Name: Samsung North America CEO On How to Lead in a Crisis: Be Honest
Uploaded: 2018-08-21
Duration: 4 min 54 s
Description: Tim Baxter rebuilt trust by speaking directly with consumers.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Tim, a lot of people say that the ultimate test of leadership comes in a time of crisis. And certainly Samsung has had recently one setback after another, whether it was about problems with its phones catching on fire, a big recall, corruption and bribery scandal in South Korea. What was the most important leadership lesson that you learned from how to lead during a crisis? The most important thing I learned in this is to own it. Own it. Speak to the consumer. Be honest. Be transparent. And we were that, and that really helped us manage through this. And I think people responded to that, number one. Number two, how do you lead a team, how do you support a team. Knowing when to really take, and take control, and know when to support. I think those were two big leadership lessons for me. What was the key thing that you had to do to win back the trust and support of your customers, of your suppliers, and even your employees? Yeah, I think the key is communication. We communicated to the roughly less than a million consumers who were impacted this probably 20 to 30 times each. Continuing to communicate to them through instant messaging, through emails, through video chats-- those were really important. And you need to do the same thing with your partners as well as your employees. And also, you're in the technology industry, which is intensely competitive, where the pace of innovation happens so fast, and you've got a crisis on your hands. So what did you do to inspire your employees to keep coming, working, and innovating? It was really the most difficult 120 days of my career. And we were going around the clock, and there was a lot of time, a lot of investment, a lot of energy, a lot of passion. And I think the key to it was being there side by side with them, and supporting them, and enabling them leading them through it, and showing them a path. As you look back knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently? In a crisis, there's always areas that you can improve. I think for us once we anchored around safety and consumer safety as being the issue, it made a lot of the decision making much, much easier. And the other big leadership issue that's still hanging over Samsung is who's going to run this giant global conglomerate. The presumptive CEO, Lee Jae-yong, is still facing another trial on these corruption charges. How do you think all that's going to play out, and what's the impact in the meantime? Yeah, and I can't speak to ongoing matters and how that will play out. I will tell you, what we are focused on is our business. what's happening here in the US, how we can serve consumers, how we can delight them, how we can bring them new solutions-- that takes up enough of my time and energy. All right. So you're focused here on the US as the American CEO of Samsung's US operations, but you still have a very important job in a South Korean company. How does that impact the way you lead? For me, in operating in this environment is understanding the culture. And it's not necessarily a Korean culture-- while that is an element of it. It is what is the corporate culture. And Samsung is all about speed, and never satisfied, continuous improvement, an almost healthy paranoia that I think is productive in terms of defining its DNA and its characteristics. And you need to be able to embrace that. You need to embrace change as an organization. And if you do that, you'll have success here. So, what do you think that you have learned from the South Korean style of leadership, and what have they learned from you? It was interesting. The first 18 months at Samsung I learned more than I did the prior five years at the prior company I had. I learned a new way of doing business, of being super aggressive, working on speed, being comfortable with conflict. It's a high performance organization, and you need to embrace that or you might not have the success here. What do you think the South Koreans learned from you as an American CEO? I think it's a collaborative style. I think it is a transparent style that I bring to it-- a partnership style that I think has enabled us to build a stronger team, has enabled us to recruit some great talent. And so I think that's appreciated. At the same time, we're a company that's focused on delivering, and I like to do that, as well. 

Samsung North America CEO On How to Lead in a Crisis: Be Honest

Leadership

Tim Baxter rebuilt trust by speaking directly with consumers.