Leadership Lessons from a CMO: Chris Williams of Capgemini | Big Think

Leadership Lessons from a CMO: Chris Williams of Capgemini

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Chris Williams describes the characteristics of successful leaders in business: they are visionaries, they are inspirational, and they are team players.

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Chris Williams:

Chris Williams is vice president and Chief Marketing Officer of Capgemini's North American business, responsible for leading the strategic positioning of the company, driving marketing execution and innovation into the North American marketplace. Prior to his current position, Williams held CMO roles for technology solutions and consulting companies including Expand Networks and Fujitsu Consulting. He was also a cofounder of Netigy, a professional services firm focused on eBusiness Infrastructure Consulting in Silicon Valley. Williams sits on the Board of Advisors for the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), Connotate Technologies and ePostmarks, and has been a contributing author on topics such as sales force automation and consulting services trends to publications including CRM Magazine and ebizChronicle.com. Williams, who grew up in Europe, attended Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., where he earned a Master's of Business Administration in International Business and Finance as well as a Bachelor's of Science degree in Marketing.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Williams: My name is Chris Williams, and I’m the Chief Marketing Officer for Capgemini in North America. Capgemini is a global consulting and IT services company, and our mission in life is to help our clients transform their businesses through technology.rnrnQuestion: What makes a great business leader?rnrnWilliams: In my experience, great business leaders have a number of characteristics. First and foremost, they tend to be visionary, and by that I mean they understand what success looks like and so they’re able to define the goal line for the rest of the organization. The second trait that I think is critical is they have to be inspirational. With today’s employee demographics and the fact that a younger generation is coming in to most organizations with a lot of different options, we as leaders have to be able to inspire our employees to achieve their maximum potential. The third trait I think business leaders need to have today more than ever before is a willingness to role their sleeves up and actually get involved in the business and be part of the effort as we move to flatter hierarchies and we move away from the command of control organizations of the past, I think it’s critical that leaders are perceived as being in the trenches, working with the employees, working with the organizations and helping to drive that vision and execute the strategy that has been articulated throughout the organization. And last but not least is integrity. At the end of the day, employees are really looking for integrity from their leaders and the business world is full of examples where integrity was not in place and unfortunately many employees were negatively affected by that and many of the problems started at the top of the organization, unfortunately. So, integrity is a very key characteristic. rnrnQuestion: How do you execute effective strategy?rnrnWilliams: I think it’s one of the top challenges that executives have in most organizations today. Strategy without execution is a waste of time. So, first and foremost, I think the vision has to be carefully architected in a way in which it’s logical, it is clearly articulated to the organization, and then there’s a second effort that’s required, which is really the selling of the vision and selling of the strategy to the organization where you need to overcome some organizational inertia, some traditional dependencies, whatever the case may be that keeps organizations from being able to change and go out and solicit a broader group of employees who in essence become change agents in their own domain, and as a result of pulling that community together, then it starts to spread throughout the rest of the organization and you develop that ground swell of support that’s really necessary to execute on what hopefully was a well articulated and well crafted strategic intent.

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