As an accomplished leader who has earned many stripes, others’ expectations of you keep getting higher. How do you deal with the pressure while continuing to perform at your best, evade complacency, stay  focused on the big picture, make sharper decisions consistently, and  continue to inspire those who work for you, while meeting and exceeding  the ever-increasing expectations?

Contributor

• • Kevin M. Larson, VP and Chief Information Officer, AAR Corp.

Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello everyone and welcome to this segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com and as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter and look for this show as #leadership. Our topic for today is Keeping Your Edge As A Seasoned Leader and I have with me Kevin Larson, who’s the Vice President and Chief Information Officer with AAR Corporation. Hi, Kevin, how are you?

Kevin M. Larson [00:00:25]:
I’m doing great. How you doing? Good morning.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:27]:
Good morning to you. So this year, 2017, how is it treating you?

Kevin M. Larson [00:00:32]:
It’s been great so far. It’s exciting time. Business is going well, personal life is going well, everything. I’m very pleased.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:41]:
I could not find a better guest than you for this show because when it comes to being a seasoned leader man, you’ve paid your dues.

Kevin M. Larson [00:00:47]:
Thank you, it was funny when you reached out.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:51]:
And so the reason we wanted to cover this topic because of course we talk a lot about how to develop leaders who are aspiring and take them to the next level or maybe dealing with leadership in general when you’re dealing with problems you have in hand but after you’ve spent number of years doing not the same thing, maybe the variety is there, but still you are the CIO, you’re at the top dealing with problems. Yes, business has changed dramatically or incrementally, but it’s been there, done that, almost that could kick in. So what we wanted to see is this tenure, if you will, and tenure not in one company, across multiple companies, but in a given role. Does that start eating into what you could truly be doing and if at all that’s the case, how do you bounce back and or maintain your edge? So when you look at the expectations, of course as you are adding years to your tenure, people start thinking, okay, this person should be able to walk on water. How have expectations changed, would you say, in the terms of level and variety than since the time you started in the leadership versus the way it’s now.

Kevin M. Larson [00:02:05]:
I think they’ve changed tremendously. If you go back to the IT department, the CIO, they probably just had more of a technology hat on. They had a back office role. They were in the shadows a little bit and fast forward to the last five plus years, it’s been more of a front office customer facing, partnering with your business leaders, working on areas where you can develop business revenues, areas where you can actually help with the business process. So I think we’re core to marketing efforts, new customer initiatives, et cetera. So I think we’ve to sum it up, I Think it’s from the back office to the front office and all the way with the executives across the board and, just driving the IT function and the digital function to things that support our business.

Sanjog Aul [00:02:58]:
So even that change that you mentioned, if I spoke to you in 2008, I think that era had started even then and you would have been very excited as a student to learn something new, to dabble into something new but now if you’re eight to 10 years out and you’re still looking at the changed expectation, the dramatic change that you mentioned from being a back office to the front, even that has happened and it’s been there for a number of years. So what excites you.

Kevin M. Larson [00:03:27]:
Probably the next part is what we’re seeing with the newer technology. So all of the various cloud initiatives and the internet a thing type of initiative, data analytics, how much more operations are driven by business intelligence and dashboards and how we can put more information in the hands of the, business operations folks and I think the other topic that is just exhilarating is what’s going on with cyber and cybersecurity and how we protect our networks and how we manage that whole process. That’s just something that’s in the news every single day.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:07]:
So if I were to abstract ourselves from what’s happening, it is another change. It sometimes change was different in terms of technology to becoming a business person and now again coming to technology and something else will happen tomorrow. So when you look at your life as if it was a movie with the changes in the scenes that brings that little bit of an elation, a momentary but then life is the same. How do you feel, you are consciously and subconsciously as part of an actor in that movie who is also growing in the process because excitement is one thing which will come for a little bit but are you able to say that you are at the top of your game all the time or somewhere in you says, this is another change? Yes, I will do what I have to do, but man, I’m not a kid in a candy store.

