details to totally geek out on!

Wahoo Kickr & Peloton Indoor Bike Trainer – After factoring in traffic and road conditions, I found I could get a significantly stronger workout cycling indoors as opposed to outdoors. Wahoo Kickr was one of the most amazing tools for indoor cycling – that was until my wife got the Peloton indoor bike. This is a game-changer. Peloton not only tracks your performance with advanced metrics like cadence, resistance and output for each ride; it also allows you to compete against yourself, set new PR’s, follow other riders, and send and check social media status updates and data from other riders. It allows you to push yourself by ‘competing’ with other riders on Peloton. Having a social network of high performance athletes is a great support system. It keeps you sharp, accountable and striving for greater performance.

Cryotherapy – This is serious stuff. And it has the serious benefit of instantaneously removing most or all of the aches, pains and soreness that come from overdoing it with your training program. Crossfit, interval training or powerlifting can create lactic acid build up that needs to be worked through. If your tolerance for being sore is low, cryotherapy can accelerate recovery. During Ironman training, I do this once a week. Cryotherapy has been used by top athletes to boost recovery, promote weight-loss and improve overall wellness. It has even been shown to boost collagen production to keep you looking healthy and youthful.

Hypoxico Altitude Training – “Exposure to reduced oxygen levels (altitude or hypoxia) is a challenge to the human body because oxygen is the primary source of energy for our cells. Under a state of hypoxia the body strives to produce required amounts of energy with less oxygen available. To do so, a protein called Hypoxia Inducible Factor (HIF-1) sets off a host of reactions geared toward improving the body’s ability to utilize oxygen.” If you ask my friend Matt Eckert ([email protected]) for “The Dave Special” he’ll set you up with a sweet discount.

This is the greatest time to be alive. It has never been easier to understand, track and improve human performance in sport, business and life. Achieving victory, it turns out, can be accomplished in precise, measured units of progress!