When is 4% growth harder than it appears to be? Could it be when you are CRO for a $30 billion business, and 4% growth means generating $1.2B in new revenue each year – in addition to retaining a $30B base?
I interviewed Sowmyanarayan Sampath, the new Chief Revenue and Growth Officer for Verizon’s $30 billion Business Group. Sampath was recently Global Enterprise President and has been placed into this new role as Verizon accelerates its push with 5G for enterprise and SMB markets.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Karen Walker: You have quite an impressive background! Of all the places on the planet you could be, why are you at Verizon?
Sowmyanarayan Sampath: Straight out of college, I worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. I was their managing partner running one of the global practices primarily serving telcos and tech companies. But I wanted to be in the “business of business, ” and to shape the telecommunication industry’s future.
Five years ago, I realized that there was no better time to do it. Today, Verizon is at the point where we can change the industry – given our size, our financial muscle, and our influence. I want to make 5G a reality, to make the market.
Walker: On the theme of making things, I imagine that the past year has helped accelerate your ability to do that. For my clients, the speed of digital transformation was just accelerated. How has that affected you and your business?
Sampath: One of the biggest developments in digital is migration to the cloud. People think of it as a technology migration, but it’s a process and cultural migration. When your CIO says, “We’re moving to the cloud,” the foundation of that migration is to have a kick-ass network. We’ve been working very closely with our customers to enable them to be ready for that.
First is work from home. We’re kind of through that. The next is, Hey, we are going to move to the cloud. Even now, 70% to 80% of workloads are still not in the cloud.
What do you need from a network infrastructure perspective to enable that migration? We’ve been laser-focused on that one opportunity, to build excellent networks and to serve our customers with the best.
Walker: Why did you make the change into the CRO role?
Sampath: Part of it comes down to the focus on growth. We’ll be investing close to $120 billion over the next three years in our networks. We have a firm conviction that we can grow and pay for that.
We built our previous structure on serving the customer, scale, and cost-efficiency. Now, we’re making a pretty hard pivot to growth first.
I’ll be spending 95% of my time focused on driving growth. Verizon Communications is committed to growing 4%, top line. It might not seem that hard, but when you’re a $130 billion company, a 4% on top is a $5 billion incremental revenue stream every single year. You need people laser-focused on driving that cumulative $5 billion of growth every year.
Walker: I worked with Aetna several years ago with their CIO to create a transformational change. It’s a big company that’s been around a long time, and when trying to make a change in an organization like that, the resistance can be tough. Verizon has a long 100 year+ history, starting with the Bell System and AT&T. What is the environment or the culture you’re facing in your new role and how will you overcome that resistance?
Sampath: I think most people want to be on winning teams. It’s fundamental to who we are. If we can show people how to win, they want to be on that team.
We’ve communicated a lot about what winning looks like, why we invest, what we are winning, and what we expect from the team. As a result, if you ask any one of my team members what winning looks like, they know what it is. Serve the customer, win in 5G, run the best networks on earth.
And there is no reason not to lead with kindness; it’s transformative and contagious.
Walker: What does “lead with kindness” mean?
Sampath: If you asked me about my leadership style 10 years ago, I may not have answered this way. I would have said I lead with insight or lead with decisiveness. But I think leading with kindness shows that there is a lot more ambiguity in this world. Irrespective of COVID, there’s technology ambiguity and relationship ambiguity. People have to navigate through it and it all can be confusing. Having a sense of kindness in all that you do is big. You see that on your teams. Kindness makes for much better operating units. Leading with kindness has been one of the most significant pillars of my management style.
I also emphasize a bias for action. Forward action is transformative. And the third cornerstone is teaming. Teams are multipliers for individuals and groups.
Walker: How do you make decisions in such a complex environment?
Sampath: I make decisions when I have a 70% level of comfort based on the underlying data. I’m also learning that decision-making’s speed is the single most impactful activity related to making decisions, especially in huge organizations.
Once I have the information I’ve asked for, if I don’t decide within 24 hours, my teams will make the decision, and I’ll have to support that. We’ve been making decisions very fast.
Walker: To what do you attribute your ability to decide quickly, other than a desire to do it?
Sampath: I can’t remember who said, “If I have six hours to cut a tree, I’ll spend five hours sharpening the ax.” I think it was Lincoln. I’m a classical strategist, and framing is important.
I’m not wed to a single framework. Frame the problem in a way where you see four sides of the picture very, very quickly. Once you put everything in the framework, it makes decision-making easy. When you think about things in isolation, bad things happen, especially in a complex organization.
Second, create stakeholders with many, many people in the organization, and third communicate well. Everyone needs to know you made the decision.
Walker: As you think about a two-by-two matrix framework, you always want to be up and to the right. Looking back on your leadership career, what was the inflection point that moved you up and to the right?
Sampath: Some of it is luck. I don’t want to pretend it was just hard work or anything because luck, chance, and taking risks play a significant role.
Also, when I pivoted from being a consultant and advisor to being a practitioner and operator, it was huge for me. It was the most rewarding change I’ve made. I’m able to bring all of my embedded consulting and strategic insight, with a practical lens around the bias for action.