New CEO Jeff Waters Outlines his Roadmap for Isola

Estimated reading time: 26 minutes

At the end of the day, if their voice is heard and we make a conscious decision to go against what somebody's opinion is, at least their voice was heard and we'll work to make sure everybody gets on the same bus and we move forward to be successful. That's what I want to see happen. With smart leaders and smart CEOs who are more insightful than the rest of the market, you sometimes get short-term success with that, but if you want to get any kind of medium- or long-term success, you must have an organization that is bubbling up good ideas and arguing in a very healthy and respectful way. That's what I want to see.

Matties: In your business career, who was the most inspirational person in your business development?

Waters: It's interesting. If I look at the leaders that I've been exposed to, probably the biggest takeaway that I've had, especially as I've moved up organizations, is that I don't think I've come across anybody that I thought was perfect. They all had very significant strengths and they had very significant flaws. I've tried to absorb both of those. I won't say which specific company, but in one of the companies, we had a leader who was probably one of the more charismatic, inspirational, and great strategic thinking leaders that I've ever seen, a visionary. The challenge, though, was that he was so in love with his vision and strategies that he was not very effective in getting the rest of the organization to really give him feedback on the flaws in implementation and the disconnects from realistic expectations.

On one hand, you had this great visionary, an inspiring leader, but he really missed out on the operational piece and on the ability to change his vision because he was getting feedback from people who were closer to the reality of what was going on. I've seen other leaders who were operationally brilliant. These people really got into the details and could help the organization run better from an operational perspective, but they lacked on the more strategic side of things.

As I would look at that from lower in the organization, I would try to say, "So, why is it you can't have people who have both elements?" The conclusion that I've come to, not that it's some great epiphany, is that what you really need to be as a leader is somebody who recognizes what your strengths and weaknesses are and can augment that with your team. Then you need to be humble enough to listen to the person who maybe has a stronger strategic muscle than you do when they're saying they disagree with you, be able to comprehend that and change your mind on things. Maybe take a little bit of a leap of faith in something that they're telling you, because no one person does it all.  

I've had to move toward this model, frankly, because I don't think I've ever been the smartest guy in the room. I've always noted that there are people who do this better than me, and people who do that better than me, and people who understand the technology better than me. I've never had any reason to feel like my opinion was much better than somebody else's that was closer to whatever the topic was. I would say that's probably my biggest takeaway from the leaders that I've been exposed to.

One other thing, if I think through some of the books that I've read, one book that had a pretty meaningful impact on me was Built to Last. One of the interesting takeaways from that book was the notion that when you look at the companies that were successful over a long period of time, they had leaders that were not like the rock star leader where everybody looked up to them and everybody saw them as the one that was driving the company. It was the people who were a little more humble and modest and that built up a team around them, because inevitably what happens is that charismatic leader leaves or dies or whatever might happen.

Matties: Like Iacocca or somebody like that.

Waters: Exactly, or Morita from Sony is another great example. It will be interesting to see how Apple does. That's the kind of model that I strive for. It's hard though, to be honest, because when you're in a position of leadership, it's nice to be the rock star and to get that feedback, but when I think about my staff and leaders within the organization I want to try to develop them to be those rock stars.

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