An interesting talk :)

In my professional life I had the great fortune of hearing stories of some very capable men. In some cases I got to hear those men in person. There is something about these men which enabled them to reach the positions that they eventually did. You can call it their drive or energy or whatever but it did make them turn adversarial situations into great opportunities. Such situations may have overwhelmed a normal individual but not these guys.

Today during my induction I heard the talk of one such guy, who is a GM in the company. The GM, an Irishman did his MBA from Georgetown way back in the early 90s. At that time it cost him around $42000, I got this feeling that it was quite a sum for him but somehow he managed. As a student he stayed in Washington and among his neighbors was Katherine Graham, whose family owns “The Washington Post”. Imagine spending the formative years of your life in the company of such characters ;)

This guy started his work in the P&G as an intern where he got to go the Caribbean islands and worked on a deal to sign on an ex-Miss World as a brand ambassador for the company. Such assignments as intern surely would have been heady and perhaps influenced him to join P&G. The way he explained his first assignment as a brand manager for a product for urinary tract infection in rural Cincinnati was insightful. There was a hint of disappointment but there was also the message that he came out well and handled bigger and more exciting things in life.

Amongst his later successes was handling Head & Shoulders. Once upon a time that brand wasn’t all that big and it wasn’t one of the coveted assignments in the company. He shared the fascinating insight of how one individual recognized the potential of H&S and it was his conviction that made the company put its resources behind the brand and turn it into the world’s largest Shampoo brand.

His address to the newbies like myself included a fascinating presentation, which had some interesting videos and the best part was his interpretation of the videos. A brief summary of the things he shared:

1.       Passion & Belief

-          I missed the exact words of his Susan Boyle interpretation, but he was trying to emphasize the idea of Passion & Belief. He advised sustaining and deepening these two emotions in spite of your career.

-          The other point he made was that life will throw urinary tract products at you. And somehow you have to figure out what you really like and move towards it. Matching Passion with you really love will result in disproportionate success.

-          He also talked about success & leadership literature concepts like “Peak Performance” and quoted works like Strength Finder, Leadership Engine and so on.

2.       Simplicity:

-          He quoted the beauty of the Hans Gosling presentations on world Demographics to suggest that it make sense to keep things simple. While the intent is admirable I got the feeling that the organization wasn’t aligned to his thought.

-          Steve Jobs famously said that keeping things simple takes a lot more work. Take for example the Gosling presentation that people find so attractive. Just imagine for a moment the effort that went into creating that presentation. First collecting data from all that sovereign countries in a format that was comparable to each other. And then working on the analytical capability to simplify everything. In today’s times when the organizations encourages a scarcity mindset, executing such outputs may be quite challenging.

3.       Knowledge:

-          He emphasized the importance of knowledge and mastery. Further if you don’t have it then it will eventually show as was visible during the Sarah Palin interview :)

     As a newbie I came out pretty impressed. Having people to look up to is such a great thing and in the first month of being in the company, this is the second time I bumped into a guy who made me feel “WOW”!!