Episode Rob James

Rob James, a guest on the podcast, Lead Long and Prosper, discusses his experience in leadership. He shares that his leadership skills began to develop on the sports field, where he excelled as a leader. He describes his leadership style as not taking himself too seriously and leading by example. Rob also mentions JTR Williams as an idol for his commitment and discipline. The joy of leadership for Rob comes from solving problems and achieving goals with a team. He highlights a challenging moment in his career when he had to turn around a project implementation that was six months late. Despite the difficulties, they were able to successfully complete the project with the support of the team. Lead Long and Prosper. The Spellcast for Joy in Leadership. Experiences, tips, and valuable hacks for all those who want to lead with joy. Hello, dear Spellcast friends, to a new and another episode of our Spellcast, Lead Long and Prosper. Today, again, with a very special guest. We have Rob James with us. But first of all, let me also introduce my co-leads here. Sabine is going to be the co-interviewer with me today. Hello, Sabine. Hello, everyone. And Hans-Joachim is going to be the Spellcaster today, so you will hear him only at the end. Hi there. First of all, hello, Rob. Hello, Joachim, and everybody that's listening. Rob is a Walesman by birth. He studied mathematics, but then early on in his career went straight into IT, to be precise. In 1984, he started his professional career in IT. He has seen, as he says, all the great things about technology, but also the irrational exuberance of technology, especially more lately, and I'm sure we're going to talk about this. He loves solving problems and he has done this in four big corporations, in Xerox, in Procter & Gamble, at Novartis, and lately at ADECO. And besides being a great professional, he has raised two daughters who are in their early 30s. He's a very proud father and, of course, also a very proud husband, and he knows exactly what it means to bring young professionals into their careers. Rob, besides having a great professional career, also had almost two lives. There was a second part where he had a tragic accident, which has led him to be paralyzed from the chest down, and that in itself has changed his leadership, but also brought up a different skill in his leadership, which we're going to talk about as well. Rob, let's start in the beginning. You were born and raised in Wales. That makes very special people, but what made it special for you in terms of your leadership? How and when did it start? And when did you know and realize that you have a special leadership skill? Maybe at the start point, I come from a small village in South Wales. Primarily, it's known for being a coal mining community. That was the big thing when I grew up. Both of my grandfathers were coal miners. In retrospect, I think there were a number of things with a young teenager that were hammered into me that were part of my heritage. In South Wales, you're taught pretty early on not to take yourself too seriously, and if the older generation would see that, they would hammer it out of you. I think that was an element that came into our leadership style later on. Secondly, your question around when did I first realize that maybe I had some leadership virtues or capability? Honestly, that was on the sports field. I was studying mathematics in one of the finest universities, UCL, and it was so competitive. I am competitive, but I realized I couldn't compete with the top guys, which was quite devastating, the realization of that. But on the sports field, I excelled, not actually as an athlete. It's a long story, but I ended up leading the UCL third team to the semifinals of the British universities, which was there, probably never been done within the university before or since. It was an incredible ride, but learning how to lead and manage people, where you're telling players on Saturday, you're not going to be in the team for the semifinal. Then on the field, when often we were outgunned by better teams, and trying to find a way to motivate individuals. Honestly, that shaped me. I was doing the same thing 30 years later, leading large organizations of thousands of people. Same basic elements, but the short answer is probably on the sports field was the first time I thought, hang on a second, these people are jumping through hoops to achieve something big for you, Rob. Somehow you're doing something that ignites them. What kind of leadership style was it? Honestly, I think it's not taking yourself too seriously. Then leading from the front, I never would ask anybody to do anything that I wouldn't do myself. I would be giving it everything I've got. I wasn't the best player, I was okay, but nobody ever would fault me for giving it everything. I think that's something I always demanded from everybody around me that stuck with me. It was the same, leading large IT organizations and major corporations. I think management later in my career, when they looked at me, I think they saw that and that meant increased responsibility. I think it all started on the sports field. There are always great analogies between sports and management or leadership. Is there anyone that became an idol for you? Somebody that you said, well, if I could be like that person, this would be my style that I want to bring into my own life? The person that I probably... There's a couple, okay? Maybe the most appropriate one was this gentleman. His name is JTR Williams. He just passed away last week. He was one of the most famous Welsh rugby players. He was famous. Number one, he was a doctor. He played multiple sports, rugby. He represented Wales at tennis. But on the field, he was uncompromising. He wasn't the fastest, wasn't the biggest, but