Any truly successful leader realizes they can’t accomplish all they wish, nor did they get where they are, by doing it alone. Leaders can rally others and can create a shared vision or common goal. What’s more, they enable others to act and together overcome any roadblocks or obstacles on the path to success. But teamwork can only be sustained when a leader promotes mutual reliance in themselves and others on the team. How does a leader driving the bus manage to inspire the rest of the passengers on his or her journey?

Contributor

• • George Surdu, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Comerica

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Transcript 

Speaker 0 [00:00:32]:

CIO Talk Radio is brought to you by HP and Bosch Software Innovations. Welcome to CIO Talk Radio with your host, Sanjog Aul. All comments, views, and opinions expressed on this show are strictly those of the host, guests, and callers. Now here’s Sanjog Aul.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:01]:

Hello, and welcome to CIO Talk Radio. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com, and we invite you to look for this show on Twitter as hashtag leadership. The topic today is, Is Leadership a Team Sport?  

And our guest for today’s show is George Serdu, who’s the executive vice president and chief technology officer with Comerica Bank. Hi, George. How are you? Good morning.

George Surdu[00:01:27]:

Hey, Sanjog Aul. Very good. And happy New Year to everybody.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:30]:

Good New Year to you as well. Now, this topic we picked up is because the inspiration was, an African philosophy or rather a saying there which says, I am because we are. So if you look at leadership, leadership is by design seen as a singular where an individual who’s like a pied piper trying to lead everyone to a given direction. However, an individual’s existence or their effectiveness is not totally to the maximum level till the we part, all other people who are making that leader the leader are all is also taken into account. So if we were to look at leadership as as, as a term, would you say that it is a team sport?

George Surdu[00:02:20]:

Oh, absolutely. I, you know, I don’t think this is any surprise to any of your listeners. But, you know, being a long-term person involved in sports and athletics over my career, I certainly came to the conclusion that if you don’t make a connection between sport, the word team, and leadership, you’re totally missing the boat, especially in IT. IT solutions for your company are really based on involvement from virtually all aspects of the IT organization, whether it’s architects, production support people, infrastructure people, software developers, testers, business analysts, and even, obviously, our clients as we define our requirements. So without a complete engagement of a team, these things just don’t happen.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:18]:

So if you look at the makeup of a team in the context of where we say leadership is a team sport, would you say there is one leader and rest followers or they’re all leaders? Because that could have its own results based on too many chefs cooking the broth or too many people trying to lead in too many different directions or a set of people who are just good at doing a certain function. And there are some people who are visionaries and folks who other people want to follow. So what’s the makeup of a team where we can call leadership as a team sport?

George Surdu[00:03:49]:

I’ve always believed in that old phrase of leaders at all levels, and I really do believe that. That doesn’t mean that you’ve got too many cooks in the kitchen, as they say. But leadership really needs to permeate throughout an entire organization. Everybody has a role and everyone needs to provide strong leadership in the fulfillment of that role. Forever, I think we have seen colleagues who have been good supervisors, some folks who’ve been good managers, where they’re doing a good job in terms of career development and filling out time cards and those kinds of things, but much less in the way of leaders and even fewer leaders of leaders. And I think that’s where one of the key responsibilities of everyone is to focus on how do we develop those leadership qualities, those leadership capabilities, not only for today but for the future. And, in my view, there is a difference. There’s a big difference between managers and supervisors and leaders.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:07]:

So when you go about trying to pull this team together or maybe the team was somehow inherited in most cases by people who are trying to make this as a team sport and make everyone come into that leadership mindset, how do you make sure that whether it is inherited or it is the one which you build organically when somebody like yourself as a leader comes on board, is moving it into that I am because we are mindset?

George Surdu[00:05:37]:

Well, I think it begins with a common purpose, and I think that is really, really critical. Let me make a comment though back on my last statement around leaders versus managers. I think leadership begins with the ability to influence, to positively influence an organization. And that can be done in a lot of different ways. But it’s that strong set of influencing skills to me that really separates leadership from management. And with that as a backdrop then, defining a common purpose for that team and getting that team to rally around that purpose, whatever that is, it’s fundamental to the success of that project and ultimately the success of the team and the success of the company. So common purpose is at the top of my list.

