John Wilson (00:00)
Glenn, welcome to the CEO Global Network podcast. We really appreciate you taking the time to be with us this morning. We're going to just get started with some questions and we really, really looking forward to your responses to these questions, Glenn. So when I think of your leadership experience, I think of the outstanding companies that you've worked with. Honeywell, Toyota, Blackberry and Amazon. I mean, my goodness gracious, it doesn't get much better than that, does it Glenn?

What was the biggest leadership lesson you took from your time running and scaling Amazon, Glenn?

Glenn Sommerville (00:34)
Thanks, John, it's great to be here. I think first of all, it's important to define what does scaling mean? because often people refer to scaling and it's really just growth. But I'm talking, when I think of scaling, I think of like significant amount of growth. And I think what made me successful up until I started at Amazon, found was no longer effective. I had to relearn leadership.

to scale at Amazon. And three things come to my mind that I learned from that. First of all is that you have to be intentional about your leadership. And that means being very selective as to what you do, what you don't do, how and when you respond to different situations or different things, when to get involved and frankly when not to get involved. So that would be number one.

Number two is I've always had a really strong commitment. And I recognized when I was at Amazon that strong commitment, again, that had, I think, helped me be successful up until that point became a problem when I was leading big leaders. I had the tendency to jump in and help. And that help wasn't always appreciated. So I had to turn that commitment into providing support, but not taking over. And then the third thing is,

to scale, you've got to have highly integrated performance systems. And that's made up of three things, core mechanisms around the products and services that the business provides, flanked by people processes that define culture that you're looking for to provide the necessary skills, and then the management systems that deploy the strategy across the organization, measure results and identify and solve problems.

So those would be the three things to me that I learned leading at scale at Amazon.

John Wilson (02:17)
And let's shift now to BlackBerry. How did your experience as vice president manufacturing operations and NPI at BlackBerry influence how you now coach other leaders?

Glenn Sommerville (02:28)
Yeah, thanks, John. Blackberry was fantastic. And when I started there, there was a lack of systems and processes from that perspective. And I think there's a few things there. Number one is that you have to have a mandate. You have to give the team a mandate to some extent. And it's finding that sweet spot, I think that is important. I focused on what's the format, the cadence, the structures, but you have to let them figure out

the details of that. They know best and what you want are systems that help them do their job better, do their job more effectively. So I think you've got to walk that fine line between kind of mandating to some extent, but giving them the flexibility to develop the systems that work best for them. You're not the expert typically. Other piece of that is that you as the leader, you have to trust but verify. So you've got to get out into the processes where the work is done.

and you trust your team that they're doing the things that they say they're doing, but you need to verify it to make sure that it meets your expectations, that it's working effectively and so forth. And then the last thing is, I always tell people is, I never regretted going too fast, only going too slow. So you've got to move faster than the organization really wants to go, but you have to manage it as well. You can't leave them behind in the dust, but you do need to.

John Wilson (03:40)
Mm-hmm.

Glenn Sommerville (03:51)
move very quickly. And so I always encourage folks that I work with and coach that you've got to move fast, keep moving faster.

John Wilson (03:58)
You gotta move fast. Thanks Glenn for that. I've heard you talk a lot and this kind of builds on what you just mentioned in a way. Enabling others. When did that mindset first click in? Was it at BlackBerry or was it prior to that?

Glenn Sommerville (04:12)
It was prior to that actually, John. I would say it was fairly early in my career, back in my Honeywell days. I was very fortunate, I guess, through my career. I've often found myself in positions where I was not the most experienced person, but yet I was leading a team that had a lot more experience than I had myself. So I had to learn while leading. One specific role that I can think about is...

John Wilson (04:16)
Okay.

Glenn Sommerville (04:34)
back when I was a plant engineering supervisor responsible for tradespeople, maintenance, engineering, and light construction. And I learned very quickly, probably the hard way, that the tradespeople that I was working with and actually was supervising, they knew a lot more than I knew and probably always did. And that my role was to enable them to get the job done, to get it done on schedule and on budget. So to do that, I needed to...

to ensure they had everything they needed to do their job. So good drawings, the right tools, the materials at the right time in the right place. And that actually forced me to work ahead of them to anticipate what they would need. If I responded to what their needs were at the moment, they wouldn't have been able to do their job. We wouldn't have been on schedule and we wouldn't have been on budget. So I learned that for me to be successful, I had to make others successful.

