David McMath

Professional Biography

Vision + Leadership: What happens when you combine visionary (future oriented) with leadership (action oriented)?

Being a 'Leader':

My definition of leadership is "to inspire people to want to struggle for a common goal." It is an easy thing to say...a hard thing to do every day.

Being 'visionary' is comparatively easier –

• imagine where you want to be in 3 years,
• imagine where your competition will come from in 3 years,
• imagine what things must be true for you to be so far ahead, that your company is seen as a maverick.

At Netflix, this type of scenario based planning is what we did every quarter – focusing on Blockbuster, Apple, Google, Comcast, Amazon, and Redbox. As a result, Blockbuster is gone, and the others are scrambling to get into the game (as of 2012 - some doing well to gain share.)

When you put the two things together – Visionary + Leadership – you get the development of an enticing picture of the future, coupled with the motivational and inspirational techniques that spur folks to action. Lay out the broad plan, provide plenty of context, and keep things "loosely coupled and highly aligned" (thank you Reed Hastings) to give freedom for decision making and line-of-scrimmage play calling.

With respect to the data areas listed above (Master Data Mgmt, CRM, BI portals, etc.) these are the tools we use to achieve that enticing vision of the future. If we focus our visionary leadership on those things – it is like "focusing on the arrow, instead of the Indian." The tools are tertiary. The business goal is primary, the emotional and mental connection and support from your internal and external stakeholders is next...