Kevin M. Larson [00:05:04]:
I think picks up the first part of the question. You’re talking about the change or the kind of the movie perspective. I think you have to realize that everything is going much faster. If you picture like an animation, how many slides per second or whatever. I think what we’re dealing with today and the last few years is that things, the world, everything is going so much faster and you have to just be ready for that. You have to prepare for that, leverage your experience to manage that change at a faster rate and you.

Kevin M. Larson [00:05:36]:
I obviously have a passion for it, so I embrace it and I feel like I am at the top of my game, actually.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:44]:
And when you’re looking at the different experiences that you’ve had and you are trying to leverage or basically the very DNA that you’ve developed for yourself, would you say that you are continuing to use the same DNA or you are even attempting to evolve that DNA so that you are relevant?

Kevin M. Larson [00:06:05]:
I actually used the phrase DNA in a board presentation yesterday when we were talking about a topic and how it’s just inherent with what we do and the topic would have been something 10 years ago. It’s so much different today. I think what we do as leaders, we leverage our experience. We don’t try to recreate step by step everything we did 10 or 15 years ago, but we leverage that experience and then we color it with what are the latest trend, the way people act today. Just one example in terms of our office space now we have all these more open collaboration spaces. Everybody is it’s all glass walls, it’s all open and low and everybody can connect with people. Think about years ago, everybody be individuals in their cubes.

Kevin M. Larson [00:06:54]:
Think about how that just organizational, environmental change has drove collaboration and working with all of your colleagues.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:02]:
And would you say the avenues that may be still there where you feel you have to grow yourself even though you are getting some things in front of you which you handle, sometimes you fall, other times you would succeed in the first cut. Where do you see the growing is happening because that’s what keeps you what you could say alive professionally.

Kevin M. Larson [00:07:26]:
I think the growing for me is to be able to obviously embrace the change, but also the mentoring, that’s probably the most important part so you can delegate more. We have, I work with just a tremendous staff and I don’t by no means do I micromanage like I would have 10 years ago. I don’t need to be in every single meeting. I don’t need to be dictating how every step is going to go. I just check in where I can check in as needed and then the most rewarding part is just watching people grow and develop.

Kevin M. Larson [00:08:02]:
That’s really the exciting part. Watching them work with our business leaders, watching them go out and talk to customers, see situation where our IT leaders are asked to go back to Europe and visit some of our other offices, support the business operation. Just driving the ship that way and watching everybody develop and grow is just very exciting.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:25]:
So this is what you are doing and of course, this is what you feel the best it is in terms of the time and effort that you put to steer the ship in the right direction. That’s your responsibility. Now let’s talk about the edge. Where are the potential risks of your edge being blunted, if you will as part of going.

Kevin M. Larson [00:08:46]:
I think if you just, you have to have the inner drive and you just sure don’t want to be complacent. I was thinking about the edge and the example kind of thought of this morning. Look at Joe Madden, so Joe Madden is a seasoned leader. Look what he did for our Chicago Cub, just amazing, again, a seasoned leader, him and I were both when we were born.

Kevin M. Larson [00:09:11]:
Eisenhower was President when both of us were born. He was on the front side. I was on the backside of that but he brings energy, he brings excitement. When these guys go on road trips and they dress up or they go on road to wear blackhawk jerseys or something. So you have to have fun, you have to trust your people but he is a seasoned leader that is still very firm in terms of how he handles his pitching staff in the world series or whatever. You knew that he was driving it, but I think the players respected him and then look at the results.

Kevin M. Larson [00:09:45]:
They speak for themselves.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:47]:
So, of course that’s the result that we saw, that he’s maintaining his edge. The million dollar question is that which are the areas which as a seasoned leader typically would be the victims, where you would be having a risk of losing the edge, which in turn will pull you while you may be seasoned leader but your effectiveness could be jeopardized. What are those areas where we could fall short on the edge part?

