Leadership Insights from IBM’s North Carolina Senior State Executive, Tim Humphrey

Timothy Humphrey, IBM Vice President, Chief Data Officer and NC Senior State Executive

Note: See links to my past leadership lesson blogs from the Raleigh Chamber C-Suites series as well as the Triangle Business Journal’s Power Breakfast gatherings at the bottom of this post.

The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce holds its “C-Suite Perspectives” breakfast meeting several times per year and features area senior level executives sharing their leadership stories and insights. The November session with IBM Vice President, Chief Data Officer and NC Senior State Executive Timothy Humphrey provided another excellent session with several important leadership lessons.

After sharing his own unique career journey from NC State University to IBM to Lenovo and then back to IBM (sprinkled with a sense of humor – Tim labeled himself “a goofy engineer who cares about people”), Tim shared 10 main points organized within 4 topics. Here they are.

Topic A – The Foundation

1) Be Authentic. That is the foundation for all leadership, and Tim found that trying to be someone he wasn’t simply does not work.

Topic B – Personal Leadership

2) Build Diverse Teams. Diversity does drive innovation.

3) Engage Employees. It is important for leaders to set an example and create a culture that engages employees which drives positive business results. And build a culture where employees feel free to ask questions, get coaching and take chances.

4) Give Back. It is important for leaders to give back to the community. For example, Tim serves on the Wake County Boys & Girls Clubs Board of Directors and on the University of North Carolina’s World View Advisory Board.

Topic C – Personal Growth

5) Have a high performance mindset …. Even when no one is watching.

6) Have a vision and a long-term perspective.

7) Go beyond just networking and build relationships. Great leaders have a ton of strong relationships.

Topic D – Business Leadership

8) Focus on measurement and outcomes.

9) Visualize success and adjust your plan along the path as you need to.

10) Make data-driven decisions. It is important to remove bias, including seeking others’ opinions to assist with this.

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My earlier C-Suite Perspectives Leadership Blogs:

September 2017: Six Leadership Insights from a local “Fortune 1000” CEO – with Martin Marietta CEO C. Howard Nye.

November 2016: Learning about Leadership through Life – with Duke Energy NC President David Fountain

May 2016: Seven Insights on Leadership, Success and Diversity from Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good

Feb 2015: Raleigh Chamber of Commerce CEO Harvey Schmitt shares about leadership and collaboration

May 2014: Exploring Leadership, Talent Development and Innovation with a Local Senior ABB Executive

March 2014: Leadership Advice from a Senior Lenovo Executive

Mergers and Acquisitions: Diversity and Career Management Considerations

Mergers and Acquisitions
It seems so often lately when talking to HR leaders in several companies about my career management and diversity consulting services, I am told, “we are all tied up in the middle of integrating a newly acquired company, can you call me back in six months?” And these mergers and acquisitions can come in all shapes and sizes, for example a mega-corporate merger like American Airlines and USAir, or a multi-company strategy like a medium size local bank buying four or five smaller banks. And just last week the US Federal Government approved Lenovo’s $2.3B acquisition of a line of servers from IBM. (Link to detailed Bloomberg article)

And then in this month’s (August 2014) SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) HR Magazine, the cover article was titled “Culture Clash! How to avoid a post-merger identity crisis.” (LINK) One statistic cited was that over 25% of US employees were affected by a merger or acquisition over the past 10 years.

So what is the value proposition for my consulting services within the growing reality of mergers and acquisitions? What impact is there on diversity and career development? A great deal!

First Diversity (link to my services): When two or more companies merge, they will more than likely have two very distinct cultures and probably very different ways of looking at diversity. The corporate commitment to diversity as a key strategy could be at different levels. The companies may have different ways of defining their diversity constituencies. One company may have more emphasis on developing women leaders while the other may be focused on racial minorities. One company may have very advanced practices about the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) workplace and marketplace while the other company may not have even started on that journey.
Diversity of Thought
When companies come together, this is an ideal opportunities to expand diversity horizons by including aspects from both parties. A team can always be made stronger when the tent is widened with more diverse parties coming to the table. And finally, merging companies can immediately tackle one of the hottest new emerging areas, Diversity of Thought. (Some expansion included in past blog – link.) When two companies have differing ways of developing plans and addressing issues, bringing multiple ideas to the table, listening to and honoring various approaches and then combining the best from the various sources will lead to a winning solution.

Second – Career Development (link to my offering.) It is unfortunately when some teams view themselves as winners or losers in acquisitions and good talent that feels undervalued departs. This is the time to honor the best talent from all parties in a merger or acquisition and build a diverse yet coherent team from the best of the best. When I deploy a Total Engagement Career Mapping project with a client that had experienced past mergers and acquisitions, I request they name role models in career development for me to feature from the various original parties. This widens the various examples of career paths I can demonstrate to younger employees, plus it values the leadership coming from various parts of the business.

I look forward to engaging my clients who have experienced mergers and acquisitions in a productive way to leverage the strengths from merged companies instead of it becoming a point of contention or distraction.