Sanjog Aul [00:06:28]:

So when you look at this approach that you just mentioned is about having a common purpose. Now that commonality is achieved where it has to start somewhere. Can it be where it starts from a supervisor or a manager or even an operator and saying this is the purpose we ought to be pursuing or it is a fiduciary responsibility just because of the role that you play as a leader is for you to trigger it and then get that disseminated and then they get that adopted for it to be a common purpose. Where should it originate?

George Surdu[00:06:58]:

Well, I think it goes both ways. That sounds like a soft answer, but, to make it a little harder, I do believe it needs to start at the top. I think the top of the house needs to set a set of goals and therefore, ultimately, vision, a set of goals, and then, obviously, a set of objectives. And then those need to be translated throughout the organization into what they mean, how are they actualized across the organization. And ultimately that means that you’re seeing those at all levels of the organization and therefore you need leadership at all levels in terms of being able to articulate those and again turn that common purpose into a set of objectives by which that individual or that team can actually contribute to the overall success. We used to call that for years shared objectives and that’s probably just, you know, as good a term as anything else. But I think, if you’re truly gonna have one team, and that mindset is, I think, very, very important for a company. One team, a one team concept. That one team concept needs to drive a set of shared objectives. And the leaders throughout the organization need to understand what those shared objectives are and, again, how to actualize. And you can do that in a lot of different ways. Metrics is a big part of that in terms of demonstrating that you’re delivering against those shared objectives. But it’s one team. It’s a set of shared objectives. Ultimately, it needs to start at the top of the house and then be driven down throughout the entire organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:46]:

Sometime back, I watched a movie where they showed that there was a hockey team. And that hockey team where the when the team was assembled, they themselves came as superstars from their own respective leagues, and they were too much about themselves. But the coach had to say, first, you’re playing for your country, then you’re playing for your team, and then playing for yourself. And it is not uncommon for this to happen at the time when you’re trying to assemble a team of your own. And what are the techniques or what are the approaches that you will take besides, of course, laying out that common shared objective for them to let go of them and work towards that organization and that team and then themselves?

George Surdu[00:09:35]:

So I think that’s where this whole influencing concept comes from relative to leadership differentiation. Leaders have to tell a story. They have to be able to tell a story on what it means to everyone on the team when you get to that end state, whatever that end state is. People wanna know what is it ultimately, people wanna know what does it mean to me. And if you can tell that story, in a way that all can connect with, then you’re there. That team is gonna all roll in the same direction. And you do have to break down those individual biases on what we want ourselves versus what’s good for the organization. Over the years, I think I’ve seen experiences where we have had team recognition, including financials, where we’ve told the team if you get this over the goal line, you’re all gonna benefit financially from it, not just the project manager or the lead developer or whatever. And so recognizing them as a team, rewarding them as a team are a couple of the things that you can do to ultimately demonstrate why you want them to act like a team. But I think, again, leaders need to be able to tell that story and be able to make that connection.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:13]:

Now you mentioned about creating that shared objective or a common purpose. So it becomes like a hub and spoke model where each individual is tying back to that common objective. Awesome. Great. Now point is also there is an interplay required among the two members of the team. And if that camaraderie doesn’t exist, just creating a hub and spoke approach to getting them to work in one single direction, they will somehow get there. We get it. However, the interplay or lack of it, basically, is gonna cause a lot of strain and friction along the way, which is not truly getting the most out of the team’s combined strength or, one person working well with the other person. How do you make that happen?

George Surdu[00:12:00]:

Well, clearly, that’s the responsibility of the senior leader, the senior project manager, the senior program manager. Those perceptions have got to be part of the analysis that goes on through the life of that project. I’m not so sure. And I know you made the comment that said, if we have that team friction and if there are parties that are working, I’ll just say against each other, you may still get to the end state. You may, but in IT, I’ve seen that get realized by projects being late, projects costing more money and missed expectations. And so a fundamental part, another fundamental ingredient of leadership in addition to influencing skills is having those human insights from a team standpoint. And that’s why going back to your question, is leadership a team sport? Team dynamics are very, very important. And good coaches, good managers have that ability to understand and to see through those team dynamics. And leaders have to do the same thing.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:16]:

No. Leaders do the right things, and managers do the things right. If we had managers who were handling two or three people who were having friction among themselves somehow get them to work together and eventually get to the role, that truly does not kindle the spirit of leadership within those two or three individuals so that this doesn’t require an additional resource just to manage those individuals. And then they become leaders in their own right and try to maximize their potential and also play well with each other and basically make the manager redundant. Wouldn’t that be the epitome of what you would like to see where leadership truly becomes a team sport?