my goodness, commitment. He was famous for it. I think at the moment, with this coming so soon, with his passing, I know for a fact, I always wanted to be like that. Absolute commitment, encouraging people around you, fearless, but very disciplined. Is that how you would describe yourself as a leader? Yes. I think the discipline piece for me is interesting, right? Because I have a mathematics background, right? So I could get into detail or whatever, but I don't like to do that. I like to... What I've learned is let people have sufficient rope to succeed or fail, and then get involved as is necessary. So the discipline piece, right, I think could be interpreted different ways. But yes, absolutely. I think I was like that. Rob, we are talking in our podcast about the joy of leadership. So it was a natural thing for you when you're describing that you take this leadership role on the sports field. What kind of joy did you felt there? That's a really great question, Sabine, and I really mean that because what I realized, right, was solving problems with major achievements. The first global implementation of SAP, it was a proctor and gamble, actually, back in 1998, solving a major data center issue, two days to go before closing, and we were down. The joy was not in the achievement. The joy was experiencing that journey to get to that achievement with the people, and the way it brought us very, very close together, and the feeling together afterwards. It was the same on the sports field. It wasn't getting the cup at the end of it. It was what we did together, and actually enjoying a dinner with the teams afterwards, and recalling the memories of what we had to do. That was the real joy for me. It wasn't so much the end result. It was the way to get there, and the people with who you could work to solve those problems that you liked so much. You mentioned already one or two highlights there, but there are some others. What are the moments in your career that stick out where you say, yeah, I've done well, or maybe also the ones that were challenging because that's where you sometimes learn most? True. I mentioned the example of the first global implementation of SAP. I'd been asked relatively early in my career to go in and lead trying to recover a project implementation. It was the first one in Norwich, upstate New York, in what the US called the boonies. It is in the middle of nowhere. On a project that was six months late, could you turn it around? I negotiated being able to handpick the best people from our organization in Europe. We went to this location, 30 of us, to help the local project team try and get in by the end of the year. From August until December, it was very, very difficult. The local team wasn't fully committed for several reasons. But the interesting challenge, can you imagine this, Roy? I said to management, we could get it in, we could jam it in, but it would be ugly. This is a regulated pharmaceutical plant. The week before going live, the FDA walked in for a site inspection and wanted then, obviously, to be part of, okay, what are you doing on this implementation? We started the cutover on the Friday to go live. You can imagine it's very intense. Then on Sunday morning, having not slept for two days, I reviewed the results on the data quality, having a British breakfast in a local diner, and we realized the data quality of the warehouse was 50%. FDA are on site. I go back into the plant. The head of QA is going, Rob, you're going to have to back everything out. So what do you do? The joy of SAP is every location in a warehouse is controlled by the system. We knew where we were not accurate, so we could block in SAP any movement in or out, and we put big charts up. We did a physical inventory check in about 12 hours, huge warehouse, and posted on the wall everything in green that was accurate, everything in red, and everything in red was blocked. Then we brought the FDA in and said, look, here's where we're at. Walked them around, showed everything, and the inspector turned to me and the head of QA and said, Rob, this is really good. You have it under control. This is not an issue. We went live the next day. That always sticks out for me because it felt like for everybody, actually including myself, this is impossible. What have we done? We need to back it out. But there was a solution, and it required asking a large group of people there to jump through hoops to do things in a structured way where we could go live, and we could then get under control and really get things humming. All implementations following in other countries went so well because the team with me knew if you don't do this in a committed way, we don't want that to happen again. That was painful. I remember sitting in Paris in a beautiful restaurant with the team after the last implementation telling stories about what we had gone through together, and that, again, Sabine, was the joy. I know they enjoyed it as well. A lot of lessons learned on the way, but then there was the day that changed your life and almost started your second life, the day of your accident, the day where you wanted to also turn your leadership towards a different perspective. Can you tell us a little bit how it happened and how you went into this new journey of helping paralyzed people in the world? As we discussed earlier, being physically active and doing sports has been a counterbalancing fact for me with work. In 2018, October, I did a company triathlon in Lanzarote, and I had trained super hard for it, thousands of kilometers on my bike in difficult conditions. In this race, unfortunately, just at the end of the bike run, I came around, I would call it a gentle roundabout. I got hit by a gust of wind, nothing bad. Then I adjusted, and as I looked down, the front tire of the bike was sliding