Name: How Jim Kavanaugh Went From Olympian To CEO
Uploaded: 2024-09-20
Duration: 5 min 38 s
Description: The World Wide Technology CEO Talks About What He Learned As A Soccer Player That Helped Him In His Career.

The World Wide Technology CEO Talks About What He Learned As A Soccer Player That Helped Him In His Career.

How Jim Kavanaugh Went From Olympian To CEO

Photo Illustration by Fortune. Photo provided by World Wide Technology. 

Leadership

Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Diane Brady being called a systems integrator, you know, is, is fine. But uh I would say the some same time different people describe us different ways because we do cover a lot of ground. You know, on one hand, we're a value added reseller of technology equipment has been working with Cisco for almost 30 years now, worked with John when he was the CEO and now Chuck with him being the CEO worldwide has evolved from what I would say is a fairly simple value-added reseller to literally being a value-added reseller growing, not just locally here in growing domestically growing globally, but adding services in the first services sector that we added was around networking. But then from there, we we expanded that portfolio in a pretty significant way. Uh adding voice video networking, compute storage, cyber, software development, uh consulting advisory services uh along with now A I uh digital transformation that you know, is, is relevant to just about every company in the world. People forget that Cisco was once the most valuable company on the planet at that point, right. By market cap and then, then it wasn't, I think it lost probably about 90% of its value. So I, we all talk about bubbles now and we talk about bubbles. We often refer to the.com bubble as the bubble that uh you know, everybody fears will happen again. What does that teach you? Well, I would say that uh being willing to understand that there will be tough times and you need to roll up your sleeves. And depending on where you are in the life cycle of your company, you want to try to create a balance sheet or a structure that you don't put everything at risk every day that if a domino falls the wrong way, it literally can put you out of business. So as much as you can, you want to create, I would say some reserves and some capacity. But when you're in the early stages of growing a business, sometimes you don't have that luxury when you glossed over very quickly. Um that you were an Olympian, you played pro soccer for a few years. I I want, let's pause a second there because that is incredibly cool, obviously incredible discipline you get as an athlete. But can you tell me some of your favorite moments? I mean, this is an Olympics here. I'm talking to a former Olympian here. What is it like to compete at that level? Yeah, the competition is it is uh eye opening. Uh you know, and, and as you move from every level and you play, you know, and compete with, with people at different levels. It, it was such a, it was such a great experience. I grew up, my dad was a bricklayer. Uh my mom, you know, really, uh was a stay at home mom for most, most of our upbringing. So we came from a, a pretty modest upbringing. Uh And then, you know, making the, uh the Pan Am an Olympic team back in 83. And telling me, OK, for that point, I traveled with the team for almost 15 months and the experience was just amazing considering I've never really traveled out of Saint Louis. And at that point, now I'm traveling all over the world. The first tournament we played in was in Seoul, Korea. You know, that was the President's Cup. We had another tournament in Beijing, you know, a great wall cup in China and then all over Europe, Central America, Pan Am Games in Caracas. So it was such a great experience of one, just the people on the team, meeting different people, but then meeting people and competing with just really world class players around the world. How do you lead? Um Now versus when you started, I know there is a size component, but maybe in essence, that what I'm really asking is, where do you get the most joy from your job? You know, the strength that you play to? Because you, you go deep, but at the same time, you have to take that big view and connect the dots for a leader to be able to go deep and really understand what your business does and really how the sausage is made. I think it's very important. But at the same time, it's not your job as a leader to stay in the detail. It's to understand what you do have an appreciation for that. But then you need to rise up to the 30,000 ft level and make sure that you're setting the right vision and mission and direction for the organization. So I think there's this uh ability I believe for leaders is to be able to set that vision, that mission and the direction, but also have a, a true understanding, an authentic understanding of the work that needs to be done to drive the execution because vision and mission with no execution is nothing and, and you need to be able to bring those together. And from my perspective when you do that and you do that with, you know, ambitious, passionate people. Uh That's where the real excitement, that's where I get inspired when I see the, the amazing teams and the people coming together to do amazing things.