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 Steven Mollenkopf, the C.E.O. of Qualcomm, the mobile-phone technology company. “The more senior you get, the less concerned you are with saying, ‘I don’t know the answer here.’ You realize that you’re not supposed to know all the answers.”
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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Were you in leadership roles when you were young?
I was the youngest kid on our street in Baltimore, and I was always playing sports with kids who were older than me. You learn a lot that way.
Tell me about your parents.
Both parents were teachers. My father became an assistant principal, and he was responsible for discipline at the school. So I didn’t get away with much at home.
My dad was also the coach of my sports teams, including basketball. When we were driving home and he would critique my play, he would always say, “You should make mistakes by throwing the ball away, not by holding the ball.” I say the same thing to people today.
And in the context of work that means…?
It means make mistakes by taking action, not by thinking about something or being timid. You want to encourage yourself to take risks. If you make a mistake trying to do something, you can fix it later.
Tell me about your college years.
I knew I wanted to be an engineer, but I didn’t know what type of engineer. I chose electrical engineering primarily because it was the hardest one to get into. It’s ridiculous when I think about it now, but it worked out O.K.
After grad school, I ended up at Qualcomm because my brother sent me a clipping of an ad saying: “I know you’re thinking about getting a job. You might want to look at this company, Qualcomm. You’ve never heard of them.” That’s essentially how I got to Qualcomm. I’ve been there ever since.
How soon did you become a manager?
We were growing so fast, and I got responsibility very early in my career that I probably should not have had. It was a defining moment because I just had to figure out how to do things. You gain confidence being able to do that. I really enjoy the unknown and uncertainty. I like when things are up in the air or changing. That’s where I tend to feel most comfortable.
Early leadership lessons?
When I became a manager, I was taught that life isn’t fair. Some people believe that we will definitely reward the right people at the right time, by the right amount. Quite frankly, you never will. You can’t get everything to work out that way. You need to make sure that you’re moving toward perfection, but you’re never going to get there.
The other one that I took away from early management was that jerks don’t get promoted. You have to be able to get along with people. Companies run on smart people who can also get other smart people to move generally in the same direction. It’s those people who actually run the company and provide the environment for truly phenomenal people to go forward.
Our company purposely doesn’t have a lot of structure. That enables the “A” players to have incredible amounts of freedom. Our structure is not to try to pull a C player up to a B. It’s to try to make sure that the B’s and the A’s have the ability to influence what happens. It works only if you reward people for the right type of conduct and if you don’t tolerate the negative.
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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.com that 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.