Dick Kovacevich on Being a Maverick. You Need “Soft Skills” to Make it Work. Who Knew?
There’s a very fine interview with former Wells Fargo CEO, Dick Kovacevich on the BAI website. People who really understand what it takes to run a large organization find much to admire
My whole point is that the ability to differentiate in business on the quantitative or technological side is very small. But on the margin, the soft skills have the biggest impact. The soft skills are almost inexhaustible in their impact while the quantitative stuff either has a short life or you really can’t improve it much on the margin, comparatively.
You need quantitative skills to make decisions. And then, when you start the implementation, you find that, on the margin, what can separate you more from your competitors is how you handle the soft skills. You can do all the advertising you want. But if it doesn’t match with what happens at the point of interaction with customers, it’s worthless.
Dick was and is a very smart guy. He was famous for lulling the competition with his assertion that he could leave his strategy on a plane somewhere and it wouldn’t matter. It was the same strategy year after year. It all came down to execution. And execution comes down to people, not numbers.
Tags: DickKovacevich , Wells Fargo, Mavericks in Banking, Soft Skills, Decision Making, Decision Quality
