The strongest leadership competencies of Owen Kemp, Vice-President Hewlett-Packard, Managing Director HP Russia, are the ability to communicate, to understand the counter parts, to have some empathy for their situation, as well as to be able to gather information from the communities he works with. Owen recalls some examples how his competencies helped him to build successful business for HP in Russia.
1. What is your strongest leadership trait?
During the many years that I've worked for HP I've found that one of my competencies is certainly my social competence: being able to communicate, being able to understand my counter parts, to have some empathy for their situation, and therefore to be able to gather the information from the communities that I work with. That's a good competence I have, and in the globalized world and the international company I work for it's very important. I thank my parents and God for that capability, and it helped me many times in my life when I worked either in the worldwide rolls like in my previous assignment based in New York, I also had some interesting projects in Africa, Middle East and Asia, now in Russia. So being multicultural and having this skill of being able to communicate easily - that's an important quality that I have.
2. How do you communicate?
One can only become a good communicator when one has knowledge to share, and when the discussion is an equitable exchange of value meaning that both sides enjoy it, both sides feel that they're talking to somebody in the same domain, the same level of knowledge, the sort of nose-to-nose. For example, if one is talking to bankers it's important to know the banking industry and the business drivers in the banking industry, the problems which they're faced with particularly now, etc. So talking with the same domain which is relevant to the counter part makes sense.
3. So, it's not only just a small talk, is it?
No, it's not only being a nice guy - the communication can only happen with a relevant level of curiosity and education. Otherwise it can quickly turn embarrassing or absolutely not rewarding for the counter part. So this equitable exchange of value is important, preparation for the meeting. I see too many people go to meetings to see what will happen. One has to prepare, one has to anticipate and to think through some scenarios. And I know that it's very difficult - sometimes I have 14-15 on the agenda for the day and I have to prepare - so that's what the night before is all about. Preparation is also very important.
4. Could you give any particular example?
Coming here, especially straight from New York in the worldwide job, in which Russia was not a significant factor, let's put it politely, and of course, I had some deficit in what's going on in today's Russia. But it was a big responsibility as well, as I was coming here equipped with an investment budget and wanted to get the best possible use of that budget and spend it not only in the appropriate fashion for HP, but also benefiting the market and making a contribution here. And you can only do that with knowledge from the market place, and may be not only from the knowledge of HP-Russia because I didn't want to re-breath our own exhaust because we also felt that we wanted to go beyond the limits of what we were doing at that point of time. So I created the custom advisory board worked for me also on the worldwide basis, and this advisory board was recruited from people from all walks of life, not only from our customer base - but also people who understood macroeconomics, the social issues and topics in Russia at that point of time, understood the consumers and retail, government affairs, the public sector and so on.
5. What did this advisory board do?
This group of wise men, a combination of foreigners and locals, helped me to understand what would resonate well in Russia, what would make HP a good corporate citizen in Russia, because it's also different from country to country, which are the future topics. We anticipated the things like educational focus, the focus on science, the focus on the environment and tried to glue in these different subjects into our growth plan - not just more revenue, not just more profit, not just more staff and more customers, but trying to make a contribution in those areas. And recruiting such a sophisticated and high-level advisory board requires good social attributes, requires that they also see the benefit of sharing their wisdom with us. And this equitable exchange of value with these different 14 members was very important. They exist for five years already, and it really helps you to look outside of the box, to take a step aside and look at what you're doing with an external view.
6. Is there any other example?
Arriving here as an external manager, don't think that everybody here is waiting and welcoming you with open arms, of course not. Because people here are expecting trouble - they had a comfortable life, they were performing well, having not big issues - why send somebody who's going to rock the boat? HP in general is a friendly and a communicative "family-type" company, but still there is a lot of apprehension here. And I think to buy in the staff at that time, to open the hearts to what is to come, and above all to open the minds for what is to come. I really try bottom up to get people involved and engaged. My and my bosses' vision is more what HP would look like in five years from now, also why bigger revenues and higher growth, better profitability and new markets - why that's good and interesting for them. And I think we got a lot out of communication around that topic, workshops that we allowed anybody to come in, because sometimes that's just a management decision but there's a lot of lost competence and contribution that people from down of your organization could also have.
7. What ideas did you bring in?
We had 75 volunteers workshopping around this future strategy of the company. And I think that we still today benefit from the broad buy in that we had throughout the company, rather than coming like a pigeon, flying in, leaving some white stuff all over the place and forcing everybody to join the strategy rather than getting a lot of input from the bottom of the company. Some of them were crazy ideas, some of them not, but it was a very useful input that many people could recognize even in the final shape of our strategy, and it won the hearts and minds of the general population of HP-Russia.