Kevin M. Larson [00:10:16]:
I think you would fall short if you’re not open to probably the technology shift and the way people like to work shift, but you’re not going to try to recreate a completely centralized data center where you’re doing all the hosting like you did 20 years ago and you’re doing all of the system like you did 20 years ago. So the minute you stop growing and developing in terms of how you can implement new solutions, I think that’s going to, slow down your progress and I think you’ll realize that but as long as you have that excitement, you have a purpose, you’re connected with your colleague, I think you’re going to maintain that edge. It’ll be pretty obvious to everybody in the room if for whatever reason you stopped that drive or that desire, it’ll impact you almost immediately.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:13]:
Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back and talk about success, which typically means when we have expectations and we exceed them now every time when the expectations increase and we are supposed to exceed them after some time it will be crushing your spirits and or it will be not suicidal but something which is going to be self inflicted if you keep those expectations raising to a point where you know you will not be able to meet them and the rest of the world’s eyes are on you. So do we try to control what others expect of us or we do something dramatic on a regular basis so that we get that our influence and capability to meet and exceed those expectations, which is what is going to deem us as a seasoned but more effective and successful leader. Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:14:19]:
Welcome back, so we’re talking about success which to the rest of the world and even to ourselves is defined when we are setting some expectations and we are exceeding them and if we are going to see as a seasoned leader with you, Kevin, for example, over the years while the expectations may have changed, but they also qualitatively be increasing in terms of what you are capable of. So anything thrown at you, people watching you or looking up to you, that may be they may be raising the bar for you. So how are you managing or how a leader should manage? Should they manage it or they say bring it on, I’ll tackle it.

Kevin M. Larson [00:14:58]:
I think the leader has to be open to almost everything that’s expected. I think the demand have changed so much in terms of IT technology, digital, etc. is the requirement is to help drive revenues, help drive business value and things that we would have done 10, 15 years ago, check the box, keeping the data center up, keeping like we talked about, keeping the technology current. Now it’s okay, that’s great you did that 10 years ago. What are you going to do now to ensure that we have more direct revenue, we have more customer satisfaction with some of the programs that you put in place and I think the expectation that your IT leaders are literally on the phone talking, visiting with customers and adding revenues and delivering at a very rapid pace.

Kevin M. Larson [00:15:57]:
We talked earlier about how things are going so much faster. So you have more requirements, more business requirements and you have to do it much faster and you have to have the energy to stay with that.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:12]:
So the things that you mentioned, just not least the tail end of what your response was more indicating the management side of a person. So they throw something at you, you somehow make it happen. The leadership on the other hand is something where you are able to help them see something new or you create a vision, have everyone follow you to that vision and of course make things happen but management can be done by a crew with under your guidance but you are still the person who everyone will say okay, can this person help drive results? How the person does it could be a combination of leadership and management and within that let’s talk about the leadership component. So as a leader, does someone say anything I put in front of Kevin, the person will be able to create a vision around it, rally the troops and somehow make it happen.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:04]:
Is that sometimes looking like it’s going out of bounds or is it something that you have to manage to make sure that you don’t over promise in that pursuit of being seen as always a person with us who’s a seasoned leader but he has an edge.

Kevin M. Larson [00:17:19]:
I think the expectation is in you have to be realistic, but you have to over deliver. The demands are so great that one thing we’re seeing is that we’re fine tuning some of the deliverable every couple days because there’s so many priorities, there’s so many demand and that each one of the people that are supporting these different initiatives, I think really what we want to get to is their leaders, they are managing that backlog they are managing the customer and business expectation and you have to be fluid. You have to be a combination of patient, but then also aggressive and very focused. I think the demands on us are greater than they’ve ever been but the success is when you just look back and you kind of look at your whole backlog and what you’ve accomplished and you get the feedback from the business that you’ve exceeded their expectations. That’s really where the excitement is and its leaders throughout the team that are supporting that. There’s no way one CIO is going to be able to manage all these expectations.

