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\f0\fs24 \cf0 Leading from Afar Part 1\ With Tom Verdery, retired Procter & Gamble
Hi, I\'92m Tom Verdery and I\'92m the Executive in Residence at the Soderquist Center and
it\'92s really a pleasure for me to be with you today. Sorry I can\'92t be here live,
but I think it\'92s very appropriate for me to speak to you virtually since the subject
is leading from afar. I want to tell you a little bit about my background in history,
as to why I feel so passionate about this topic, of leading from afar. I just retired
about a year ago from proctor and gamble, where I spend 34 and a half years with that
company. The last 14 though was really involved in working and leading with the international
business with Walmart and in that period of time, I worked with 10 different team leaders
and various geographies across the world from China to the UK. From Puerto Rico and Brazil
and the way to Canada. So I\'92ve had to deal with multiple managers I\'92ve worked with
from different time zones and in addition to that, I\'92ve also led a team of people
in Northwest Arkansas both located right next to me and then others on a separate floor.
So, I\'92ve had a lot of experience working with leading from afar both in a local basis
and also on an international basis and so it\'92s for that reason that I\'92d kind of
like to talk with you about some of my experiences leading from afar and what I\'92ve learned
in doing that over about a 14-15 year period. Some of those key areas that really have become
very important to me and my experience is the importance of clarity and simplicity in
your conversations and communication. When you\'92re working with multiple people across
the world, , many of those English was their second language, it\'92s very important that
what you are talking about is really clear, concise, and quite frankly very simple to
understand. And so for that reason , my strategic plans that I used and led by were one page.
While that may seem unusual to a lot of people and to a lot of corporations, to my success
lead from afar was not on how complicated I could make it, but to make sure that every
manager, no matter what country they are in or anyone that was supporting me in locally
in Northwest Arkansas really understood what we were working on. One of the main areas
of importance to us, when I was leading from afar, was really to make sure that we were
actually adding value into the markets. When you live in Northwest Arkansas and you work
with team leaders throughout the world, it\'92s one thing to be able to work with them via
telephone and visit with them, but if you aren\'92t adding value, they aren\'92t really
listening and they really aren\'92t that interested in helping. So one of my strategies was really
the concept of global share and reapply where every country and everywhere I worked people
were really interested in hearing what I had to say because what I was bringing to them
was a new idea. A new concept that they couldn\'92t see or actually get involved with in their
own country. The reason that I share that with you is that as you think about leading
from afar, it\'92s important that you know that the people that you are working with
that are not located next to you, are only really interested in talking with you, if
you have something to add value to them. And so that was a key concept that I learned over
the years working for proctor and gamble that has stayed with me to this day as we continue
to work at the Soderquist Center with organizations throughout the world.}