This interview with Barry Salzberg, who will be promoted from chief executive of Deloitte LLP to global chief executive of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu on June 1, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. What are some important leadership lessons you've learned?
A. Shortly after I joined the firm from law school, one of the managers asked me to find and make a copy of a ruling and bring it to her. So I got the ruling from the library, read it, and I wrote a little summary of it and gave it to her. I got a call from her and she said: "When I want you to interpret the ruling, I'll ask you to do that. All I wanted was a copy." And I said to myself, O.K., if I'm ever a manager, I'm never going to do that. I was trying to be a little proactive and forward-thinking, and to this day, I really encourage people to think and act that way.
Q. What are some other lessons?
A. There was an early training program I attended at Deloitte, and the partner teaching the class told us about the five P's: Proper planning prevents poor performance. That must have been in the 1980s, but here I am in 2011 and I guide my leadership style by the five P's.
I say it to people all the time, and I do it myself. If my executive team comes into my office to discuss their 30-page PowerPoint presentation, I will have read it and thought through it and be prepared to discuss it. They know I do that, and they say it to their teams. You've always got to be prepared.
Q. What else is important to your leadership style?
A. I don't like surprises. I don't like good surprises. I don't like bad surprises. Obviously it's better to have good surprises, but the idea is to be transparent and straight and tell it like it is all the time and to make sure that you are involving others along the way. People know that's what I stand for today. My board is never surprised by anything going on, good or bad. The people who report to me are transparent, they're right to the point. Sometimes surprise is unavoidable, and we all understand that. But if you have control over it, there is no reason for there to be a surprise. You don't want to blindside anybody in a meeting.
Q. How do you drive that message home?
A. It's not only in the consistent and repetitive messaging. It's also in the actions because people take their cues not only from what you say, but what you do. And so, people know: Just come to Barry. You are not going to get yelled at. It's not going to be the end of your career if it's bad news. You have to come forward with all of it. If you practice it long enough, it becomes routine.
Q. What about your parents? Were they big influences?
A. I'll tell you one story. I was a great math student. I remember on many occasions, I would come home from a test in math and my father would ask me how I did. And I would say, "I got a 99." And he would say, "Well, where's the other point?" So I said to myself, O.K., strive for excellence, and there is no excuse not to. That's really what he was saying to me. He wasn't being cute. He wasn't criticizing me. He was just saying that if you got 99, just know you can get 100.
Q. Not everybody would take that feedback so well and see it as a challenge.
A. I did take it as a challenge, and I realized he had the confidence in my ability to do this, and so I've got to keep working on it. That would stay with me forever.
Q. How would you say your leadership and management style has evolved over the years?
A. In our firm, we are very open to feedback. It's a very open partnership and the partners like to be able to express their points of view. When I was first elected into a national role as managing partner eight years ago, it was a very hard thing for me to receive critical input about some things. But I describe Deloitte as a self-improvement-addict firm. We always want to improve what we do, and even with all the good things, it's just never good enough. We are proud, but never satisfied. And I think that's a good culture to have. But when you have that culture and you are sitting at the helm, you constantly get feedback.
People would send e-mails all the time. At the very beginning I was very taken aback by it and it bothered me. But through proper coaching and proper learning on my own and maturing, I really took the feedback in a much more positive way over time. Today, I read through it and I find the pearls of wisdom.
My style has evolved now where people feel very comfortable sharing different points of view with me. Maybe at the very early stages of my tenure, many years ago, people were uncomfortable because they knew that I wouldn't react as positively and as openly and as constructively as I do today.
Q. What were some other important lessons?
A. At the very early stages, I was eager to give people longer time to succeed in roles. Early on, I would just say, you know, he'll improve, things will get better. And then I learned the lesson that when you kind of get it, you need to take action. It's worse to let this thing kind of go on, and it sends the wrong message to the individual. They think that everything is O.K. So now, I provide feedback regularly to people, particularly when they are in new roles, and I really give them the lay of the land early.
Q. How do you hire?
A. The one thing that's most important to me when I interview is to be sure there is a very good marriage. This isn't about Deloitte just believing that the person we are interviewing is perfect for some role. It's also that person believing that the Deloitte is perfect for the environment that they want to be in. And throughout my interviews with people, I'm searching to determine whether that marriage is there. It shouldn't be one-sided, because if it is, it's not going to be a successful marriage. So I'm looking for values. I'm looking for priorities. I'm looking for personality. I'm looking for fit.
Now, of course, that's in addition to whether they have the competence and experience, right? Do they fit the job description? But we're also looking for these intangibles, because at the end of the day, what we've found is, people join you for the firm and what they think they are going to do, and they leave because of the people and the environment they work in. So if you are looking to hire someone for the sustainable future, you want to be sure that that fit is really going to be there.
I do a lot of speaking to university students, and inevitably the question comes up: What are you looking for? I say: Look, you are smart. You are going to graduate with good grades, you are going to want to get into our firm. But we've got to find out who is different and what makes you different.
I look for speaking and writing skills, values, and experiences — not in the field, but worldly experiences. I love the person who went traveling for a while. I love the person who worked in a meaningful way for a couple of not-for-profits. I like the person who has communication skills.
What you often see when you look at graduating students is that they've got the core competencies, but they're not as good at communicating verbally. And so I tell people, you've got to broaden who you are and be yourself. I don't want to interview the person you think I want to interview. I want to interview you.
Q. If you could ask someone only a few questions in an interview, what would they be?
A. What are the values that are most important to you? And how have you demonstrated your commitment to those values in the last two years? Another might be, give me an example of something in that last two years that didn't go well. Why didn't it go well? And what did you do about it? And I would tell you that you will learn a lot about somebody from those questions.
Q. What are the most important lessons you convey to up-and-comers at Deloitte?
A. No. 1 is, pay it forward. Make sure you are taking care of people. You have to take the leadership experiences and education you're getting here and cascade those lessons into the organization.
No. 2 is, brand yourself. Make sure people know who you are and that you stand for who you are. Be honest about yourself. I don't want you to show me who you think I want you to be. I want you to be yourself, but find out who you really are and drive it. Be unique about something. Be a specialist in something. Be known for something. Drive something — that's very, very important for success in leadership because there are so many highly talented people. What's different about you — that's your personal brand.
And three, get out of your comfort zone. Leaders can take multiple paths, but in our firm, the more experienced you are, the more diverse set of experiences you've had, the better off you will be in terms of leadership roles. And so I tell people, get out of your comfort zone. It's O.K. to be uncomfortable. Don't resist change. Don't resist a different role or a different way of looking at things.
Thanks to Adam Bryant / NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/business/22corner.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
No comments:
Post a Comment