George Surdu[00:14:03]:

Yeah. I mean, again, go back to athletics. Clearly, just like in athletics, business teams are gonna have colleagues who aren’t gonna get it. And, ultimately, the team has to displace them, has to move them out because their performance and the team performance will be degraded. And ultimately, it’s visible. Those are things I truly believe you can’t hide. You certainly can’t hide over time. And part of leadership in the team dynamics is to identify those and address those. And companies are no different, whether you’re in an athletic, professional event and people get traded or the same thing has to happen in business. But those that are performing need to get recognized and they need to get recognized based on the commitments that you made going into it. I think ultimately, you lead by example. And when your teammates see what a one team concept can deliver and what shared objectives can deliver, I’ve just seen where people will rally around that. We’ve had some things over the last couple of years where we’ve made some pretty significant commitments on increased output, increased delivery, or just improving our capacity. And we made those shared objectives across the organization and the teams have not only met that, they’ve exceeded it. And I believe that strongly. The teams when you get teams moving in the right direction, there’s no stopping them.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:03]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back. And look at the way the definitions may be changing when you look at in a digital world that we live in and distributed world that we live in or externally focused or using other partners which are external to the organization. How do you bring a team into a mode where they are stable, they are thinking alike, as we were talking about a common purpose, and have those personality conflicts minimized or removed, especially when you are not truly reporting to the same manager. You may not be even working in the same company. So what does a leader do to influence all those disparate sets of individuals or groups to still make it a team sport. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:54]:

Welcome back. So, George, the digital age that we live in or distributed age that we live in are the one where we have multiple partners who are helping us get our jobs done and get our initiatives, from ideation to fruition. That team is not under one geographic location. It is not under one individual leader’s influence or set of managers. It is not even one under one organization, but that is the reality. That’s where we are going. Do you think leadership can also be a team sport, or we’ll have two or three teams trying to figure out how to work together?

George Surdu[00:19:34]:

So I think you can, and there are a lot of different ways. A lot of companies have done this in different ways and my experiences aren’t too different than I’m sure what other companies have done. But contractually, we’ve built contractual agreements based on, again, a set of shared objectives where we all benefit when we succeed and succeed as defined by timing and cost and quality. But there’s a softer side of this that I think is really, really important. And I believe this. I believe this deeply. I have not met IT professionals, whether they worked for me or they work for our partners, that get up in the morning and wanna do a bad job. I’ve just not seen it. I’ve not seen IT people or experienced IT people who said I wanna bring a server down. I wanna bring the network down. I wanna write bad code. Human nature inherently wants to excel. I really believe this. And we surround ourselves. We hire what we believe are good people. And those are some of the things we look for, those kinds of traits when we hire people. So part of what we’ve got going for us are people that care, people that wanna do a good job. There are times you tighten that up through, contracts and those kinds of things and commitments around rewards and recognition. But I really think it can be and it is being done, whether we’re building the whole thing ourselves or whether we’re partnering with others.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:19]:

Now when you look at the contractual side of it, that doesn’t really trigger the human emotion.

George Surdu[00:21:25]:

That doesn’t.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:26]:

Or maybe it does, but it does more of fear based versus faith based. So how do you how do you really see that helping the end goal of you truly making it a team sport? They are or that is something which we should just not even bother going.

George Surdu[00:21:42]:

Well, I mean, at times it’s the hard reality of running a business because you are making firm commitments, whether it’s to your shareholders or your customers. And you don’t wanna miss those dates. So sometimes you have to do that. But, to me, it’s back to the carrot and the stick, and I agree with you that at times it can be the stick. But it also depends on how you write that contract. If you write the contract as being punitive, then it’s a stick. If you write it as a way to reward excellence, it’s totally different. So you can write contracts where this is not a penalty. This is a reward, when we deliver certain things.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:32]:

Can a person, an individual be a good leader but a poor team player?

