Name: Insight Enterprise gets its first female CEO—and the C-Suite is all female too
Uploaded: 2022-10-26
Duration: 7 min 53 s
Description: CEO Joyce Mullen’s description of her female team: 'collaborative', 'empathetic' and 'driven.'

CEO Joyce Mullen’s description of her female team: "collaborative", "empathetic" and "driven."

Insight Enterprise gets its first female CEO—and the C-Suite is all female too 

Leadership

CEO Joyce Mullen’s description of her female team: "collaborative", "empathetic" and "driven"

Insight Enterprise first female CEO; C-Suite is all female

Insight Enterprise gets its first female CEO—and the C-Suite is all female too

joy thank you so much for joining us to talk about your new role at insight enterprises. You took over as Ceo at the beginning of the year and you are the first woman to lead this Fortune 500 technology company for starters tell our viewers what insight actually does and why so many businesses come to you to answer all their tech questions, insights mission is very simple. We deliver the very best technology solutions, a combination of hardware, software and solutions and services that deliver the business outcomes that that our customers are most interested in. Usually those are things like how do I get more efficient or how do I improve my customer satisfaction or how do I build new revenue models for my company or how do I reduce my risk. These are the problems our clients are trying to solve every single day and technology can help solve all of those problems. Well as you know during the pandemic. So many companies told stories about how they accelerated their digital transformation by three years by five years because they had to with remote work companies needed to have a technology upgrade and the same thing for customers who are doing more and more online. But what about now? Our business is still as eager to make big investments in technology. We don't see any business is slowing down in terms of their interest in modernizing their environments from a technology point of view. They are certainly very concerned about security risks so that usually means they have to make sure they have the latest and greatest technology. Most of them are trying to figure out how to respond to their customers more quickly. That usually means they need a more agile technology infrastructure. That usually means they're thinking about things like cloud and using their data in a modern way using artificial intelligence automating processes because labor is so expensive and in such short supply. So we don't see the demand slowing down. What you wrote an op ed article recently in the title is The secret to winning amid volatility. Make bold digital moves. What's the point that you're making there? What's the message? I'm going to use a quote from my grandmother, she said when the times get tough, the tough get going and our customers are pretty ambitious about their goals and objectives. And they're saying this is the time to actually decide to invest in automation. This is the time to invest in a more robust online experience. So their customers can get what they need when they want it. So we have seen enormous success on the part of our customers when they are making bold moves and kind of bucking the economic trend. The alternative is to get really, really conservative and and stop making progress, but you know, their competitors are not gonna wait. So they can't either. Well, in that op ed piece that we were talking about bold moves, you cited IBM as an example of a company that made a dramatic change in a dramatic decision and came out with some good results. Can you tell us about that? Well sure, IBM basically said I need to separate my business so I can optimize both of them right into Kendrell and IBM and that's what they're doing. That required a whole bunch of technology support. Can you imagine how integrated those systems have been over so many years at IBM? That was a big move and we've seen other companies do the same before you came to Inside Joyce, you worked at Dell Technologies for more than 20 years. How has that experience been helping you now that you're at insight? Well, first of all, Dell was a terrific opportunity for me. I had I think 11 or 12, maybe 13 jobs at Dell, all different functions. So that functional experience is certainly quite helpful as a Ceo where you gotta kind of know a little bit about everything. And then second I had some terrific opportunities to learn from some of the best Michael. Dell is a great innovator. He is a great leader and so emulating many of those traits and helping helping us drive more innovation and insight is gonna service as well as well. Joyce, I want to talk to you a little bit about leadership as we mentioned earlier, you're the company's first female Ceo but you're not the only woman in the C suite insights. Chief financial Officers, A woman. Uh so is the C I o the head of human resources, the global controller and the president of the european operations. They're all women. And in fact I think our viewers will be interested in the 60% of insight. Senior leadership are women. So this is our obviously intentional but it's also very unusual. How has this all female team influenced the leadership tone and style at your company. First of all I can't take credit for this because this has been part of insight for a very long time. My predecessor ken lamb nick was very very clear on the need to make sure we have a diverse leadership team. And so uh today though in terms of answering your specific question around how does it influence our our style and our approach we focus on making sure that we collaborate incredibly well. We have I think demonstrated a level of empathy which has become so important over the last couple of years given the difficulties that so many of our teammates have have been going through, we are pretty darn humble and we use a lot of, we bring a lot of minds together to make decisions. We always say 1000 minds are better than one. We don't bring 1000 together but we do bring four or five or six and we get to a best decision and that delivers the results. We're looking for well you have a tremendous opportunity now as Ceo to groom the next generation of leaders. What kinds of things are you doing now to inspire women and men at insight uh, to be good leaders great leaders. We bring every single director and above through a West Point strategy and leadership training session offsite. That's a very, very good program that helps build business skills and leadership skills. I think something that's quite unique is a board program for women. We just introduced, this is an 18-month program that helps our women leaders get ready to serve on boards. We are big believers in the fact that if we can get many of our leaders on a board of directors at a different public company or private company, there are tremendous um skills and insights that they build in that kind of environment. So that's why we're making that investment there. We have a teammate resource groups who are very focused on making sure that we're building the right kinds of development programs and also the right kinds of recruiting programs to attract latino populations, african american populations, veterans etcetera. So those are all really key to our success. Joyce. You've said that you've had many mentors in your career and many great bosses. Can you single out one Of them who gave you some terrific leadership advice what it was and how it's guided you. I would say as a young brand new plant manager at Cummins engine company. I had an older plant manager been a plant manager 50 years, a man of few words and I asked him for some advice and his advice was a little bit cryptic. He said paint the bathrooms. And it took me a while to realize what he meant was demonstrate to the people on your team, the people in the plant that they are very important and demonstrate that by putting your money where your mouth is, make investments in their environment, they go, they go to the restroom a couple of times a day, make sure that it's not broken and cracked, make sure that they know that you care about their well being because that will serve you well and it sure has.