ICON66 – Volume 7
ICON's IT Giants
We launched IT Giants™ to find out what global success looks like from the inside. As it turned out, we discovered a lot more besides. Throughout this series of interviews the “Giants” have given their fascinating insights on such critical factors as growth, customers, execution, leadership and innovation… and candidly revealed some major challenges.
Sir Robin Saxby, ARM
On making mistakes
Whether you’re a start up, or joining another company, the real risk is: “can I get another job with as much money tomorrow?” If you can, then have a bloody go. In ARM we have an expression and in performance appraisals we say: “what mistakes have you made?” If you haven’t made any mistakes you probably haven’t been doing enough and we shouldn’t be paying you a salary.
The current culture is all about hiding our mistakes. I learned a lot from my early mistakes and I didn’t make the same mistakes with ARM. If I hadn’t learned from my mistakes, I’d still be in Motorola and perhaps they’d be trying to pension me off because I’d got too old and my face didn’t fit ... so, have a go and have some fun. That’s the other thing – if you’re not enjoying it, don’t bloody do it. It’s got to be fun.
John Brigden, Symantec
On leadership
Well, I think every leader has to ask themselves: am I really learning, am I reinventing myself? And if the answer to those questions is “no”, it’s time for you to move, quite frankly. I argue that effective leaders, certainly in the role of CEO, probably have a life cycle of about 8-10 years. If they don’t reinvent themselves and reinvent the company in the process, boy, they probably ought to move on because they’re not serving that company very well.
Richard Fiddis, Experian
On price pressure
Over the years I found with clients that have pressured us on price, we’ve actually managed to say yes okay there are pressures here but we can effectively expand our sphere of operation to give you more benefit and one classic area is in fraud prevention which has become a significant issue for banks. So our traditional way of working and I think many other IT companies work this way as well, is there’s always price pressure, you have to acknowledge it, you have to deal with it but at the same time if you can grow the relationship by doing more and adding more value, then you’ll have a stronger relationship long term.
Sir John Chisholm, Qinetiq
On getting to market
The key to success is in understanding that the real value of IP is not the idea itself but how you get it to market. It’s more than likely that other people may have the same idea as you, even if your idea is totally original, it’s likely that it could be arrived at through a different process by someone else. So you need to accept that the only way to succeed is through a combination of continuous innovation and partnering to bring it to market. You are unlikely to end up with the same offering that you started with.
Brian McBride, Amazon
On putting the customer first
What Amazon does really well is it starts with the customer and works back from there. So we figure out what the customer wants and then make sure that the processes and experiences behind that support what that customer wants. Stuff goes wrong, of course it does, but having run T-Mobile, a large telecoms company with 16 million customers, I’d have a box of complaints every day and I’d have staff just to handle complaints. In Amazon, I might get one a week, so the volume, the order of magnitude is quite different because the processes were designed behind what the customer wanted. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling electronics, books, beans or newspapers, if you give the customer what they want, you under-promise and over-deliver and don’t disappoint people, they’re going to keep coming back.
Chris Baker, Oracle
On global competition
For British companies to thrive, they need to be at the forefront of innovation. This is more than just inventing new products and processes, it’s about applying that invention and making businesses successful. Larger companies, the government and financiers have a role to play to encourage companies to make those innovations successful. Historically the UK, while strong in invention, hasn’t managed to turn this into hugely successful business for the UK. Throwing money at the problem doesn't fix this issue. Expertise and experience matched with clear measurement have much more effect in turning innovation into successful businesses.
Mike Lynch, Autonomy
On hiring the best
We like outsiders. By outsiders I mean people who have grown up slightly disconnected from their society, because those people don’t accept anything at face value. One of our developers is a Japanese girl who grew up in Ecuador. Another one was a chap whose father was a journalist who got into a lot of trouble in South Africa under the previous government. Those people tend to be great because they believe that it’s going to be different tomorrow to how it is today. We find it quite difficult to hire senior people, the reason being that our culture is very special and people tend to be great believers in it. One of the big ways that we get very good people is through acquisitions. The fascinating thing is how often the real stars have been repressed by the organization.
Andrew Gilbert, Qualcomm
On execution
Having a great idea is one thing, but you’ve got to execute on it. Innovation isn’t just ideas; it means ideas and execution on those ideas. I see loads of people with great ideas, but they can’t execute. They don’t have the right management team, the right approach, the right business model, and that is as much about success as having the good idea. But people will give you that, if you have the right people.