George Surdu[00:22:43]:

Well, the obvious answer is I’m sure you can. We have in the IT profession, sometimes technical specialists who are very, very focused on their discipline, their technical discipline, and they lose sight of the bigger picture. So they’re more focused on a set of strict or restricted adherence to technical standards and miss the bigger picture in terms of what will the end state deliver to the company. And there are times we call those exceptions. And we have a process here where we have architectural review boards that will review the design. And there are times when we will make mild exceptions because getting us to that end state faster has much greater rewards from a business standpoint. So I guess the answer is yes.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:41]:

I mean, if you were to compare leadership with parenting Mhmm. You basically have, the children are being led by example. And if you want them to show camaraderie among the siblings and or respect towards the elders or the parents, we have to somehow demonstrate that consciously and subconsciously because they pick up both vibrations. Mhmm. That’s no different in an organization. So if you were to say the life and the day a day in the life of a of a leader, what would be the examples that you want to set on a regular basis so that people who are already respecting you for what you do or what you’ve accomplished are also subconsciously picking up on those positive vibrations and eventually show the leadership traits and also embrace that philosophy of I am because we are.

George Surdu[00:24:44]:

You know, leaders the thing that I always worry about is somebody connects the word leader with a level in the organization. And so because George Surduis the head of the IT organization at Comerica Bank, he’s got to be a leader. And that’s not the case. Leaders have to earn that title, if you will, have to earn that level of respect. And, you know, I’ve always said, at the end of the day, the thing that makes an organization successful and to really deliver around a one team concept is trust. They have to trust each other. They have to be trusted by their clients. And so how do you get trust? Trust begins with results. At any level, you have to deliver results. I’ve always said results. Once you deliver results, the results will generate credibility. And once you’re credible, the trust will come. And leaders have to live by that. We need to be able to demonstrate that we’re competent, that we’re good listeners, and the attributes that we’re expecting our people to be dedicated, that we are trustworthy, that we are a team player, that we don’t have all the answers, that the answers are found in the team, not in the individual. And so we have to demonstrate those things. And by demonstrating those, they need to create a set of tangible results that our people can see. And once that happens, again, as I said before, credibility will come, and with credibility will come trust as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:26:55]:

When I taught my daughter how to ride a bicycle, I had to hold her seat, assure her all along, and then eventually, she was on her own. That same concept has to be perhaps accommodated, and you can confirm that for our listeners in terms of how to make a person behave in the right manner for them to be justified as a part of the team. And second is to also help them develop that leadership skill or that DNA over a period of time, but you have to hold their seat along the way. How do you go about doing that? And you cannot be present at all levels. Yep. How do you make sure that George’s DNA is being replicated or even enhanced by your team, your direct report so that it percolates all the way down to the very operator level?

George Surdu[00:27:49]:

So that’s part of the mentoring. I mean, leaders, and too often, we forget. We forget that part of our responsibility is to build the next generation of leaders for the organization. That is part of our core set of leadership commitments that we make. And so you do that through mentoring. I do that, and you find every opportunity you can, excuse me, to articulate that, whether it’s in my leadership meetings. We have extended leadership meetings as well. We have open forums. And imparting those views, I also do individual mentoring. And then expect that level of mentoring and communication by my directs into their organization and so on and so on. So, it’s a continuous set of communications. You have to build that into how you act and how you behave and how you communicate. But it is clearly a responsibility that we all have, and it’s so different than, as you mentioned earlier, rearing our children. They are going to live through the examples that we give them and through the experiences that we provide them. That’s how they learn, and we have to do the same thing. I spend a lot of time before we launch projects in prelaunch meetings where we talk about what could go wrong. And I take the attitude that says, you need to talk me into launching this thing, not talking me out of it. So give me all the reasons why I should be worried. And through that come my experiences, and that draws out some others. And over time, it’s all one big learning experience.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:51]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back. And let’s look at the way leadership as a team sport needs to change when there is a change in business required or that is not at all the case. So if you have a culture in a company and or some competencies that you’ve developed, now the business needs to change direction. It goes through M&A, or maybe the time demands some different offerings or different way of doing business. That will definitely have a disruption in terms of the human resources that you may have, the processes that you may have, and even in leadership that you may have. How do you maintain the team’s strength and the core DNA so that as the team changes in its makeup and the type of people who are forming the team, we do not lose that team spirit. So how do you go about doing it? How do you handle changes? And change is the only thing that’s constant. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:19]:

Welcome back. So we are talking about disruption, and that is change, which is basically a constant in today’s day and age. So if we have to go through that disruption, go about building the necessary competencies to handle the change and get even better at what we were doing earlier, that means you will have to have some things which remain the same, which is kind of the culture, the spirit, and that sentiment of leadership being a team sport. How do you make that happen, George?