Kevin M. Larson [00:18:32]:
So the delegation and the freedom let people grow and develop is the exciting part for me.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:39]:
And if you are looking at situations, so you mentioned that you’re seeing things coming from all directions and these are new situations you’re dealing with, but still they may have a pattern which compares to any previous situation you may have dealt with as a seasoned leader. You can talk about the way a seasoned leader thinks or approaches. Do you think every time that, oh, yeah, I’ve had something like this before. Let me see if this fits in that mold or you say this is a blue sky or it’s a white sheet of paper. Let me redraw with the fresh thinking and raw intelligence. What’s the natural gut for someone who is a seasoned leader, yet has the potential or is doing the right things to keep their edge?

Kevin M. Larson [00:19:23]:
I think it’s that hybrid. I think we have this inherent historical perspective on how things were accomplished, how success was delivered but you have to be very careful that you’re living in today. You’re going forward, you’re thinking new and different, and you can look back and see, I would say from a milestone perspective, what things were accomplished or how you manage expectations but you have to be very open. This is a much different world we’re in now. I’m going to just say it again, as far as the fast pace and the speed of everything. So you have to be ready to manage that and juggle it every single day and you have to be out in front of it and you have to have a little bit of a thick skin that you’re going to get some pushback, you’re going to get some.

Kevin M. Larson [00:20:13]:
areas where it’s challenging and you have to just work with it.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:19]:
Would you say, in continuation to what you just mentioned, if I gave a situation to a seasoned leader, would a natural gut reaction to that would be, let me first see what I did somewhat similar in the past, and then see what new I can do or you say, let me take it and take a very objective and an open look at it up front, first and then see what I can bring the experience later.

Kevin M. Larson [00:20:45]:
I think the 75% of it is, let’s look at this in, today’s vision. Let’s look at it new and different. How would we handle this independently of all that experience could actually be a drag on you. If you’re going to, if you’re always living in the past, what you want to do is you want to take this and say, how can I creatively, how can I from an innovation perspective, from a delivery perspective, how can I address that in the current framework and enterprise that we’re dealing with and don’t go back and tap into these old, these old views until you really need to and if you tap into them, so it’s really from a milestone perspective, accomplishment as far as timing or delivery but think new and different all the time. I would think.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:34]:
So, typically as a seasoned leader and there are two types. So there are people who have been going to different companies because they got bored or whatever the reason was throughout their career and then there are people who would be there in the same organization continuing to add value because they find a variety and they continue to learn but do you think to keep an edge, like for example, what you’ve done? I’m sure you’ve been there with AAR for some time, and if you have the same environment, almost same set of people, some changing or not, and then the same management philosophy, et cetera, how do you bring variety in it so that you see that fresh thinking which comes in yourself, not just others? It has to start with you.

Kevin M. Larson [00:22:18]:
I think what you have to do is you have to embrace the way the organizational changes at a company are and I think every company goes through rapid change, especially over the last 10, 15 years, and we’re no exception of that. We’re a much different company, a much more focused company on certain services and capability and you have to make sure IT is with that and partnering. The importance is that IT continues to deliver as the organization changes and IT has to throw a couple of things out there that we want to go with these initiatives, we want to try these new products, we want to get this investment and you have to be ready to get out in front and kind of project out where the business might be going, what type of solutions they might need, and you have them already ready to go.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:14]:
And would you say your edge is also dependent on the type of people who you surround yourself with and if they themselves have been around for like in there. So you are a group of people, which I’m not safe for sure but could there be a risk of being cocooned in a set of thinking, a set of advice, a set of approaches which prevents you from being able to have that blue sky capability even as a group, let alone you being the leader?

Kevin M. Larson [00:23:44]:
I think what we’ve, seen here is that there’s been the traditional IT and there’s also been with very smart leaders here to bring in some new digital initiatives. The digital initiatives help us make sure that we have the latest and the greatest strategies and capabilities and then the art is to blend these digital initiatives with kind of the core IT capabilities blended together. It’s a very powerful solution and that infusion of what we want to do on the digital side and from new leader and new leader objectives, that infusion of these new desires and objectives and then the foundation, IT is this very strong foundation that kind of feeds these, that partnering is what we see as been very successful over the last, even the last year.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:40]:
And talking about the decision making because you’ve got the people, you’re making changes and you got smart management, everything is great. Now would you say you will take their experience and yours like the gut, if you will, is that what should drive the decision making and the approaches you take or would you say let us get some specialized army of advisors as needed, go data and analytics direction and drive it that way so that you are no longer limited by the human complacency which knowingly or unknowingly may creep in.