John Wilson (05:24)
Yeah, well, it's a great lesson to learn fairly early in your career. What do you think most companies misunderstand about creating truly high performance teams, Glenn?

Glenn Sommerville (05:35)
Great question, John. Well, first of all, I think it's important to define what high performance means. To me, high performance means getting or exceeding challenging results on a continued basis over the long term. And typically we define long term as greater than seven years. That's hard. It's more than just calling yourself a high performance team.

It's pretty easy to get results through brute force for a period of time, but that's not sustainable. So to get sustainable results long term, it takes that highly integrated performance system that I spoke about earlier. Not only to have the robust core mechanisms that deliver value to your customers, you have to audit them regularly to ensure they're being used, they're effective, and to identify opportunities for them.

On the people process side, that drives the culture needed to overcome the challenges and barriers and solve problems and develop the skills not only for today, but the future with new technology, new advancements, et cetera. And then the third area being the management systems that measure the right results, identify the problems quickly and drive problem solving to the root, not the band-aid type approach.

John Wilson (06:46)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Let's shift gears and talk about the great outdoors, Glenn. I know you're an outdoors person. You and your family spent a lot of time in the Canadian outdoors. ⁓ How is your time in the back country, if we can call Algonquin and places like that the back country? How has it shaped your approach to leadership or decision making? Has it?

Glenn Sommerville (07:10)
Yeah, it has. So yeah, the back country is my happy place. ⁓ But with that, things can go very wrong very quickly. So I have a reputation. I take a lot of newbies ⁓ and kids into the back country. I've taken my kids since they were babies, actually. When I look back, I'm actually shocked. ⁓ So a couple of things come into my mind from a leadership or decision making. First of all, you've got to plan for the worst and hope for the best. And from a camping perspective,

John Wilson (07:14)
Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Glenn Sommerville (07:37)
One of the first things I always do is I look for a safe shelter. You can be out there in really bad storms. I've been out there with tornadoes. A tent isn't gonna cut it. So even in the business world though, the same applies. You've got to plan for the worst, but hope for the best. Second is to trust your instincts. I've gone canoeing and back country with other people and my instincts kicked in and kind of had to...

take a more informal leadership role if you will saying we're not going to go this way, I think we better go that way and turned out that I was right. So again from a leadership perspective, you've gotten to your position because of your results, your leadership, but also your instincts and I think you need to trust your instincts. And then the third thing is be prepared to change your plans.

I've run into bad weather in the backcountry, you want to get to that special campsite, that really nice place that you haven't been to this year, et cetera. But sometimes it just doesn't work out. Same with business. So you need to have a plan, but you need to be prepared to change your plans because you don't have all the information when you've created those plans in the first place, or things have changed. So you have to be able to change those.

John Wilson (08:45)
Yeah, great lessons learned. Last question, Glenn, and then we'll wrap up. If your family camping journal had a leadership lesson tucked into one of those campfire stories, what would it be?

Glenn Sommerville (08:56)
Yeah, so I actually do have a family camping journal, 25 years in the making. I think it would be this, John, is that as a leader, sometimes you need to step away from the day to day. Camping has been that place for me, that I could step away from the hustle and bustle, the busyness, the stresses, et cetera, and really think about things from a self-critical point of view.

John Wilson (08:59)
Good for you.

Glenn Sommerville (09:21)
what am I doing well, what can I be doing better? There's usually lots more of those in the first one. What's working, what's not working, and also looking to the future. Sometimes when you're in the office, it's hard to step away from the day-to-day issues and things that are the interruptions that are coming around. So I think it's important to step away, reflect, refresh, regroup, and

come back a new person and ready to take on the new challenges.

John Wilson (09:49)
Glenn, thank you so much for being on the CEO Global Network podcast with us. This has been fascinating for me to hear your responses to these questions. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Glenn Sommerville (10:00)
Great, thanks very much, John.