George Surdu[00:33:54]:

So, you know, it’s interesting. Let me give you a bit of perspective on change because I think there’s a direct correlation between change and leadership and the role of the leader. We’re all afraid of change, all of us. And there is no industry that goes through more change than the technology industry. And so why are we afraid of it? Why are we afraid of change? Well, we’re afraid because of the fear of the unknown. And this is where the leader comes in. The leader really needs to demonstrate and be able to tell the story of the new world, of what it’s gonna mean to them when something changes. So I’ll do this by way of a quick example. We, many years ago, we had several different divisions that had their own technical change management process. And each of them were doing it a little bit differently. And quite frankly, we were finding on weekends when we were making the changes that people were sort of stepping on themselves because they really didn’t understand the change they were making was affecting somebody else. So we brought them all in a room and we said, look, this is killing us. We really need one common, consistent change management process. And we got them all to agree to that. My next question was fine. Well, which one are we gonna pick? And, of course, all of them said, well, I agree with one, and it should be mine. At the end of the day, we said, I’m gonna throw them all out, and we’re going to go to idle, and we’re going forward from that standpoint. And it was when I finally demonstrated to the people that were making these changes on weekends and living with pagers in those days and beepers, they basically said, in a nice way, I hate my job, but I figured out how to deal with it. I wear a pager 24 by 7, 365 days of the year. And I do get paged on my birthday, and I get paged on our anniversary, but I figured out how to deal with it. When I demonstrated to them that they would get paged less and that their world would get better, they ran after it. They ran after supporting a single change management process. So leaders have got to tell the story. They’ve got to connect the change. And we are constantly changing. So it needs to be part of our messaging. Change connotes continuous improvement. And as IT professionals, we need to constantly stay focused on continuously improving our capabilities. And that’s part of lifelong learning, that’s part of preparing them for potential promotional opportunities and professional opportunities. And that’s what will connect them again to those changes.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:50]:

If I were to compare a leader to a weatherman, they would never get fired for the subjective measures saying that, oh, my team is not truly living that leadership as a team sport type of makeup, or they are not up to that level. They are essentially measured in terms of the results they deliver. So perhaps the reason many of the teams out there do not demonstrate that DNA of being a team sport, everybody is working towards a common goal, etcetera, etcetera. The reason they’re not doing it is because perhaps a leader at the top level is not being measured on that particular aspect. But it in a way has an impact, as you already mentioned, on the overall outcome. So what should be the role of a job description, where the accountability and responsibility is very clearly outlined for a leader in order for them to be able to do justice to building leaders within the organization?

George Surdu[00:38:00]:

So we believe very, very deeply in the DNA of our company, of being a fact based company. We make fact based decisions. And our measurement system starts at the top and goes throughout the entire organization. So we have, well, we have shared objectives. Those shared objectives have metrics attached so that we can demonstrate success or not. And we are measured against those. We are measured professionally and personally against those. I think that’s very, very important. I think all levels of the organization of any company has got to tune themselves to results in one fashion or another, and we do. So, you know, I’m not sure there’s too many professions like, you mentioned weatherman. I wish sometimes I was that way that I could be wrong and it wasn’t a problem, but that’s not the profession I’m in. And that’s not the profession of most companies or virtually every company. It is about results and driving results through the numbers. Metrics is really, really important. We have, as an example, well over 200 key performance measures from an operational standpoint. And we commit ourselves to over 99.5% of those meeting or exceeding on an annual basis, and we watch those every single month. So, metrics is a big part of this. It’s a big part of ultimately being able to connect credible results and credible rewards and recognition. So, yeah, I think metrics is a big part of it, to be honest with you.

