Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Shafqat Islam, C.E.O. of NewsCred, a content marketing platform, says his management philosophy is one of “irrational optimism” about what can be accomplished. But, he says, it’s also important to eventually find balance.
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
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When you were a child, were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things?
My dad worked for the U.N., and I grew up in Thailand, India and Switzerland. I was always in student government and different clubs. It was never because I thought, “I need to show leadership.” It was more because my parents strongly encouraged it.
In terms of entrepreneurship, I started a website in high school about the band Hootie and the Blowfish. I had e-commerce running on it, and at its peak I was probably making a couple of thousand dollars a month in college. That was my first taste of, “This Web thing is pretty exciting.”
What lessons did you learn from living in all those countries?
I’m from Bangladesh originally, and I went there a lot. I was exposed to a lot of the hardships you would expect to see in developing countries. From a pretty early age, I realized that on the surface, it can look like there are a lot of problems. But that also means there’s a lot of opportunity to fix some problems, and I don’t mean in some kind of grandiose way. I just always wanted to solve important problems.
That’s an easy way to identify who has an entrepreneurial streak. If you go into countries like that, you either think, “It’s pointless,” or you think, “Wow, there’s an abundance of opportunity.” I just see opportunity. I’m not going to say it’s easy.
Were there certain expressions that your parents would repeat often?
I had never asked what my name meant until I was about 12. Shafqat is an Arabic word, and it means “compassion.” My parents would often talk about how everyone should be more compassionate.
As a kid, you say things like, “Oh, I hate this, I hate that.” But my mother always would say, “Don’t use the word ‘hate.’ ” Now it’s a running joke among my friends. They don’t even say it anymore because they know I’ll correct them. Hate is a pretty strong word. Nothing is that bad.
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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.comthat he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.
His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.