Interview with Mike Lawrie, new CEO of CSC

Week 2 at CSC and is the interview below with a reporter on the Wahington Post a snapshot into Mike Lawrie's 100 day plan? I await with interest to see what unfolds in relation to the changes he will make in the organisation sturcture and how he will align the Board and the senior leadership team. I will play my part in what I can do to align the compensation strategy and systems to enable the business strategy to be executed and to role model the values which will be expected of the senior executive team.


What leadership skills does it require to do a major turnaround?
The starting point is trying to determine with your team what do you want to be the best at and how you want to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. The second step is to get a strategy together that allows you to achieve that vision. The next step is to get an organizational structure in place that allows you to organize your most important assets — your people, your human resources, intellectual capital — so you can execute the strategy. Once you decide on the organization, you need to recruit the right leaders to actually run that organization. Then you need to get your compensation systems, measurement system and management system to monitor the progress that you make and then make adjustments as you go along. I have used that basic formula for 15 years. To a large extent, that’s the process I am beginning here at CSC.
Your first stint as chief executive was at Siebel Systems. What would you have done differently?
I would have tried to get more conviction and buy-in from the board as to what needed to be accomplished and the threats to the existing business model. I don’t think I did a good job in clearly articulating that. I also think I was slower than I should’ve been in bringing a team in that could execute against that changing business model.
You are known for improving client satisfaction at Misys. How did you do it?
The first thing we did was ask our customers how we were doing. Up until that point we had never done that. I hired a third-party firm to do that. It turned out we were not doing very well. It wasn’t hard to see the four or five things that we needed to improve on. So we put a game plan in place. We listened and acted.
Do businesses do that enough?
I think it’s spotty. Even at CSC, we don’t have a uniform approach to customer satisfaction. That’s one of the things I’ve uncovered in the first few days I was here. We do not have a consistent approach to how we go about soliciting feedback from our clients. As a result we don’t have a laser-focused action plan to address some of their needs.
In a turnaround situation, you mentioned the importance of hiring the right leadership. What is the best way to do that?
The more difficult part is identifying someone’s values. That’s where I spend most of my time is getting a handle on the values that make them who they are. I’m very strong on values. If you don’t get the right values in senior executives, you won’t be able to get the right values in the corporation and that will impede your ability to be a highly successful enterprise.
—Interview with Vanessa Small - Washington Post