Arun Sarin: Encouraging others to shine
 |  Sarin: "Leadership is experiential... it's really a trained art." |
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- CNN Financial Editor Todd Benjamin speaks to Arun Sarin -- CEO of Vodafone, the world's leading mobile telecommunications company -- on motivation and the influence of others on performance.
Benjamin: You've tried to unify Vodafone. What have been the main challenges you've faced as CEO of the company since you joined in July 2003?
Sarin: First of all, Chris (Gent, the former CEO of Vodafone) did do a great job. In a period when mergers and acquisitions were going on, he did some brilliant mergers with Mannesman and with Airtouch, great companies that we've inherited now. Every company has a certain life cycle associated with it.
The life cycle we're in now is about integration, is about introducing new products and services with 3G services, changing the culture a little bit so that we can serve our customers a little better. So those are the changes that are going on right now. What I would say is that one has to look at the situation of a company within an industry and lead it from that point of view.
Benjamin: How do you think your management style is different from Chris Gent's?
Sarin: My management style is about running this company as well as we can run the company for the benefit of our customers and our shareholders and our employees. So it's a customer-centric headset, it's a shareholder headset, it's a making sure we're knitting our companies together headset, it's making sure we're leveraging on the skill and scope of the company. So it's about execution.
Benjamin: Do you think you're a detail-oriented type of manger, hands on, or do you think you're more the type of leader who delegates?
Sarin: I'd say I'm both; it just depends on the circumstance. There are certain things that I delegate because we've got great teams who know where they're going, have got the power to do it, produce the results. There are some areas where I am personally involved because we haven't made the kind of progress we need to make. So it's situational. When I need to be hands on, I'll be hands on. When I can be delegating, I'll be delegating. The power of the leadership role in some ways is to encourage others in an organization to shine and for them to do great things. So I start from that position and then I get involved in those areas where I feel my personal involvement can make a difference.
Benjamin: As a leader, how do you empower and motivate other people?
Sarin: The first thing in a large organization, in particular, is to have a very clear idea of what it is we're trying to do; what is the vision? Our business is undergoing a lot of change. On the one hand we've got plenty of upside opportunity because there are more minutes that we can capture from the fixed line, there are new services we are bringing on, whether they're entertainment services or information services, so we've got the winds behind us. But equally we've got a number of competitors, we've got new technologies, we've got regulators looking at us. So the question is, fundamentally where are we trying to take the business? If we are clear in the team as to where we are trying to take the business, that's a very important first step.
The second step is around making sure we have got some good goals and intermediate targets. So that we can say we're headed north and as we're headed north when we get there we'll know we're roughly in the right space. If everybody understands where we're going and where the intermediate targets are and then you create the team -- the human side -- to make sure you have the right collection of people who can execute on that strategy.
Benjamin: Do you think you can have too many smart people at the top of an organization?
Sarin: You can have too many smart people who are not alike. That may be an issue, but I don't think you can have too many smart people who are aligned. My view is you want to find the best talent. I'm a big believer in hiring absolutely the best people, better than me, smarter than me, because frankly they will be the future leaders of this company in time.
Benjamin: When you're choosing your key lieutenants, what is the key quality you are looking for?
Sarin: I'm looking for, first of all, passion for the business, passion for the team, passion for this alignment, passion for being able to execute on our customers behalf and, frankly, the last thing I think about is just human skills. Are you a good human being, at the core?
Benjamin: Do you think you have any failings as a manager?
Sarin: I'm sure I have failings as a manager. I try to model myself in terms of what I expect from others; I expect that from myself. So I'm very focused on: Are we are doing the right things strategically? Are we doing the right things from an operational execution standpoint? Am I leading the team properly from a human point of view? Am I encouraging people, am I communicating, am I giving them enough incentive, am I giving them enough room? I think about these things constantly and I'm sure on some dimension on some day, I'm absolutely failing.
Benjamin: Do you think leadership is something innate or something learned?
Sarin: I firmly believe that leadership is experiential. Now you may be born with some predisposition and that's nice, but it's really a trained art. You've have to practice it, you've got to think it, you've got to work it, and you have got to practice it. I remember myself when I was 20 years old and 30 years old and 40 years old. I've clearly grown as a leader. I'm not the same person in a leadership sense as I was when I was 30. I was much rougher around the edges, as it were. And you kind of smooth out your style and you figure out what works, what doesn't work, because you're having experiences every single minute.
Benjamin: So it's nothing you can learn from textbooks, it's confronting issues on the job and having experiences?
Sarin: There are clearly some basic ideas about leadership that you can learn from textbooks. You have to be a good communicator, you have to be able to organize, you have to be able to have a good vision, you have got to pay attention to execution. These are things that a textbook could teach you or a business school could teach you. But at the end of the day, it's your personal journey. Leadership is a very personal thing, meaning you need to have a very strong motor inside you that says I want to lead a large organization because I can do good.
Benjamin: Where does this motivation for you come from? What was your big influence?
Sarin: I've had 20 years of my life in India, 30 years of my life in America and the last couple of years here in the UK. I've had many, many, many influences in my life. I went to a boarding school where I learnt about hard work, discipline, teamwork. Then I went to this engineering school ... where the smartest people were around me so I had a wonderful chance to intellectualize what needed to be intellectualized. I was given a scholarship to study at Berkeley as you point out and that was just one of those things that happened. And since I received a scholarship I decide to go to America and come to California and then went on to business school from engineering school; I went on to work for a management consulting firm.
