Review - Through Shifts and Shocks

The new book by tech industry veteran and ex-CEO of Xero, Steve Vamos

Going by the sheer number of insights, leadership philosophies and practical playbooks in Steve Vamos’s new book, I’d bet good money that he won’t write a follow-up since it’s clear that in bringing Through Shifts and Shocks - Lessons from the Front Line of Technology and Change — to the page, Vamos has chosen to hold nothing back for a possible future sequel.

Instead, we get a complete anthology or director’s cut memoir of a 40-year voyage of learning across a storied executive career with some of the world’s most notable technology brands: IBM, Apple, Microsoft and up to his retirement last year after five years as CEO at Xero. It’s all here.

Indeed, it’s three years this month since I last pulled on my own Xero t-shirt, and for the last leg of my 12+ years at Xero, I had the good fortune of being a member of Steve’s leadership team, so reading his book was something of an odd experience for me.

This is partly because, in my head, it was Steve’s calm, Aussie twang reading every word out to me like some magical audiobook brain implant (someone, please invent this). It also means I can directly vouch for the authenticity of the contents of Through Shifts and Shocks, having been in the room with Steve many times and observed him embodying many of the leadership behaviours and traits he sets out in his book.

If you factor in the likely prospect that Steve hung up his CEO boots for the last time when he finished at Xero last year — it’s probably safe to say that reading Through Shifts and Shocks is now the closest anyone will get to being coached, and guided by one of the world’s most capable executives.

While this book is written by and from the perspective of a technology executive, many of the insights it contains are applicable and relevant to anyone in a leadership role (or aspiring to one) in a growing list of industries today. Such is the extent to which technology and its tendency to brutally upend business models and strategies has travelled far beyond Silicon Valley.

Steve’s impressive run of top jobs in stellar technology organisations (he joined IBM straight out of university) more than ably provides a framing for some of the most significant ‘shifts and shocks’ that would beset his past employers and where he was fortunate to have had front-row seats to witness and carefully observe them.

First, inside IBM and the shift from the mainframe to the PC in the 1980s, and an IBM beleaguered by an all-too-familiar form of internal conflict that blinds leadership and stifles innovation, and where the big-iron execs in IBM’s mainframe division jokingly referred to IBM’s emerging PC division as the “Toy Factory”.

Then, Steve’s experience of joining a hopelessly adrift Apple during the Steve Jobs wilderness years up to his legendary return to power in 1997. Here, Vamos exalts Jobs’ as ‘the master’ with his often brutal quest for focus being one of the essential skills technology executives need to learn as a survival skill.

Then to Microsoft, some time after having sleep-walked into its historical misread of the significance of the internet while being blindly addicted to selling licenses of its uber-successful Windows operating system. Vamos adds real colour to these sections of the book by sharing often amusing anecdotes and stories of his face-to-face encounters with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

While these anecdotes together serve as a relatable canvas upon which to discuss and explore the kinds of life-threatening shocks that can confront technology companies, often knocking them off course or worse, for me, the real meat and potatoes of Through Shifts and Shocks lies in its humility and in the thoughtful manner that’s typical of Steve, as he shares countless learnings and the mistakes he made along the way.

Here, in these smaller moments, Vamos captures the often best and most useful leadership insights in the book.

Readers are comprehensively walked through several frameworks and approaches for breaking down what can seem like impenetrable organisational problems, as well as several practical diagnostics and playbooks Steve developed and used throughout his career. He covers the critical importance of the battle to align strategy and execution — sounds easier than it is, the vital need to repeatedly focus on performance, and defining and shaping the characteristics that make the best teams truly effective, as well as tackling famously tricky areas such as having difficult conversations and making tough choices.

This book is easy to read, even though it tackles several difficult and often complex aspects of leadership, culture, mindset, and the daily grind of focusing operational intensity and rigour on the things that matter most. Throughout, Vamos repeatedly demonstrates the humility and learning mindset I remember him for.

In fact, the hard choices / tough conversations sections are among the best in the book. Here, Vamos briefly concedes that you don’t need to be nice to be an effective leader. While this may be true, it’s also the greatest deception in Through Shifts and Shocks because Steve Vamos belongs to a class of all-too-rare leaders who can have the most challenging conversations and make the hardest calls yet still walk away with their reputation and respect intact.

You don’t have to be nice to be an effective leader, but they’re not mutually exclusive if you’re smart enough.

Through Shifts and Shocks is available to order now, and I recommend that you grab a copy.

Steve can be reached via his website at: www.stevevamos.com