He was one cool customer. Casually sitting, reading through emails and we greeted and it seemed like we’ve known each other for a while. Not often you feel perfectly settled in someone’s company, especially some you admire and have heaps of questions to ask.
Steve Walker, of Two Sides Communications, was that man. Cool, calm, collective; he sat drinking his flat white and spoke of his rich experience in telecommunications and how he managed transformation many times; you can see why he’s achieved what he has. He remains unflappable.
Steve started from the beginning of his career and it nestles nicely with the boom of the smartphone era and how ‘feature-led phones’ moved into smart. The whole transition and whereabouts in the market showed a distinctive tone of how to operate in such a fast-paced industry.
The leadership lessons learnt from Steve – above anything – was how to deal with change and transformation through notably execution circulating around three principle qualities: consistency, trustworthiness and the ability to believe in yourself. Nicely done.
Ranging from product marketing to product management and going back again enabled a great overview of a business and how to interact and build credibility in your company. Be able to have the marketing conversation and the engineering one was – at Steve puts it – “Critical in establishing an open dialogue to build credibility of all areas of the business”. This was something of note.
Moving into a Global CMO reaffirmed my beliefs that I want to work abroad someday, or if not, to travel much. You may not have to speak many languages, but knowing the ‘business language’ remains key. Steve was adamant that this was the case.
We spoke about one of the key areas that I really want to work on and that is to build gravitas and credibility with key stakeholders and senior figures. Being quite jovial and having a relaxed-demeanour, sometimes you don’t get taken seriously. Steve points it down to one thing: trust.
He’s a firm believer in the ‘Trust Equation’ where trust equals to credibility plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self-orientation. This was a good to understand and see how Steve sees this plays out.
Be stepping away and working for common key business objectives can be achieved, but working together and building those relationships is fundamental.
This is also helped with the customer journey and the many ‘touch points’ we have – especially how this has escalated with the use of digital. He spoke about the classic ‘bell ringing above door’ moment, where a customer enters the shop. The world of retargeting is not produce the exact science of asking a customer “How can I help you?”
Wherever marketing takes us, or how many industrial transformations we go through in the future, the key learnings I will take from Steve are that: a calm manner keeps everyone around you on task; intelligent insights can help revolutionise a market and trust, above all, is the main component of leadership and building long-term continuity.
Thanks, Steve. Hope to borrow your ear and your brain sometime soon.