sideways, and the back tire of the bike was going sideways. You can't brake. You can't do anything. I remember thinking, oh, my God, this is going to hurt. I woke up, I guess, 20 seconds later. I'd hit a rock head-on. I remember thinking, oh, my God, I can't feel my legs. I knew it was bad because I couldn't see anything, but I could hear the competitors going past, and they were crying. I broke everything, every rib. The fact that I'd been in such good shape, the doctors afterwards said, look, you never would have survived your internal injuries otherwise. To go back to your question, right at the point in time, believe it or not, right at that point in time, I thought, you know what, okay, if my legs are paralyzed, I'm okay with that. They've done so much for me through all kinds of sports, rugby, rowing in university, playing football for 20 years, playing squash for 15 years. I can live with that. There are other things I can do. Then the second thing was my family. Immediately, it was, okay, it's okay. I'm going to make the most of this because I always told my kids, do your best. Now is not the time to give up. I want to inspire them to be successful young women in whatever they choose to do and be an inspiration rather than, okay, now's the time to give up. I had five weeks in intensive care. I knew I had to fight every second, which was the case. That was the motivation to come through. Then when things sort of settled down, and it takes a while, my wife and I, my wife's amazing, but for us, it was like, okay, there are so many things that are wrong and difficult for people with disabilities. We saw it firsthand. We're in a privileged position where we can have an impact here. That was the focal point. After I started recovering, getting back to a bit of strength to go, right, now let's focus our energies on starting a new foundation, trying to help the research community. We both have scientific backgrounds. Then the two other areas were helping young people in a wheelchair to get jobs in the kind of companies I worked in. I can do something about that. My wife is really sort of has been very focused on helping carers. So if you are the spouse or the child or whatever of somebody with a disability like mine having gone through it, you have people that you count on, but it's hard on them, right? There are not a lot of resources or there are a lot of resources around, but it's difficult to tap into them. So that's the focus for us right now in a number of these areas. Thank you for sharing your story, Rob, because I think it can be a great inspiration for everybody who's listening and struggling with something around him or her. My question to coming back to leadership questions, what you told us is a huge transformation. My feeling is that a lot of people are in companies or a personal situation where there is a transformation, not that hard as yours. Do you think you got some recipes for these people? What is your advice to come through this grieving process? There must be one. What is helpful for the resilience? I think number one, family. Too many people go through their careers where they sacrifice the connection with their families. Let me tell you, right, when you go to a life-changing event like I've gone through, the support and the love I got from my family, how could I not bounce back? So thankful. I never solely focused on work at the expense of the girls being brought up or my wife. We were in it together. Every career move we made was always together. Girls had to move multiple times, countries and whatever. My advice to anybody would be, please, invest what you need to. Even little things. If one of the girls called me and we were in a meeting, I'd pick up. That's a small thing. I think that was a real foundation or anchor for me. And then the second thing, Sabina, I would say is I never shied away from a challenge, which could have failed, which could have meant us going to one country and being pushed back to another or whatever. And some of those transitions were hard. I'm lying in the bed in hospital and I can't do anything, right? I can't turn over in bed. I can't go to the toilet myself. I can't shower myself. I can't change my clothes. Everything is done by nurses. What we did is my wife from Odeco got a flip chart and we put on the flip chart, how long is it going to take you to do a shower, go to the bathroom, do your shoes, what's the heaviest weight you can lift in the gym. So we had a list on our flip chart. And every day I would plot how I did. And if it were what we called a world record, I would put it in red and we'd track the world records every week. And my girls would call me every day, Dad, have you broken any world records today? And the nurses and doctors said, oh my god, this is amazing. Now that comes from work and we would track big SAP projects or CRM. It's the same thing, right? So I think the discipline of tackling challenges was something that was super good for me and helped me directly as I tried to bounce back. And I would encourage people, don't take it safe. If you want to be a leader, you want to take on significant responsibility and with that comes challenge, then you can't be afraid to tackle it. So much in there. I'll ask you two more questions. From all your experience, you have learned so many things, but you've seen also how leadership has changed. So what do you think are the biggest differences and what are the leadership challenges or opportunities today, maybe also versus the past? And what's your advice for future leaders? Well, you know, number one, I think it's harder today. As you evolve in your career and you evolve with your leadership style, things that worked for me very successfully 30 years ago, probably right, would not be successful today. So I think it's harder. The