PART TWO
Our CEO Sanjay Kucheria sat down with Rich Hook, CIO of Penske Corporation, earlier this year to discuss his leadership role, digital trends, and more. Rich provides a thoughtful and candid perspective on his journey to Penske and the challenges he faced along the way.
To read part one, click here.
SANJAY:
Let’s talk technology trends and the top few technologies you consider when you are thinking about your business.
RICH:
Cybersecurity obviously continues to be a key area of focus. I call it cybersecurity Kaizen. I am a firm believer in continuous improvement. If you think anything is sacred or set, you have the wrong mindset. Automation of workflows is still a big area of focus, at least for us, especially because of the industries we are in. In the short-and-medium term this leads to opportunities to take inefficiencies out. Technologies like RPA (robotic process automation) are allowing us to generate exponential scalability in some areas of business. And I think that dovetails into other things, specifically AI and ML. AI is going to find great opportunities, but I think from a commercialization perspective, it is all very bespoke right now. I think digital opportunities are prevalent for any business that has a customer, whether that customer is internal or external. The question we need to ask ourselves is: how do we continue to make things better for our customers? And that could be everything from how they transact with us to how they contact customer support to how we close our books internally. We’ve got things that you’ll continue to see from us, and digital customer engagement is what we’re all chasing for that omnichannel experience in our business.
Analytics is another big area. I do not think it is ever going away. Having said that, there are still a lot of businesses out there that do not even have basics to run their business operations well, such as clean data and useful dashboards. We have created the operational analytics so our people can manage their business from a day-to-day perspective and then layered on it complex analytics to solve some interesting problems.
My wife is the CFO for a high growth company, and we were just talking about this. My wife is probably my biggest mentor and vice versa because we constantly bounce ideas off each other. Some of these topics range from digital opportunities, reporting and analytics, difficult situations, and just venting when needed. Being able to have this sounding board has been amazing for both of us. We were recently talking about building a digital platform, but the question then becomes: what are you trying to accomplish, and do you have the team for it? It seems great on paper when the board’s asking but what if it does not give you a competitive advantage? Maybe you can buy it and the cost structure isn’t prohibitive and maybe you are fine with that. It just depends on your model. But I think how you use data is going to be key if you continue to think: how do we go after the right customers or bring our cost of sale down or address our target markets with greater effectiveness?
Having said all this, it is really about utilization. We have put a lot of technologies and tools in place over the last three years and I want to make sure we continue to leverage and utilize those platforms. Finally, it is really all about people; making sure that we are hiring the right people and continuing to develop and promote them. Our team’s not that massive, but just being able to stretch people and keep them excited about what is out there is desirable. I’ve said this before, but we have the best team in the business! Those are the things we are focusing on.
SANJAY:
You’ve been active with SIM (Society for Information Management). Tell me about it.
RICH:
I have been involved with SIM for most of the time I’ve been at Penske, which is almost 12 years now and joined the SIM National Board about 4 years ago. We’ve experienced fantastic growth in our SIM chapter and the overall organization has such a terrific national presence with continual growth opportunities. It does take a certain amount of work to familiarize potential prospects with the organization and the value it creates. And then to create the kinds of meetings or gatherings that attract CIOs, and their direct reports. It has been a very interesting, fruitful journey to see how SIM and RLF (Regional Leadership Forum) have really grown in length and breadth. I’ve sent my leadership team and several others through RLF. I’m on the Advanced Practices Council (APC) which offers some incredibly deep learning opportunities that as a CIO sometimes you don’t get in your day-to-day job. And the benefit you get from fellow SIM members who can provide practical advice learned in the trenches saves you time, money, and potentially failed projects. All in all, I can’t speak highly enough about SIM.
SANJAY:
Switching gears, let’s talk about leadership. How would you describe yourself as a leader? I’ve gotten snippets, but if you were to boil it down for me.
RICH:
For me, I have high expectations of people. But I am very much a passionate, communicative and comedic personality. I like to connect with people. I am a relationship builder. I think if you ask people that have worked for me, they will say I’m tough but fair. I am not going to give anyone any more than they can handle. Some people may not love me that day or that week if we are working on a project because I can turn on a dime and be cordial one minute and tough the next, for example, when we’re trying to get a project done and it has been poorly communicated or not well planned. I also take a lot of notes and I expect my team will too, simply because not all of us can remember everything. Honestly though my team is amazing, energized and enthusiastic, but you’ve got to have an attention to detail, and you’ve got to execute strongly. I am okay with making mistakes; we can make mistakes and we can take risks. Just don’t make the same ones over and over again. Ask for help when it’s needed. That’s my style, kind of high energy, high expectation, attention to detail while also having fun. In fact, I also work with my vendor partners the same way. The ones who have been successful partners with us are successful because they share a similar culture: their mindset of how they treat their customers, how service is so important for them, the caliber of their people – these are factors that contribute to our mutual, long-term success. Even with the business, I am not shy. I’m a pretty candid, open book. I will tell people what I think whether they like it or not. If I think we’re going in the wrong direction I’m going to tell you. From my perspective it may be totally wrong, and it may change, but we’re going to have a great conversation around it.
SANJAY:
Let’s look at a business leader you admire and why.
RICH:
I think there have been different mentors and leaders throughout my career. I think throughout my life I had a lot of people that influenced me starting with my mother, being a single mother, to my grandfather, who I’m named after, for teaching me how to shake someone’s hand properly or being a firm communicator. I look up to my wife as much as anyone, she’s amazing and outstanding and just blows me away. Early in my career, at Arthur Andersen, I picked mentors that were financial audit partners, people that were doing different things, that just complimented what I did. I was a big Jack Welch fan for a lot of stuff. I mean, some of his philosophy does not work in today’s era, but I think that the winning culture and performance-based culture is still relevant.
But honestly, at Penske, as I look at it, it is Roger (Penske). He’s just been such an influence and it has been an incredible opportunity to work for a founder this long. In terms of other business leaders, I like the abstract thinking of a Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos or Henry Ford. Steve Pickett (retired Penske CIO) was also an amazing mentor; I had the opportunity to work for Steve for six years and learned a lot. Mario Leone, (former CIO) my boss in a prior job, who gave me a lot of responsibility and moved me around so I could grow. I also learned from people who were terrible leaders; there is always something to learn from everyone.
SANJAY:
Well, that was such a huge pleasure and I so appreciate the time, Rich. It’s been amazing.
RICH:
Yeah, it was great, Sanjay. Thanks.
END PART TWO OF TWO.