Kevin M. Larson [00:25:19]:
I think the combination, I love analytics and just the, the metric and the KPI, but it’s. I think you also have to have the analysis and the, human factor in terms of what the data is saying or what is practical. I think it’s a blended approach that we have to take. It has to be core data driven strategy, core KPIs to drive everything but then there’s just the number of intangibles that you have to be ready for and the intangible are driven by your experience and the human factors of the people around you.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:59]:
And to that decision making. We’ll take a quick break and we’ll come back and explore. So what we should talk about is in this whole decision making process, and you rightly said that there will be a mix between the two, would you say that our approach to be where if we want to see a change, we cannot do the way things were done earlier and that continual change not only in terms of okay, the tools that you use, what data gives us, but even our gut, so our gut is also in a way formed over the years with certain variables, patterns that we have seen. Does that have to be rethought because otherwise you are influencing whatever other data is telling you with your older gut which should be fundamentally recharged or renewed. Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and talk about how to build sharper decision making.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:43]:
Welcome back. So to this end of building or rather making sharper decisions, we have to, as we discussed to use the tools, have a team of people who we work with but then we are also saying that yes, we cannot undermine the gut that we have now let’s talk about that very gut which is dependent on our past experiences, what we have seen happen and to some extent it is leveraging things which could also be undermining, unknowingly undermining the quality of the decision you make. So how do you keep your gut that give an edge to your gut itself for you to be a better leader.

Kevin M. Larson [00:29:23]:
I think it as a leader now I think things have changed where even if your gut has a you can visualize how long a certain task or effort is going to take but you’re sitting around a room and everything like we talked earlier about everything is built more around collaboration, sharing ideas, more agile methodologies and the blend between the agile methodologies and the traditional waterfall methodology, system development, life cycle, things like that, the blending of the two. The agile methodologies are going to maybe be a little more aggressive, they’re going to not have a clear picture. So you’re the leader, you’re kind of want to help these agile methodologies be successful and you realize that there’s maybe more risk with them. You have to blend it and you have to let it go. You have to be more free to let things play out. You have to have more patience than you maybe you would have years ago and because there will be risk, reward I believe if you eventually get it right

Kevin M. Larson [00:30:33]:
but it’s not going to be as cookie cutter. Leadership is not as cookie cutter as it was before. It’s not dictating how everything is going to come together. You have to be willing to take a backseat, you have to be willing to let your team a little more trial and error. You have to, hopefully they have more creative ideas. There’s going to be definitely bumps in the road, there’s going to be more surprises and when you run into those surprises, you have to make the best of it. You have to keep pushing forward and you can’t draw a line of sand. You have to say, okay, fine, let’s try this then

Kevin M. Larson [00:31:09]:
and so by getting patient and letting things play out because there will be benefit at the end of the road.

Sanjog Aul [00:31:15]:
And that approach that you just mentioned about being flexible and giving the autonomy or the authority for your people to make mistakes, are you saying that particular approach itself is a sign of someone who’s going to be able to maintain their edge as a leader and make a difference that would you say is a significant contribution towards not only improving yourself but also the outcome?

Kevin M. Larson [00:31:42]:
I think so and I don’t know if it necessarily, I wouldn’t focus on the quote mistake. I think it’s more of the learning curve, it’s more of the progress that people are making and I think as a leader you have to be more accepting, you have to be more or just maybe be continue to be positive, optimistic with a new kind of set of rules or a new set of objectives and I think as you go back and forth the interplay all works out at the end, but it’s an exciting time and you just, I think you have to be flexible obviously like you touched on.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:22]:
And when we are looking at the leaders who especially like seasoned leaders who’ve been there, done that, there must be areas which they recognize that what brought them here. Even when you like you are seasoned leader today in last eight or Ten years, if you were doing the CIO job, that’s the, effort and the experience that you got which got you to where you are. Would you say, would you be willing to creatively destruct some of that in order to make room for the new so that you can keep your edge, or would you take the whole baggage along?

