Leadership isn’t talking to people. It’s talking with people.
It’s not explaining to employees what they do. It’s explaining why they do it.
And it’s not about planning just the next few steps. It’s about visualizing the end point.
“Great leaders think about the end in mind,” said Laura Angelini, the new president of North America for Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc., whose Vistakon contact-lens division is based in Jacksonville. The 51-year-old international executive also is president of global strategic marketing.
“Visualize your end state. Visualize your dream and allow yourself the flexibility about how you get there,” Angelini said. That means making sure “everyone is behind you in the journey.”
If they feel they are a part of the mission, “they will embrace the outcome even if it’s not 100 percent what they wanted in the beginning.”
Leadership also is about change. “The pace of change these days is unprecedented,” she said. Leaders adapt, help people along and are “constantly challenging the status quo.”
Angelini spent an hour Tuesday afternoon with about 30 Jacksonville University graduate and undergraduate students, including her son, as part of the school’s CEO Speaker Series.
“You’re going to face a much tougher life than the one I’ve been experiencing in my 30 years in business,” she said, adding the young adults will need to change directions 10 to 20 times faster than she had to do.
When she entered the business world in 1983, there was no Internet. She remembers when the first facsimile machine arrived. Ten years was the length of time that people who learned a skill or function could expect to use it before it changed.
“What you learn today is obsolete in 18 months,” she said.
That’s why learning requires a different approach.
“It’s not about what you learn in business,” she said. “It’s about how you learn it.”
A native of Italy who joined Johnson & Johnson in 1991, Angelini worked in several European and Eastern European cities before moving to the United States in 2012.
She spoke about leadership from experience. Before her U.S. move, she was vice president of the company’s medical device business in Eastern Europe, managing an organization of more than 1,000 people and commercial teams in 27 countries.
“Chances are you will be leading an international team,” she told the students. “You will be expected to interact seamlessly around the globe.”
She said that applies to all businesses, small and large, because the competition is worldwide.
That’s where the fine points of leadership come into play. Angelini provided directions, reminding the students their personal lives can benefit from the same advice.
Leaders must set a path for themselves and their organizations, and that takes energy. “It’s the energy you have and the energies you are able to create in your organization to mobilize your people.”
Leaders must mobilize resources and develop people so that they move in certain directions. Referring to Facebook COO and author Sheryl Sandberg, Angelini said a leader makes people better as a result of his or her presence so the impact doesn’t disappear in his or her absence.
Leaders must be fast, flexible and adaptable to change.
Angelini said as a leader, she spends 70 percent of her time executing the vision and 30 percent thinking about what she might be missing.
Leaders also need to realize that international cultures move at different paces.
She told the students that by the time they are approaching the business world, China will be the No. 1 business partner of the United States.
Leaders must anticipate and prepare to overcome obstacles. “Life is not going to be the way you predicted,” she said.
Angelini said looking back on her career, she sees a lot of successes and some failures, and finds that to be common. She said the best leaders are those who have overcome adversity. “Don’t necessarily be afraid of failing,” she said. The key is how quickly leaders recover and correct.
Moreover, leaders who say they have never faced adversity raise a red flag. Angelini is concerned how they will be able to handle it.
Leaders must navigate the cultural realities of how people think and get things done. That requires “managing across cultures.” Angelini has worked in Italy, then Hamburg, Germany, and then Russia.
Her first order of business in Russia was to learn Russian because by learning the language, she learned the culture.
Upon moving to the U.S., she set about “learning about how people think” and respecting that.
Leaders must have the confidence and courage to make tough decisions, including about ethics and values.
“Ultimately that is going to be what distinguishes you in your business life and your personal life,” she said.
When a tough decision must be made, “you have to act promptly, firmly, zero tolerance.”
Johnson & Johnson’s credo outlines the company’s responsibility to its patients, doctors and nurses; to its employees; to its communities; and to its stockholders.
If the company performs well among the first three, stockholders will benefit from increased company value, she said.
Leaders also must be customer-centric.
“Make sure in everything you do that your customers are he center,” she said, warning that organizations “are by far too internally focused.”
Citing Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Angelini said a company’s most unhappy customers are sources of learning. “We need to go out and meet with the customers,” she said.
Johnson & Johnson Vision Care announced in September 2013 it appointed Angelini as president of its North America businesses, including Vistakon. She said she was brought in to “help the business do a little bit of a turnaround.”
Vistakon, based in Deerwood Park in Jacksonville’s Southside, makes the Acuvue brand of disposable contact lenses.
Angelini has held sales and marketing leadership roles in the company’s medical device and diagnostics segment and early in her career was responsible for introducing the 1-Day Acuvue brand of contact lenses to the Italian market.
Vistakon, with almost 2,000 employees continues to expand at its 7500 Centurion Parkway campus.
Angelini was asked about being a woman coming into the leadership ranks 30 years ago.
“I remember days when I was the only woman in a meeting,” she said.
At one gathering in Europe, her boss, from the U.S., asked the group leader about it.
“We had one woman,” was the response. “We didn’t like her.”
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