All through my life I've been very lucky to be around very good people. My first job out of business school was with a fantastic person who was a trained economist and helped me understand a lot of things. I then went on and saw at Pacific Telesis -- and at Airtouch -- some great leaders. So I've had many, many, many excellent role models and I've always learnt from people. The natural curiosity of how does this person do it and how do they do it so well and what must be going through their mind? How did they handle this hard situation? And you learn and you learn and you learn and you refine and you refine. So there's no one moment where you wake up and you say: I want to be a leader. People have to encourage you to be a leader. People all through my life have encouraged me to take on bigger and bigger and bigger leadership roles. And that's how you come to where you are.
Benjamin: Did being an immigrant have an influence on your drive or did it come from some place else?
Sarin: Being an immigrant clearly had an influence on my drive because you want to succeed. You're in an old country, new country. You're in the new country and you say, I want to do good. And you kind of learn discipline and hard work early in your life and then you apply that with higher education and in wider circles as it were. So I think clearly being an immigrant in America drove me a little bit harder and faster which is a good thing.
Benjamin: What do you want your legacy to be?
Sarin: I guess the legacy for me would be that we're taking Vodafone and making it into a truly world class organization. We introduce new products, as we integrate the company, as we put a sense of urgency into the culture. The people will look three, four, five years from now and say -- much like we have other companies that we think of when we say -- 'what a great company' because it produces outstanding managers. I would like to think of Vodafone as being a leader in the mobile space, being a world-class company in terms of its processes and producing world-class executive talent.
Benjamin: You're obviously successful. Do you feel you've been as successful as a parent?
Sarin: A work-life balance is difficult to achieve in any circumstance but in a circumstance where you commit 70, 80, 90 hours a week to work, that becomes even more difficult. I'm very conscious of that. I have two children and every spare moment that I have, I try and put in to the family. And I'm sure on the margin I've had to make choices. I haven't been to many soccer games or piano recitals or plays, etc., etc. So that's something that's in the mix. And what I would say about that is that one needs a very supportive family to be able to do what I do well. Because if I didn't have a supportive spouse and I didn't have supportive children, it would be very difficult for me to do what I do. I'm blessed that my family completely understands what I'm doing. They support it. They understand it most of the time. There are times where there is lack of understanding there, but it's tough. Balancing the two is hard.
Benjamin: Vodafone's bid to merge with AT&T Wireless of the United States didn't work. What did you learn from that experience?
Sarin: First of all, I don't categorize AWE (AT&T Wireless) as a failure. I categorize it as discipline. The fact that we could be in America, have our own brand, our own technology, become a more global company, was a wonderful strategic thing for us to think about. But every asset has a price. And when you think of it in shareholder terms, there was a certain price. We were very disciplined, we came up against the price and we dropped out of the bidding. My view is that kind of discipline is hugely important in a firm. Because otherwise nobody really knows what the boundaries are. And everybody in the team, in our team -- whether it was the board or the executive management team -- everybody knew precisely what we were doing and how far we were willing to go.
Now in terms of learning, every situation produces learning. So when I think of it in those terms, the learning would have been frankly the AWE thing came up very early in my tenure. I've been here as a chief executive only six months and there was a certain point of view about where we were in America and what we were doing and this was a different position. Comes back to if you're going to make change, you have to be clear about what change you'd like to make, why you'd like to make it, how you're going to make it, in what time frame will you make it, and quite frankly I did not have time to communicate those things to our shareholders before we actually embarked on our journey.
Benjamin: What do you think separates a good leader from a great leader?
Sarin: I think there are many good leaders but there are very few great leaders. I think part of it is skill and execution of certain things with a little bit of situational luck thrown in.
Benjamin: Do you have much time to read? And if you do what do you read?
Sarin: I read Grisham-like books, essentially. I like to read light stuff because most of my day is on pretty heavy things and so I like to read light things. I like to read newspapers, I like to read magazines. I like to have a world view essentially, so I'm very much into current events, what's going on in the world and things that relate to it.
Benjamin: What would be your ideal day?
Sarin: An ideal day for me is a jam-packed day at work. I really enjoy the pace and the rhythm. Come in here early, figure out what's going on, take some decisions, communicate, meet a lot of my employees, visit with some customers, visit with some shareholders, do something good for society; go make a speech at the London Business School, which is what I did yesterday. That's a full day for me. Go home, crash, talk to the kids and that's a day.
Benjamin: You have in a unique perspective. What's the big difference in how the business is done in the U.S. versus Europe and Japan?
Sarin: At one level, business is done differently between America, Europe, Japan or the Far East, generally. On another level, actually it's the same principles. It is about, again, a vision, execution, human skills that you have to apply but with local cultural sensitivity.
Benjamin: But there is so much more dynamism in the U.S. economy.
Sarin: Well, there is dynamism in the U.S. economy because the U.S. economy is growing faster. It has a certain set of labor principles and pulls. There's a certain level of change, there's a certain amount of supply and demand in terms of competition: very, very competitive markets. I'd say many of those features exist here in Europe, but with some institutional biases as it were. And then in Japan there is a much more consensual approach.
But again, one has to morph one's leadership style depending on where you are because at the end of the day leadership is about getting things done. It's about making things happen. And I'd like to say, making good things happen. Now, how you make good things happen in America and how you make good tings happen here in Europe and how you make good things happen in Japan are all very similar at its base principle but how you execute is a bit different.
The power of the leadership role in some ways is to encourage others in an organization to shine and for them to do great things. 