Kevin M. Larson [00:33:00]:
I think it was really a question of how are you as a, as far as change management, how are you as accepting things that they, that kind of evolve in front of you? I don’t know. Give me the question another way.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:14]:
So think of you. You did certain things a certain way and they worked, but environment is changing, other things are changing and you are supposed to keep your edge and certain things may or may not work. Are you willing to forego what worked in the past and fundamentally refresh yourself to keep your edge?

Kevin M. Larson [00:33:37]:
Perfect, you have to. The traditional methodology, the traditional things that brought you here, they may not have held up over time. So the things that you believed in, the things that you woke up and the way you drove projects, et cetera, completely different. It’s much more open, it’s much more collaborative and I think you are going to be successful. When you’re not the person speaking in the room the entire time that you’re listening more, you’re watching these kind of shift, evolve and change and you have to embrace that and accept that and you look for different measures of the team accomplishments. Let it get distributed across your organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:34:25]:
So is there this is an analog approach or either a digital or a binary approach? It’s a wake up call one day to say, okay, I have to clean certain things up because that’s not working or is there a part of someone, as a seasoned leader, as you are, who it’s a daily meditation of sorts to say, okay, this is a cleaner part. I have to do and I have to continually evolve so that I let go of some of, they were not bad but they are not just relevant, those skills or competencies or mindsets or limiting beliefs or enabling beliefs.

Kevin M. Larson [00:34:56]:
I think you, I mean, we’ve been empowering people for years and years, but you’re empowering people at a much higher level. What can you do to give as many of your folk the quote, facetime, the visibility, the freedom, the opportunity to be leaders in their own right. A really solid team is going to have, everybody’s going to be able to work independently. When we talked about all of the pressing demand, the CIO role, as I see it is, you basically get managed escalations manage the things that people are going to come to you and say, I know that you have 25 things going on, but this is required for this particular deadline and you have to drop in and make sure you’re going to address that deadline and the beauty is having your team willing to let you drop in and micromanage at the point level when there’s been some type of escalation and they respect that and then the other 85% of the time you stay out of the way. You let them do their thing, you let them be successful, you let them get the recognition for what they’re doing. and the balance is when you have those unfortunate situations where you have to juggle somebody based on some type of escalation, your individual leaders are open to that, they understand the circumstances, they understand what we’re trying to accomplish, and they don’t get frustrated that you’re maybe juggling them a little bit.

Kevin M. Larson [00:36:32]:
So I see that kind of evolving much more in this fast paced world than we would have ever done head down, let somebody work on something for three months. That doesn’t happen at all anymore.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:45]:
So as a seasoned leader, if you were to do your own performance review and maybe create categories where you would see, these are the areas I need to continually evaluate to see if I’m keeping my edge, what would that categories look like?

Kevin M. Larson [00:37:00]:
That’s a good idea. That’s a great question. I think one category would be innovation. So are you open to new and different things? Another category would be oit. That’s a great question.

Sanjog Aul [00:37:16]:
My idea was not to stop you, but I’m trying to see if someone is thinking, yeah, you’re trying to say that, okay, I give myself an A plus or maybe not as A plus. So what would those categories even. So when you’re doing reflection, you got to have some structure. You cannot be all over the place.

Kevin M. Larson [00:37:33]:
I would go back to the number one category for me, and this is a topic we talked about years ago, was that customer service. We talked extensively on that. True blue customer service and I would go back to that because it is as important today as it was, as it always has been. I think the IT folks, I think the digital folks, we are in the customer service business, we have a requirement, we have to put a smile on our face. We have to be positive, optimistic that we’re going to support our business and I think once you have that relationship and people know that inherently, even though you have more requirements than you could possibly ever accomplish, that your heart is in the right place, that your effort is in the right place, that your entire team following this initiative, these requirements and they’re doing everything possible.

