Having the Courage to Lead

Since 2011, you became a Vice President at Varian, as I’ve heard, the youngest VP at the time, correct? And you clearly made a great impression because you kept climbing through the ranks. What would you say are the top three things that you did to get noticed and keep advancing?

I always start with doing what’s best for the company. So, I would just say that anytime there’s an opportunity within the company that needs somebody to step in, guide, lead, take on a project that is super challenging, that usually nobody wants to touch because it’s really hard, jump in that opportunity, show that you have the courage to go in there and take on a super hard assignment.
I think that when you can demonstrate that you have the courage to take on something hard, you’re just not going to have a lot of competition number one. And the other part is if you succeed, you’re going to be tapped into as one of those people that the company can go to to ensure something gets solved or something gets done.
So, in my example, I would say that in 2006, we had our first FDA inspection. Nobody knew what to do. We had a pretty bad outcome. And really there was nobody that was really raising their hand to say, “Hey, I want to take this on. I want to ensure that we get all of our issues resolved with the FDA.” And for me, that was a challenge. That was something that I felt, hey, you know what? I’m going to go to the managers or the leadership team in charge and say, I’m interested in doing it. Here’s my plan. What do you think?
I think the key thing is to not be afraid of failure. I think that’s what a lot of folks struggle with is, can I do something? And is it something that I can successfully achieve? And sometimes you just got to go for it and say, you know what? I may fail, but I’m just going to go for it. And I’m going to tell people that here’s my plan. It might fail. If we fail, here’s plan B. Those are the kinds of things like that. Again, I always go back to the word courage. Just have the courage to go out there and fail and then figure out how you’re going to navigate to success.