InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
|
November 27, 2000 |
 |
Chiefs Of The Year:
Leaders Of The Net Era
Lepore and Pottruck reinvent themselves and their relationship as they lead Charles Schwab into E-business
|
|
 Send Us Your Feedback |
hether in business or in life, the overriding theme of the year 2000 has been change. The United States voted for a new president after eight years, and the unprecedented result, or lack thereof, may forever change the way presidents are elected. In business, the dot-com stock market bubble may have burst this year, but Internet-mandated changes in the way business is done have altered the competitive landscape and shaken many established companies to the core.
InformationWeek's 2000 Chiefs of the Year, Charles Schwab & Co. Inc.'s president and co-CEO David Pottruck and vice chairman and CIO Dawn Lepore, are symbols and leaders of the discount brokerage's thrive-on-change culture. They've helped lead Schwab to its position as the No. 1 online brokerage, outpacing its traditional competitors while retaining customer and employee loyalty against a slew of Web pure-play upstarts. Pottruck and Lepore live and breathe everything that successful companies must have in the E-business era: technology leadership from the very top, attraction and retention of employees, and a never-wavering focus on the customer.
At first glance, Pottruck and Lepore may seem unlikely agents of change. They've both been at Schwab a long time--17 years, give or take a few months. They've risen steadily through the upper-management ranks, Lepore in IT and Pottruck originally in marketing, while the company has enjoyed steady financial success. If anyone seems to have earned the right to settle back and steer a solid company on a calm course, it's these two.
But that's not the Schwab way, and it's certainly not their way. "What makes them so unusual is how they keep reinventing themselves in their existing roles," says Jan Hier-King, Schwab's senior VP of electronic brokerage technology. "I've seen many executives do it when they change jobs. It's a lot more challenging to do it in the same job. I joined Schwab six years ago, and I can't begin to tell you how different [Pottruck and Lepore] look now."
For Lepore, that change has meant shifting more of her focus outside internal operations and systems, dealing with customers and speaking to employee groups as large as 2,500 about IT as the heart and soul of Schwab. For Pottruck, reinvention has meant smoothing the edges of an initially more aggressive management style--some say he was too "East Coast" for Schwab's San Francisco culture--and a tendency to micromanage. "No detail was too small for Dave," says Hier-King. "As time has gone on, he has carved out a niche of identifying evolving customer trends, then setting aspirational technology goals, as opposed to involvement in selecting specific technologies. Now he lets Dawn lead the technology direction."
Yet Pottruck has never lost what Hier-King calls his "childlike wonder and enthusiasm for technology." She recalls a meeting with all Schwab technologists in San Francisco where Pottruck leaned down from the podium, put on a pair of sunglasses, and said they could now reach him on E-mail at "electric.dave@schwab.com." "He got wild applause from all of us," she says, "because he was basically saying he embraced what we did and was going to be personally part of it."
The evolution of the Schwab.com Web site illustrates Pottruck's role in leading technology initiatives. In the site's early days in 1996, Pottruck pushed for the best transaction technology. As the Web became more mainstream, Hier-King says, Pottruck pushed Lepore's organization to use Schwab.com more as a marketing tool. Today, customer-relationship building is front and center on the Web, so Pottruck has charged the company with implementing personalization and customization technologies to meet individual customer needs. "Schwab .com isn't there yet," says Hier-King, "but that's the next challenge that Dave has set in front of us."
An aptitude for reinvention is clearly a quality that Pottruck and Lepore admire in each other. "It has been amazing and gratifying to watch Dawn's skills and talents blossom," Pottruck says. "She started as an almost shy person, even somewhat uncomfortable as a public speaker. She has come to understand that her own personal authenticity is what inspires people to work so well for her."
And the CIO on Pottruck: "David sets stretch goals for himself and for the company," Lepore says. "He has all the qualities I look for in a leader--he's smart, he's willing to take risks, but he's also incredibly supportive. And he cares passionately about the customer."
There's the word. Passion. It's everywhere at Schwab. It's on the cover of the book that Pottruck co-authored this year, Clicks And Mortar: Passion-Driven Growth In An Internet-Driven World (Jossey-Bass, 2000). It's in VisionQuest, an annual one-day employee orientation to Schwab's culture, values, history, and goals--"where we're going and why," in Pottruck's words. It's in the energy of crowded-elevator conversations at Schwab's San Francisco headquarters. It's in Lepore's choice of guest speakers to inspire her staff--people who've climbed Mount Everest or worked on the Mars space probe.
"People will work for money," Lepore says, "but they'll give a piece of their lives for meaning."
That's the kind of philosophy that sets Lepore and Pottruck apart from the pack, the kind that fuels the success of their partnership. In many ways, they're very different. Lepore was a college music major and classical pianist who learned Cobol and coding in a training program at her first job at Cincinnati Bell. Pottruck put his energies into football and wrestling. "Dave's more explosive and outwardly energetic, but Dawn is just as inspiring in a more methodical way," says Beth Sawi, Schwab's executive VP and chief administrative officer. "The conviction in her voice and the certainty in her vision gets people to follow her and believe in her direction."
Photos by Alan Blaustein
Back to This Week's Issue
Send Us Your Feedback
Top of the Page
Featured Microsite