Kevin M. Larson [00:38:33]:
I think the respect you get from that and the goodwill goes an awfully long way. So how can I ensure that I never lose that in my review? That it like you’re difficult to work with or you don’t see the big picture or whatever and that to me those are highly driven by customer service skills, attitude and positive relationship.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:59]:
How much value do you give to the calling? Everyone has a calling and you became a seasoned leader and it takes persistence. It takes all the effort and the passion that you need to get there. Do you think a person should evaluate whether they are still sticking to their calling even though whatever that has been said and we’re talking about the big picture? You see what I mean?

Sanjog Aul [00:39:21]:
Not only in the organizational context, but your personal because at the end of the day you are the one who’s monitoring yourselves. How much value do you put through that? Do you think about your calling while you’ve been here, done that and say am I sticking to it?

Kevin M. Larson [00:39:32]:
I think the your calling is how are you adapting, how are you growing and are you willing to put the same level of effort in that you would have done 5, 10, 15 years ago? Are you going to take home all of the reports and do the research and live it every single day, wake up early and prepare for significant meetings and as long as you have that same energy and drive, you’re satisfying your calling. In some ways, I think as a leader I am accomplishing more today than I did last year and more than the previous year, et cetera. I think the calling is that you want to be successful, you want to be recognized as a force in the organization, you want to be recognized as a team builder and somebody that’s going to be relied on and knowing that it’s harder today than it ever was and it’ll be harder next year and your calling is that you want to be successful and you have to work to maintain that edge.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:46]:
Let’s take a quick break listeners. When we come back, let’s talk about the authenticity and the identity which could be the very foundational blocks based on which the leader became what they became and now that they are at this moment where they have lots of experience, people want a whole lot from them and have higher expectations and in that pursuit of keeping an edge and meeting others expectations, what do we do to make sure that we don’t lose ourselves in the race? Please say tuned listeners, we’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:28]:
Welcome back. So we are expected a lot from and the DNA over the years as a seasoned leader is somewhat set. So do we risk losing our identity and authenticity in the way we are ongoing on an ongoing basis meeting and exceeding other people’s expectations? That’s going to be a zero sum game if it ends up being that way. So how do you preserve the you, the real you while you were becoming a seasoned leader and in the process of keeping your edge?

Kevin M. Larson [00:44:02]:
I think it’s such a great question. I think it you’re inherently let me think about that for a second. I think the I don’t know if people change. I think the difference would be if people stop growing. So you can still be your core person. I think if you ask the folks around here that have known me for 20 years, I’m pretty much the same person. I’m pretty much as flexible with people. I’m caring and supportive of people

Kevin M. Larson [00:44:31]:
and you have to manage the pressure. You have to manage the the ongoing expectation and know people let people know that you’re sincere and you’re genuine and you’re likable and I think that’s going to be the balance between how you were maybe more hard driving and charging years ago, but you’re going to be want to accept more you’re going to give people more freedoms. You’re going to be able to let things happen outside of your control, let things move and vary outside your control, knowing that you can still pull it back if things go off the rail a little bit. So that’s how we kind of look at it here, I think.

Sanjog Aul [00:45:17]:
Do you think there could be people out there who may be rockstars in front of the rest of the world, but inside something is not aligned to what they truly are because they ended up becoming focused and there’s nothing wrong with helping others, serving others, but in that process, they somehow changed and they are not feeling themselves.

Kevin M. Larson [00:45:36]:
I don’t know, that would be unfortunate. I think if people, it takes the entire package, it takes your entire spirit to get up and do it every day. So if you’re living outside yourself in any capacity, I think that would be really challenging because where would the reward be? You have to have your inner rewards. You have to know that what you accomplished today was what you were hoping to accomplish and what makes you feel good. You wouldn’t want to come out of a.

