David Kenny is the Chairman of Nielsen, Best Buy and Teach For America.
He was the CEO of Digitas when it was bought by the Publicis Groupe where he served as a member of the Directoire, before joining Akamai as its President. David then became the Chairman and CEO of Weather Channel which was bought by IBM, where he served as SVP of Watson and Cognitive Solutions before joining Nielsen as its CEO. David began his career at Bain Consulting.
David joined me in person for a live audio and video taping of a special episode of What Next? the twice monthly global podcast I host, to share his distilled learnings on transformation, leadership and talent.
It is a 45 minute masterclass that everyone should watch or listen to.
In the following weeks some other amazing leaders from Jack Klues the driving force behind the creation of Starcom, Starcom Mediavest and what would with the merger of Zenith Optimedia, Digitas and Razorfish become Vivaki and Publicis Media, Ann Mukherjee who most recently was the CEO of Pernod Ricard USA and before that held major posts at SC Johnson and Pepsico, Seth Green the Dean of the University of Chicago Graham School, will be just a few of the extra-ordinary leaders sharing their thoughts about modern leadership. If you do not subscribe to What Next? you may want to. It is totally free like this Substack with no subscription fees and no advertising. Just amazing people in conversation with world class production and editing to help you grow and transform and see the light vs heat you up with enragement.
Today we have David Kenny.
The links so you can here the entire conversation are at the end of this post but here are the one dozen takeaways that will hopefully make you listen to David in his own voice and entirety.
Transformation.
Know where you are going: Transformation is not just about speed but also direction. It is important to know what one is transforming to. What matters is velocity of change which is a combination of speed and direction. Speed alone can kill if one does not know direction.
Roots and Wings: Transformation is successful if one remembers what we wish to retain from the existing business. If there is little or nothing we wish to keep then one should start with a blank sheet of paper but that is not the case for most businesses. In fact in many businesses the existing businesses while declining are very profitable and help fund the change. Also in successful transformations everyone and every part of the businesses is given an opportunity to transform. One cannot leave the past behind if legacy businesses are making money and it is very dispiriting to folks to believe they belong to the past while others are the future.
The importance of aligning with technology curves: Successful transformation requires a company and leaders to align with technology curves. Too early or too late one results often in failure. Sometimes the customer, the technology and the eco-system takes time to develop so it can scale and be cost effective.
A focus on Clients is not enough: Transformation must keep Clients front and center but in order to deliver for Clients many non Client facing parts of our organizations will have to transform including IT, Legal and Finance. New wiring, new contracts and new measurement are are part and parcel of transformation. The voice and inclusion of so called “support” functions is critical.
Leadership.
Leadership is balancing innovation and trust: Trust is key and driven by integrity. Integrity is when there is alignment between what a leader believes, says and does.
Both leadership and management are important but different: Leadership is about pioneering and deciding where to go. It is about making hard calls and is both future oriented and lonely. Management is ensuring one gets there. Many leaders are great managers but neither by themselves are enough.
Three keys to trust: Data, Intention and Transparency. Follow the data and share the data and adapt to the data. Be clear with intention and be transparent about decision making.
The best leaders are willing to admit they are wrong and are okay changing their mind: People trust people who say they are not sure or when new data comes in accept that they were wrong.
Talent.
To lead talent one must realize the importance of emotion and heart: People choose with their hearts and use numbers to justify what they do. Software is not just code but the soft skills of engaging, connecting and inspiring people.
Talent will be even more important in the future but talent will have to learn new technologies, be curious, be creative: There are so many ways to learn and those who do not will be left behind. If one is not upgrading oneself one is falling behind.
Diversity is critical to win in the marketplace: For AI to be trained right one needs diverse inputs. To compete one needs the best talent and they can come from everywhere. David made himself the Chief Diversity Officer for a year because he believes ensuring belonging, ensuring access to the best talent and ensuring the best talent is everybody’s job including the CEO’s and is the way to win in business.
Talent wants access to leadership : Leadership that is accessible to talent learn fast and see patterns and better understand what the opportunities and challenges are. An involved leader is a learning leader.
Here is the Spotify Link which includes video: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0gvICYwqxDQjsH8Zaqh1Xq?si=b7d433d90c89463c
Besides this Substack (free), and the podcast (free), I am also a published author and my next (second) book while not free is very reasonable ( about $20 in the US and will be available also on launch day much cheaper in my birth country of India in both print, audible and electronic). If you can please do pre-order between now and Feb 4 for yourself or your company ( huge discounts for 25 or more) . More about Rethinking Work here.
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