diversity of the people that you work directly with is different. I think the emotional intelligence skills that you need are greater today than maybe they were sort of 30 years ago or even during my time. I think with that is some very good things. And with that, you know, there are some big challenges that I cannot imagine. Taking on big challenges and asking people to come around on this journey with you in the current environment, that's hard. And now on top, there's a new player on the block, which is called AI, which also will have an impact on leadership. And I know you called it the irrational exuberance of technology sometimes. Is that an exuberance? And how do you see AI in the future for leadership? You know, as an old guy, right? I mean, we've seen this. We've seen multiple breakthroughs that happened or were coming that were supposed to do X, Y, Z. And in most cases, didn't. Now, let me be really clear. On the other hand, we didn't see some things coming. You know, if you take the Internet, that really hit us by surprise. We knew it was coming. But by the commercialization of that, an update was was breathtaking. For AI, right, I'm a massive science fiction fan. I read every book under the sun when I was a youngster. And everything that's sort of happening as relates to AI has been written by scientists who are famous authors 30, 40, 50 years ago. To keep it short, I don't think it's a good thing. I think we've demonstrated over many years that we are incapable of regulating technology. I am so disappointed with my generation on our inability to regulate the Internet to protect young people from all the horrible things that happened today. If we were going to build it again, we would have done it differently. So we failed miserably. I see no pathway, not yet at least, whereby for AI, we will regulate it the right way. And so my view on that is I'm very, very worried about it for my kids' sake and for, you know, the generations, I hope, right, in our family to come. I do believe it will result in loss of jobs, absolutely, which will not be replaced. And I think people that will have careers are going to have to learn to adapt. But what we know is it will become pervasive. If today what we think will not be overtaken or by AI, I promise you it will. So a bit pessimistic, right? I hope the current generation of generations of the future will solve it. But there's nothing that I see that leads me to believe that we will sort this out in the right way. Hans-Joachim, you have the magical task of summarizing this wonderful conversation with you, Rob. Hans-Joachim. There was a lot of it. Thank you very much, Rob, especially for the last words, which I'll come back later. I have heard you talking about so many things which resonated with me that might resonate as well with people who are looking and having that 35 years in front. You know, one thing was from cold to quantum physics or quantum computers. And this made it possible for you to have mathematics and sports. So mathematics, you learn the thinking, by sport, you learn the doing, the leading. And you have more of these kind of, let's say, dicatums which you made to something which is leading forward in one way. I heard something around leading is always. It's never not leading. Leading is something you do always. If it's the love of a person in your group, is it the love of a cashier at the counter? So leading is taking place always. It's not something which you switch on and off. Like someone else in our talk said, leadership is not a career step. Leadership is something which is a continuous process. You highlighted for me important fearless is one part, but discipline is another part. If you're not disciplined and fearless, you're at risk. But if you're fearless and disciplined, you have a chance to drill through the most difficult piece of work. Solving big things is fun, but more the process than the reach. So make sure that you win with people and not alone. Never sacrifice your family, you said. I would say never sacrifice your secure ground. If it's family, is it something which is important, which holds you in life? What is needed today, you said, it's more difficult today to survive as a leader or to become a leader. Emotional intelligence is more important. And I would add, as we see that the numerical intelligence is rising, maybe the emotional intelligence is more important. The last two things is, you might sign the sentence, life and a purpose is more important than a physical accident. Having a purpose, having a meaningful life outlives the physical accident. The last thing on AI, which is more from me than from you, I think intelligence will make us human beings stupid before AI becomes intelligent. So thank you very much. It was fun listening and compiling. And thank you, Rob, for these wonderful 30 minutes or so. Very, very inspiring. But as always, the last word goes to you. Some closing words, Rob? Thinking about leadership, the thing I'm most proud of is the people that came on the journey with me and seeing them go on to bigger and better by far than anything I did. In summary, that has been the absolute joy of the last 35, 40 years of my career. And I think in essence, that captures what leadership's all about, right? It's about helping others go on to do bigger and better things and having a positive impact. And so I've loved that journey. And I hope with the challenges now we're going to tackle next, that I will continue to enjoy meeting new people and having the same impact and them having the same impact on me. So it's been an absolute joy the last sort of 35, 40 years career-wise. And we're not done yet. This was your Spellcast. Lead long and prosper with Sabine Schmitzroth, Achim Glöckebaum, and Hans-Jachen Spreng. Thank you for being with us and see you next time.