Sanjog Aul [00:39:59]:

So the way you explained it, yes, the performance measures are supposed to be there, and there are some key metrics. Do you think, unknowingly, this teamwork and collaboration and the softer side of life and the DNA, the culture, which is not truly measured directly, could become a victim, and that’s why you have some very toxic corporate cultures that exist who might otherwise be pleasing Wall Street and shareholders quite a bit?

George Surdu[00:40:24]:

I guess. I would hope that’s not, I mean, I’m sure that’s reality in certain places. I think at the end of the day, the culture that leaders have to create is one of integrity, and one of honesty, and one of doing what’s right. I’ve always found if you do what’s right, sometimes you’re not gonna like the answer. But if you do what’s right, things always happen, always end up in the right place. So, again, it’s part of cultures. But integrity, honesty, transparency, data driven decisions. Those are important parts of creating the criteria within which an organization behaves.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:21]:

Now a team does not always win. There are some setbacks. There are learnings. I do not want to use the word failure because usually, we have learnings or successes. When that happens, it requires resilience for them to bounce back. It requires them to really take a step back and learn about what actually happened, assess the gaps, and perhaps take some conscious measures to fix those gaps so that at least those same mistakes are not repeated. How do you make sure that that becomes inherent in the team’s DNA, and everyone is thinking in that mode as a leader, and it becomes a team sport so that it fails, but learns gracefully and then bounces back.

George Surdu[00:42:12]:

So we have, you know, what you’re talking about gets into this whole continuous improvement mindset. I wish things, especially in our profession and technology, never broke, but they break. And more often, they break when human beings touch it. So we do make mistakes. And I think leaders have to be vulnerable. They have to demonstrate their mistakes. They have to recognize their mistakes and communicate those mistakes. But they also have to be clear that it’s okay to make a mistake once. If you make the same mistake a second time, I’m gonna question your capability. If you make it a third time, I’m probably gonna question your IQ. So, at the end of every project and program and initiative, whether it’s successful or not, we have a postmortem. And we review things gone right and things gone wrong. And those we embed back into our processes and our methodologies in the way we deliver going forward. So we’re constantly, you know, we try to have this closed loop circle where we’re constantly learning both things gone right, things gone wrong, and embed them back into the way we do our business. So that is important, and it does fall into the whole continuous improvement. Taking someone who makes a mistake and putting them out there for all to see and hear is, in my opinion, not a good thing. Go back to the team sport in the beginning of our conversation today. And you watch whether it’s baseball or football or basketball, people make mistakes. And they certainly don’t openly raise that mistake in a stadium. If they need to do it, they do it in a different way. But human beings are gonna make mistakes, and we all have to learn from those mistakes.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:27]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back, and let’s compare accountability with countability. So one is to make a person accountable and, of course, manage to make sure that they don’t make the same mistake twice or maybe maximum three times. Another is to build them from within. What all can be done besides a stroke, a pat on the back, some encouragement so that they meet their true potential as an individual, and that’s where they demonstrate leadership and the most competence they could probably demonstrate. And then as a combined effect or cumulative effect, the whole team succeeds. What is it that we have to do in that regard? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and talk about accountability versus countability.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:42]:

Welcome back. So accountability versus countability. And if you wear the hat of a manager, you will talk about accountability. But perhaps the leader should look at everyone becoming countable. These are two different paths with a sword hanging over our head in terms of performance measures and results and metrics. How much leeway are you able to offer to the people to take the time to become countable? And how are you able to insulate them from the pressure of that sword hanging over the head in terms of the deadlines and the commitments?

George Surdu[00:48:23]:

