CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1 - 72

How can you take a thing like an invention, which
by its very nature doesn't exist yet, and develop a
methodology and a process that make it possible
for people who are fairly new to the domain to
contribute and invent?

now-and to watch them do great things at
scale. In a way, this engineering relationship
is as much about people development as it is
about technology innovation.
You have to take the hearts and minds of
the individuals with you or there's no way you
can be successful. That's why it's so important
that we identified the win for the people as an
important dimension. This wasn't just about
two companies.
It's important to me that I'm not a stranger
to the people who work at the global facilities.
Toward this end, nothing beats taking a walk.
While I lived in Chennai and now on my
frequent trips back to India, Malaysia, and
Singapore, one of the most important things
to do is walk. We walk around the labs, and
we walk around the organization. For senior
leaders, managing by walking around is an
old trick but a good one. You've got to get
out, walk around, and make contact with the
people, because ultimately it's the people who
deliver the results, not us.
In the five years we've been at this, we've
found that we can engage more fully with
people if we embed senior leaders in the
local environment for ten days to two weeks
at a time. So we're rotating some of our
people through, giving them time to bond

with the partner's people both operationally
and socially. This cements relationships and
makes them easier to manage at a distance.
Living in India for four years helped me
tremendously, too. At the good advice of a
fellow I talked to before I left for India, "I left my
Western head behind" and opened my mind
to my new environment. Your perspective
can't help but change when you walk for four
years in your partner's shoes. Certainly the
decisions you make are influenced by your
environment; I know living in India changed
the way I thought about problems.
That's not to say I didn't have constant
reminders from the West about needing
to maintain the strategic intent of the
relationship. But because I was living
in Chennai, I was able to bring the local
perspective and the global perspective to bear
when making decisions.

No Turning Back
From the start, I was part of a core team of
individuals who believed that, in light of the
changing technical world and the prospect
of global development, we faced a "burning
platform." Once you set a direction to address
a particular situation and start moving in that

CTO Straight Talk | 72
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1
