[Music]
well hello everyone my name is Jim
Whitehurst and I have to admit I'm a
recovering know-it-all CEO I once
believed that my job was to have all the
answers I was responsible for the
problems facing my company and
importantly it was my job to instill
order and structure in the words of US
president Harry Truman the buck stops
here that's what I thought my role was
and I was wrong and I'm convinced I
built this misconception very much
because of my classic business
background you know I got an MBA I work
for a almost a dozen years at a
consulting firm I was ultimately
recruited to Delta Airlines where over
time I became chief operating officer
responsible for over 80,000 people and
traditional management terms things were
going pretty well then in 2008 I was
recruited to Red Hat as CEO Red Hat is
the open source software company that is
at the frontline of many of the
innovations that are happening around us
and it's this last stop that made all
the difference because it's there that I
realized in the 21st century and dynamic
environments leadership isn't about
controlling compliance it's about
creating the context for the best ideas
to emerge out of your organization
I began to realize something significant
was happening my second week on the job
at Red Hat I was in a meeting talking to
the team about our strategy for an area
called virtualization for those of you
aren't in technology virtualization was
the thing everybody was talking about
before they were talking about the cloud
and through this at the senior team and
a bunch of the engineers kind of walking
through our strategy and the what's and
the whys of it and about halfway through
the meeting one of the engineers one of
the most junior engineers just took a
pause and said look I know this is what
we're doing but this is ABS
the wrong direction and he didn't stop
there he kept going and going and going
about why we were wrong and how wrong we
were and I'm looking across the room
because this room had his boss and his
boss's boss's boss's boss's boss waiting
for a reaction and there was a reaction
you know I would call it a point in
counterpoint which is a very polite way
to say we had a huge argument but at the
end of the meeting everybody walked out
like this was normal now
I'm two weeks out of being in a very
traditional organization and I have to
tell you I was sitting here thinking
this is the most bizarre thing that I
had ever seen I would hazard a delta and
frankly most large organizations and
many you know what I mean here if a
person to the CEO in front of their boss
there was boss's boss and their boss's
boss's boss said what these people are
doing is completely wrong that person
would have clearly been fired by the end
of the day and to be honest maybe killed
before the end of the meeting but
everybody acted like this was normal and
I remember going home that night and
talking to my wife and I said I have
come into this most bizarre strange
company I've clearly been brought in to
clean it up and it it wasn't just this
hour a couple weeks later I asked about
doing a research report in an area in a
couple weeks later when I asked about
where that was the team very happily and
merrily said yeah we thought was a bad
idea so we decided not to do that like
so first I really like course like to
have a mutiny on my phone but they're so
friendly and they're like positive about
not doing what I told him to do and so I
before I had a chance to impose kind of
the traditional management structure
which I had learned so well and hone so
well I thought well you know what Red
Hat's been really successful before I
got there at least need to step back and
observe and so my management consulting
kicked in and that's what I did and I
have to say I felt a little bit you know
like an anthropologist you know tossed
into some odd ecosystem and I really had
to hold myself back from wanting to
inject myself and I have to say the
first few months at Red Hat were I guess
fair to say shocking it was just so
different than anything I had ever been
used to and I realized my role as a
leader was gonna look nothing like what
I'd been used to in the past it Delta my
job was to be the person who knew more
than anyone else when I walked into a
meeting I typically knew more because I
had a purview to all of it I knew more
than others because I had access to more
information than anyone and that's not
just a Delta I believe that's it any
large organization that's how decision
rights are distributed
that's how information is distributed
executives know more because they have
access to more information and therefore
become integral to the decision
processes that companies normally go
through and you know I saw my role as
the person who knew more different
leaders different places have a
different conception of their role right
you get some leaders I think you see
themselves is I'm the brilliant
strategist you can get people to follow
me or I'm the fix-it person and I can go
in and fix things better than you know
anyone else and so I can go in and help
people solve problems all of those are
some flavor of helping people direct and
decide right that's what you do you
direct and decide you're applying
structure and in it the 21st century
where things are so much more volatile
and so much more unknown and we're all
worried about being disrupted that is
not the best role for a leader in
today's world let me come back to that
story about the engineer about three
months after that initial conversation
so I was about three and a half months
on the job that same team came back to
me and said you know what it turns out
he was right circumstances has changed
in the marketplace and we need to now go
pursue this other direction and by the
way we need to go buy a company to do it
and we need to go do that quickly and so
let's get going
and that all happened without me asking
it to be revisited or from some planning
process it just emerged as circumstances
had changed and so we needed to change
direction I think it's important
the people in that room not a single one
of them was apologetic or defensive
right they weren't like me they had been
there for a while they recognized that
in a volatile more dynamic environment
when circumstances changed you have to
be ready to change so success isn't
about having the the best ideas or
making all the right decisions success
is making a lot of decisions but being
open and transparent in a non defensive
enough to be willing to change those
decisions when circumstances warrant and
that's when I fully realize what my role
as a leader needed to be I wasn't going
to be the person with the big binders of
data like I was Delta and I wasn't the
person who's going to make all the
decisions my job was to make sure that
the right people had the appropriate
data and everybody had a sense of the
the big picture of the company my role
as a leader was to make sure those
conversations happened to foster a
degree of conflict and for the really
difficult things to make sure that they
stayed in front of people to bubble and
simmer and churn I wasn't the person
brought in to clean up the chaos I was
the person brought in to scale this more
organic way of working to put it simply
I was brought in to create the context
for people to do their best work now I
was truly given a gift going from Delta
to Red Hat I had to change right I had a
chance up front to see the difference
between an organization optimized for
efficiency in a static environment and
an organization optimized for innovation
in a dynamic environment and that
required me to change as a leader most
leaders have a more difficult problem
right most leaders have this challenge
of they see their organizations moving
into a different competitive context
where they need greater resilience and
adaptability so they have to take their
organizations down that change path and
it's hard and it's hard because it's not
a
changing processes and systems it's
about changing mindsets and behaviors
and change it behaviors is hard I mean
you know I'll use the analogy they
losing weight losing weight
intellectually is really simple you only
need four words eat less exercise more
pretty simple yet there are a million
diet books out there why because
managing your weights really really hard
right because it requires behavior
change and behavior change is
particularly difficult when that
behavior change requires that you have
to do something painful in the short
term for a long-term gain but I can tell
you as a leader who's lived through it
opening yourself up for criticism and
encouraging it and allowing push back
all the time feels like you've taken a
club and you're just beating yourself on
the head and at some point you say this
just doesn't feel like a good thing to
do right and so so many leaders if
you're not as intentional about managing
and changing your behaviors and your
mindset as you are your processes and
your systems you will backslide into the
command and control systems and ways of
being that you're so comfortable with
which is the managerial equivalent of
kicking back on the couch and eating
junk food and I can tell you those first
few confrontational conversations are
hard for confident leaders who try to
exude confidence saying I don't know and
I don't know if it's Nobel's hard but
over time you build new muscle and it
gets easier and after you have observed
the power of a well-functioning
self-directed collaborative organization
you'll say I can't believe we ever acted
another way thank you
[Applause]