Hands-on Leadership, and why it is effective in today's dynamic business climate
I was recently challenged on what leadership means as I came across a LinkedIn post, where the author talked about leadership as being inspirational, displaying compassion and being there for the people that you lead. I found myself contradicting that view of leadership as the ones that inspired me were leaders who rolled up their sleeves, got their hands dirty and were more hands-on in the area of business that they were operating in. Upon further thought, I realized that the author of that LinkedIn post was probably right for the work he was performing as the head of a university hospital, and his constant working around patients and hospital workers required him to provide that form of inspirational leadership. I am in the high tech services industry, and I’ve found that there is a marked shift from just providing inspirational leadership to being a hands-on leader that is intricately involved in every-day business.
I was also inspired to write this post on behalf of the tech community, as many reach a crosswalk during their career, having to make a decision between choosing a technical or a business track.
The general view is that one has to make a shift at some point in time from being a technical person to becoming a business person. There is also a view among old-school thinkers that being a sales/business person is more valuable than being a technical person. Many business leaders who’ve made such switches, forget their technology leanings and are far removed from ground realities, that they make decisions purely on the information that they receive, rather than qualifying such information. There are also many who just become people managers, driving efficiency and performance of teams without getting deeply involved in the ongoing technicalities.
The intent of this article is to promote a new form of leadership, which has its roots on being a hands-on person while still embracing a strong understanding of business and inspiring people to great performance. This is the leadership that I see embraced by leaders like Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Elon Musk of Tesla. The late Steve Jobs was also one such leader. The impact that these leaders made on their individual companies is visible to the world and they left their signature on the products, services and culture of the company.
For example, the Microsoft we knew before Nadella took over the reins was sales-focused, employed forceful tactics, was against open source and didn’t really understand the pain-points of customers but rather just focused on making customers pay for expensive products that were monopolistic. Since Satya Nadella took over, Microsoft has become an approachable company, embraced open source, added products that offer great value to customers and added impressive acquisitions (LinkedIn, Spotify, GitHub).
Satya Nadella was an engineer at Microsoft growing the ranks, being hands-on and developing a deep understanding of Microsoft’s products, its culture, its strengths and flaws.
I am part of Cognizant, a 15 billion high tech services company that has grown 700% in revenue over the last decade. It has kept itself up to speed with the changes in the market, transforming itself form a cost-centered services player to a high tech digital services company. One of the key observations I have about Cognizant where I’ve been for the last 5 years is that most of the leaders tend to be very hands-on, and are very deeply involved in the day-to-day business. Sometimes to the point of correcting slides on a deck the previous night of a client presentation, while adeptly switching hats the next day to being an executive leader representing the business in front of the client leadership.
Technical folks who have strong leanings toward technology should play to their strengths and not let go of such skills in favor of only sales or business skills.
In addition to their core technology skills, technical folks need to acquire essential business skills around commercials, effective communication, strategy and leadership.
It is this mix of skills of techno-business leaders that is driving significant change and performance in today’s dynamic business climate.
I started off my career as a technical engineer involved in implementations, support and operations. Having that background helped me drive practical effectiveness in my subsequent roles in presales, architecture and business development. I continue to keep myself updated technically and try to understand the nuances of what’s changing in the technology world on a constant basis. In addition to my technical roots, I continue to enhance my business skills by gaining understanding of client’s businesses, being a strong communicator during client meetings and presentations, and augmenting my skills with additional programs such as an MBA. I try to inspire my team by doing, and showing them how it gets done. I learn from my team in areas that they excel.
The differentiating key attribute I've noticed with hands-on leaders is Lifelong Learning. They continue to cannibalize their current skills and acquire new ones - both technical and business skills.
The differentiation that this combination of technical and business skills brings to organizations is invaluable. Hats off to those leaders and mentors that I’ve come across in my career who've inspired me to being a hands-on leader.
Cheers to all of us technocrats and let’s just grow to be techno-business hands-on leaders!