IIT 2007 From Engineer to Leader

This was a panel discussion I didn't spend much time at, but here are some interesting concepts that I grasped.

One speaker spoke on how a manager must be able to take complex ideas and present them as extremely simple concepts. He gave the example of his former boss (Larry Ellison) who does this really well.

One topic which dominated the discussion was risk-taking. Big companies, just like normal people, are averse to taking risks. If a business model works, or if something brings a steady supply of cash, employees are highly discouraged to change it in any way. When business is good, it is difficult to bring about change, which is why there is more risk on the manager/leader's part. When business is bad, the same decision is actually a low risk one as things are going southwards anyway. I agree that this is somewhat counter-intuitive to how we understand risks, but remember that we are talking about risks in the context of coming out of a comfort zone when it is strictly not necessary to do so.

To reinforce this point, one panelist gave an example of how he transitioned into a leadership role. There was some crisis situation in his company and a group of employees including managers used to hold meetings everyday to decide on a course of action to resolve the issue. Interestingly, the final decision was obvious to everyone from day one, but it was a tough decision to take due to the risk of not being able to fulfill it, and hence nobody wanted to actually make that decision for fear of being associated with a failed decision. But the speaker actually came out, made the decision, and set out to realize the goal (and the rest he said is history).

Two interesting points were raised about risk-taking during the course of this discussion:

The "F" words:

The most dangerous words for potential leaders are two "F" words: fear, and failure. You cannot hope to be a leader until you learn to convert these into a calculated risk.

Hedging of risk:

Risks can be hedged using two methods: PQ and EQ. PQ stands for Political Quotient and EQ stands for Emotional Quotient. The basic idea is that when you are taking a risk within an organization in a leadership role, make the right political and emotional connections in the organization, such that if you fail, the damage to your career is not much. For example, if the VP of engineering really loves you for the energy and ideas that you bring to the company, your failure is more likely to be ignored, which means you can take more risks :-)