INTERVIEW VIEW Interview INTER Learning to Lead An Interview with Ronald A. Williams, Chairman and Chief Executive Offi cer, RW2 Enterprises LLC also a central location for my board work as entity that transcends a CEO in the enterprise. well as the central focus for my private equity The work can be challenging, depending on work, where I partner with Clayton, Dubilier what is going on in the environment. The rule & Rice. I currently chair two portfolio compa- today is, “Noses in, fi ngers out.” Noses in exten- nies in the healthcare space, agilon health sively and vigorously, but keep your fi ngers and naviHealth. out because you don’t know what management Ronald A. Williams RW2 is an entrepreneurial venture. knows and you will never know because you When you were leading large companies don’t think about the company 24/7 as they do. EDITORS’ NOTE Prior to his current role, Ron such as Aetna, did you still take an entrepre- I think boards need a balance of skills, Williams served as CEO and Chairman for neurial approach? but some portion of the board should be those Aetna. He is one of only 16 African Americans to I did. Big companies are a collection of who have been CEOs as they understand what have been CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He sits businesses. People think about Aetna as insur- is involved in actually running and governing a on the boards of American Express, The Boeing ance. That’s correct, but we had insurance to large enterprise. Company and Johnson & Johnson. He was serve small and mid-sized groups, insurance The title of your new book, Learning appointed to and served on President Obama’s to serve individual businesses and insurance to Lead, would seem to have a premise that President’s Management Advisory Board from to serve large and national accounts. We also leadership can be taught. Is that your view 2011 to 2017, where he worked to bring the had a Medicare business, a Medicaid business, and what do you want to convey through best of business practices to the management a dental business, and a data analytics business. In the book? and operation of the federal government. Black order to grow when you have a huge earnings I do believe leadership can be taught. Enterprise magazine has named him Executive base, your existing lines of business must grow, Some people may have a higher propensity that of the Year and he has appeared on CNBC and but the future is always in innovating and creat- makes it easier to learn, but I think the funda- Bloomberg. He holds an M.S. in Management ing new businesses, which is entrepreneurial. mentals of leadership can be learned. They can from the Sloan School of Management at the I actually had been an entrepreneur ear- also be unlearned. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. lier in my career, and I started two businesses The book came about because I got a lot of before I joined Aetna. calls from CEOs who needed practical advice on COMPANY BRIEF Through RW2, Ron Williams Is innovation more challenging once a leadership issues and challenges they were fac- (ronwilliams.net) counsels C-Suite corporate company reaches a certain size and scale? ing. I got the same calls from people who found executives on the development of strategy and Yes, it is. If you think about a large orga- their way to me mid-career, perhaps heading on how to achieve transformational leader- nization that has been structured over time to into jobs as a division president or even chief ship grounded in core values, and the keys to fulfi ll client and stakeholder expectations, it is operating offi cer roles in a company. As I did successful board service. He works with pri- really an organization that has been built to do talks at some of the universities, colleges and vate-sector and nonprofi t groups to address crit- the work of yesterday, and innovation is the graduate schools, I had people entering new ical societal needs, including how to transform work of tomorrow. If you have 50,000 employ- careers looking for practical tips. American healthcare so that it creates more ees, all of those employees, by and large, are This book is really about practical advice value for consumers. there doing the work of yesterday. and tools that can help leaders, whether they This focus on the work of yesterday makes are fi guring out how to lead themselves into What was your vision in creating RW2 innovation hard, and that’s why sometimes early stages of success, or they are mid-career Enterprises? companies build skunk works. They take many and taking on new challenges leading groups RW2 Enterprises is focused on human capi- of the high-potential talent and send them off to of people, or even if they are already leading tal in a variety of ways. It focuses on coaching create innovative new lines of business. That’s an organization. at the C-Suite level. It also focuses on doing also why companies do acquisitions and gener- I’ve learned that people think about these research in areas that advance the human capi- ate growth in new lines through acquiring skills, skills as hierarchical. They really are not hierar- tal discussion. For example, we did a major competencies and attitudes that are necessary chical. When you are the CEO, you must revisit study with The Conference Board on millennial to innovate. that skill of leading yourself or revisit those leaders and how the C-Suite envisions the skills, How have the roles and responsibili- competencies around leading others. So my competencies, and experiences that millen- ties of a board member evolved and how do book really is a toolkit to be visited and used nial leaders need to develop to move into the you defi ne the role today? depending on what your needs are. C-Suite, in contrast to what millennials believe I have to say that I came after what is referred I also have had access to some great execu- is necessary. That was quite interesting. to as the Golden Age of board service, when it tives who have had great careers. Ken Chenault Last year, I coached approximately included trips to faraway places, often including of Amex was one of them. Others were Pat 165 different C-Suite executives to help spouses, as well as golf outings and dinners. Russo, who led Lucent Technologies, Ian Davis, them confront problems of transformational I think board service today is an obligation who led McKinsey, JD Hoye, who runs a huge change, new assignments and new groups. I that you take on to help an organization have nonprofi t called NAF, as well as Ursula Burns spent a good deal of time doing that. RW2 is a great long-term future. The board is the only at Xerox. Their experience in going through 12 LEADERS POSTED WITH PERMISSION. COPYRIGHT © 2019 LEADERS MAGAZINE, LLC VOLUME 42, NUMBER 3 that process of learning to lead themselves and learning to lead people and organizations, along with my own experience, really is the basis for the book. What advice do you offer to young peo- This book is really about practical advice and tools ple who hope to lead an organization dur- ing their career? I’ve mentioned the study of millennial lead- that can help leaders, whether they are fi guring ers that I did with The Conference Board. We looked at the skills and competencies that mil- lennial leaders thought were necessary to move out how to lead themselves into early stages of into the C-Suite, and then we also looked at the same views from those currently in the C-Suite. We found some really interesting discrep- success, or they are mid-career and taking on ancies. The C-Suite placed enormous emphasis on what I will call fundamental business com- new challenges leading groups of people, or even petency: understanding how the business oper- ates at a molecular level and being in a position to create value. That ranked much lower in the if they are already leading an organization. hierarchy of the millennial leaders. Millennials also, as a group, were quite comfortable with certain kinds of risk, but uncomfortable with other kinds. For example, they were very comfortable walking into the CEOs offi ce and telling them how to run the without collaboration among people with a where the individual’s responsibility begins and business. On the other hand, when asked to range of skills – digital, marketing, product ends, and where our society’s responsibility take on a risky assignment, they were much less innovation, legal, regulatory, etc. begins and ends. We need to make certain that comfortable. So people need internships sooner. They we don’t destroy 20 percent of the GDP of the There was a mismatch between what the need to get exposure earlier and perhaps even country with healthcare solutions that haven’t CEOs believed the millennials would need to rotate going to school with going to work so been well-thought-out. move into the C-Suite versus the millennials’ that they keep the theory and the practice in At this point, I see policymakers engaging beliefs. It is not clear who is right, but I’ll put sync as they move through their educational much more in slogans and political maneuver- my money on the CEOs. process. ing than I do actually engaging in a practical This outlines a developmental challenge Where do you see the U.S.