So let me start with the second part of your question, and then I’ll come back to the first. So we work in what I believe is the most complex profession of any industry. Our technology is constantly changing. All elements are constantly changing. The world is constantly changing. The expectations are constantly changing. And we, as leaders, need to do as much as we can to try to simplify that, to try to reduce the risk of human mistake. And part of that is a focus I’ve had for years, and that is a focus on simplification and standardization. We have way too much variability and any company has a mixture of new technologies and older technologies. And all of those have to play and they all have to play the right way from a performance standpoint and a security standpoint and a control standpoint, all of those things, quality. And so how do you do that? And the way one way to do that and to insulate your people is through process. As much as we professionals love to think we’re artists, we’re not. We are building things and there are processes and methodologies that we can follow and should follow to ensure that there’s a higher probability of success than had we not. So one is to simplify the environment, is to try to not have what I call every flavor of everything in our environment. And that means sometimes not making a decision on the latest and the greatest because it’s got one more bell and whistle. So that’s part of it, simplification and standardization. The second is a commitment and a passion to process. We can and should invoke common processes and common methodologies, whether it’s traditional waterfall or whether it’s new agile capabilities. All of those have processes and they need to be followed. And so part of the way to insulate our people is through process. Part of it is through training. We need to train them and educate them. We can’t just tell them, now go do that. So we need to give them the tools and educate them. We need to be a bit lenient early on because they need to get experience through that. So we put them on teams, where they’ve got more experienced people working with them, where they can learn from them as well. And then ultimately, on an annual basis, you evaluate their performance. And over time, if that performance doesn’t improve, then you’ve got to deal with it, which is back to the first part of your question. But to keep the sword away from them, I think it’s simplification and standardization in our profession. It’s process orientation, and it’s giving them some latitude to work with peers who have more experience than they do to give them time to learn.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:44]:

Now interestingly, the new age teams that are being developed, there’s a concept of two-speed IT that was coined sometime back because what they are saying is on the one hand, we want technology department to be predictable and deliver something on a consistent basis and orientation is important. On the other hand, we are expected to also help innovate. And in order for us to innovate, we got to be able to do some sandboxing. And so when you made a comment about we cannot be artists, we have to be mechanics, if you will. Perhaps there is some artistry required for us to innovate. And these two different groups, they might have to interplay, but still have their own respective strengths in order for you to be able to deliver on both fronts. Now with that as a new expectation from management and from business in terms of how IT delivers, how does that change your approach to how you’re gonna handle these two, not silos of the team, but two groups of the team who have relatively different background, different DNAs, different expectations?

George Surdu[00:52:57]:

So we, I don’t think that’s new, by the way, Sanjog Aul. I think you’ve just hit the core of the IT challenge for the last 20 plus years. It’s always about, do more, go faster, but be highly resilient and high availability, high reliability, high levels of quality, all that kind of stuff. I mean, that’s the profession we’re in and that’s the profession we’ve been in for a long time. So what we do, we have organized around a pretty simple model that I call plan, build and operate. So I have a plan organization that is focused on strategy and advanced planning and innovation. We have a build organization that goes and builds stuff, both the software and the hardware. And I have a run organization that runs the organization, hardware and software 24/7. And on the plan side, a lot of this is about expectation. And again, this goes back to leadership in the role of a leader. A leader has to, again, articulate and set expectations. Historically, we’ve not done a good job. We have brought things in under the auspices of pilot, which have turned into production, which we’re not ready for production. And over the years, we’ve gotten a lot smarter at being much more clear when I’m innovating, when we’re piloting technology, and when it’s really ready for prime time. So part of that is, again, telling the story. Part of that is leadership, but I don’t think it’s a new story. I think it’s been around a long time for us.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:40]:

Alright. So what’s your advice for the leaders out there who are struggling to make this leadership as a team sport? What should they do new, different, or more?

George Surdu[00:54:52]:

Well, there’s several things. I think one, you have to work at it. This is not something that you’re born with. This is not an innate kind of thing. You need to work at it. And you need to realize that you can’t be successful alone. This has to be a team sport. Especially in our profession, there is no one person that knows everything, not even close. So you cannot be successful alone. Third, I think you need to surround yourself with good people. You need to surround yourself with people that care and that are committed to improvement. And so that’s the third item. And then I think fourth, find ways to celebrate the small stuff. Find ways to celebrate the successes, in the personal and professional successes, not only as individuals but as teams. We have a lot of team celebrations, and I think that’s really important. That fosters a one team concept. And then finally, as a leader, be humble. We all make mistakes. And I think we, as I said earlier, we have to expose ourselves and we have to be vulnerable. And most importantly, we have to be humble. We all have a job to do and, quite frankly, I’m not really big on stripes. So hope that helps.

Sanjog Aul [00:56:13]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, George, for taking the time here and sharing your thoughts on how to make leadership as a team sport.

George Surdu[00:56:23]:

Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:56:24]:

Thank you once again. And, listeners, please like us on Facebook, search for CIO Talk Radio, and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to CIO Talk Radio. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week. Take care, and God bless.

Speaker 0 [00:56:39]:

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