Kevin M. Larson [00:46:10]:
real high profile meeting, walk out of the meeting and say, yeah, I think that went okay, but I went again, my kind of core values, or I went against what I believed in, or I went again, what I thought just to maybe get a different reaction. I think you want to be in the thing 100% that what you’re presenting, what you’re communicating, what you believe in is what you’re about. This is the energy you bring to the CIO position. This is the drive, this is how you’re going to look out and support your team. It’s got to be one, it’s got to be core and if you, I think if you’re at the point where you’re representing something different than what you totally believe in, that would be an issue.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:59]:
Now, recently, we know that something like cybersecurity has really kept us all up at night, and it also sometimes makes us feel helpless or it challenges us to the core, where we are not able to truly get our arms around it and the war is still on. What someone like, as a seasoned leader, as you would see it as, has that impacted you? Has that made you even sharpen your edge in the process of dealing with it?

Kevin M. Larson [00:47:29]:
I think that’s a great question. I think that’s probably been the most exhilarating topic that I’ve seen over the years, because you wake up and it’s in the news. It seems every single day you’re seeing new situations, new threat vectors out there. That, it’s like, that is really something you’ve never seen before and it requires a terrific team, it requires a tremendous amount of collaboration, it requires the most analysis that I’ve ever seen in terms of how can you stay in front of this, how can you stay on top of this and it’s also been one of the most rewarding times because it’s another objective, it’s another there the world, in your CIO world, the bar is raising now. You have to be a Chief Information Security Officer and you have to have a team in place that’s, it’s in their DNA that they’re working on these threat vectors. So there to me, it’s been the, it’s been such a game changer in terms of the obligations, the requirements of CAO’s to manage this new cyber threat

Kevin M. Larson [00:48:40]:
and we might just be at the beginning of this, it’s just going to continue but there’s so many avenues and so many variations of this amazing thread out there with dipr.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:51]:
With the type of people that we are dealing with or when even when we were growing up, we wanted to change the world and we wanted to over a period of time and now that we’ve had some experience, so the seasoned leaders, especially in this case, we are trying to see what we can change in ourselves. So how someone who is on the path of changing ourselves and building ourselves can realistically create value by getting the other people who are in that change the world mindset, still, it’s just almost like an age dependent mindset. How can you be a leader or effective leader and keep your edge working with these other people who are just in that previous stage that you were in?

Kevin M. Larson [00:49:34]:
I would say you, you want to be able to inspire, you want to be able to lessen. If people want to take on more and they want to take on more, they want to take on more, you have to help ensure that they can accomplish it, that they can have the accomplishments, they can do, the hard charging for their careers and then if you can do anything to inspire and in some ways, maybe the phrase, maybe get out of the way a little bit, make sure that you’re not impeding their progress. I think if you were to talk to the team, 30 seconds, you have a good team, you don’t need to say no to them too often.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:14]:
All right. On behalf of the show and our listeners, thank you so much Kevin, you’re always a delight and loved a lot about your experience as a seasoned leader, what you’re doing to keep your edge and how others can follow suit. Thank you so much again, Kevin.

Kevin M. Larson [00:50:28]:
Thank you. I enjoyed it.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:30]:
Thank you and listeners, hope you enjoyed the discussion, got some nuggets out of it. Please like us on Facebook, search for CTN, CIO Talk Network and please be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week take care and god bless you.

Download Podcast
Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, and Stitcher. Find other syndication channels here or search CIO Talk Network podcast on any other app.

Explore More

• • Finding Financial Services a Competitive Edge through Big Data
  • MORE (Choice, Speed, Scale): A Double Edged Sword?
  • Winning Strategies For Exceeding Customer Expectations
  • Is Your IT Prepared for Fluid Customer Expectations?
  • Can IT Push Innovation Beyond All Customer Expectation?
  • CIO of a Recovering Economy: The Challenges and Expectations
  • Keeping Relevant in Order to Prosper
  • IT Portfolio Management: Keeping Score