Be Clear on Where You Are Heading: Interview with Anand Srivatsa, CEO of Tobii

I recently went one on one with Anand Srivatsa, CEO of Tobii.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth? 

Anand: I have been privileged to move around the world for much of my life; I truly consider myself a citizen of the world. This is because of the opportunities my parents afforded me. We moved several times within India and then moved to the United States. The opportunity to see the world in a very broad way – and, in some cases, being forced to make new connections relatively often – has shaped my personality, my worldview, and my willingness to continue to move. This willingness has taught me not to look at moving as scary, but rather as something that is quite exciting and personally fulfilling. If I think about my successes in relation to some of the areas where I’ve been challenged, the reason I've been able to be successful is my willingness to take risks. And my willingness to move all over has given me access to opportunities other people probably haven't been as willing to take. 

Being from an Indian background, I face a mindset challenge where we tend to be quite conservative in our ability to take risks. Being brought up in a middle-class Indian household, the focus was always to get a stable job and to not take too much risk because you've invested so much just to stabilize your life. Radical changes in my career didn’t feel very natural to me at the start. I moved from engineering to sales, an area where I had no formal education, which was a challenge. As I've gotten more comfortable taking those kinds of risks, it's become an asset for me — to the point that I feel like I'm open to taking risks now.

Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?

Anand: I think the challenge we have at Tobii is pretty immense, but so is the opportunity. This actually brings a unique set of considerations when we think about how we scale our business. 

We are in the business of driving attention computing: a new field that is part of the human-computer interaction sector within the technology industry. The focus of attention computing is to enable machines to better understand human attention and intent. We believe bringing this technology to the mass market will make all kinds of machines more inclusive and accessible to everyday people.

At Tobii, we think the opportunity for attention computing is ubiquitous. At the same time, we're a small company with limited means. So the steps to growing and scaling our business are focused on a few sets of opportunities where we can really demonstrate the power of our technology. We believe that if we're able to go and showcase these opportunities, they will be catalysts for innovation and a much broader set of use cases than what we naturally push from our end. 

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams? 

Anand: One of the most important things a leader needs to be able to do is to distill things down and make them simple. In our area, and the high-tech field in general, we have some very complicated issues. When you manage and lead teams, it's important to be able to distill those down into very tangible issues, and also be able to simplify what actions you need to take. That’s a critical aspect of getting teams aligned behind you.

Adam: What are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them? 

Anand: In our field, we believe machines will communicate with humans – on human terms. This is a long-standing trend, but sometimes we don't recognize the power of that trend. Innovation in this area is trying to lower barriers to entry so more people can harness the potential that technology can bring into our lives. The fact that machines and technology don't understand the way we naturally communicate is a major issue, and it has created digital divides worldwide. For example, think about programming languages being written in English. We don’t often think about the burden for people around the world who must learn English in order to get a computer and create value. These kinds of issues can be hard to recognize, but the reality is that the trend is inexorable – machines are going to communicate with humans on our terms, in the way we learn to communicate with each other. I think that's pretty powerful and something we should recognize.

An important first step in the process of pushing this trend forward is to recognize that technology on its own isn't accessible or inclusive on the day it's built. We can recognize the benefits it creates, but we don't acknowledge the fact that those benefits are limited to a certain portion of the population. For example, wealthy people are more likely to have access to technology and its benefits than people of a lower socioeconomic status. Less obvious, though, is the divide between the two types of technology users – people who use technology for the value it can bring to their lives, and those who use it to produce value for others. That divide has nonlinear effects on wealth creation, value creation, and the second type of technology user really relies on the ability to communicate with machines in a much deeper way.

Given this, I’d love to see companies expand the available modalities of communication their devices can recognize with an eye toward inclusion and accessibility, such as adding speech control to laptops. For somebody who has the ability to interact with a machine in multiple ways, maybe speech isn't going to be the most efficient method for communication. But for somebody else, speech may be the only way they can get or create value with that device.

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader? 

Anand: There are many qualities that make an effective leader, but if I had to pick two, I would say be approachable and be a good communicator. And in many ways, these go hand in hand. 

To me, being approachable means all parts of your team feel comfortable engaging with you. Many issues affecting your team or organization might not be visible to leadership. If you encourage them to share challenges with you, you’ll be able to gain a better understanding of the issues where you may have limited visibility and take steps to mitigate them.

The value of being a good communicator is twofold. First, effective communication ensures those you lead understand what’s important to the organization and the team and what’s expected of them. Second, quality, consistent communication will help keep your team aligned and engaged with the goals you have for the organization. In short, it can improve organizational buy-in and culture. In general, communication is an undervalued leadership trait. You might be a technical expert in your field, but if you can’t communicate your goals and vision to your employees, you’re not going to be effective in your role.

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Anand: The critical first step in improving your leadership skills is reflecting on why it’s important to be a good leader. For me, it was the recognition that I couldn't touch all of the people on my team directly every single day. Because of this, I wanted to become the kind of role model where, in the few moments I had with them, I was making an impact on how they would continue to perform.

The second thing is for leaders to recognize that leadership is a journey. The most important thing is that you’re developing good habits around leadership and keeping yourself accountable for your decisions. Many times we take shortcuts or engage in bad behavior because we think no one's looking, but those things are quite detrimental and don't allow you to build a foundation of good leadership. 

Being a good leader is about recognizing the importance of leadership, getting in the habit of engaging in good leadership principles, and keeping yourself accountable, even when no one is looking.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders? 

Anand: Tip number one is to be clear on where you are heading. One of your biggest responsibilities as a leader is to set the long-term ambition of your organization. This allows you to prioritize where you want your team to spend their time and to prevent waste of energy, which is my second tip. When you ruthlessly prioritize your work against your goals, you’ll see progress in going where you actually want to get to. The third tip I have is to be the voice of optimism in your organization. Most things worth doing are hard, and it's easy at times to focus on things that are not going right. But it's important for a leader, especially when things are tough, to speak honestly about the challenges, and also to inspire the team to believe they can overcome them. If the message of inspiration doesn't come from senior leadership, it can be hard for others to fill that gap.

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding? 

Anand: For me, being in a sales position is all about the customers. I've spent a significant portion of my career in sales, and talking to customers has been one of the most energizing ways to spend my time – even today. If you want to be successful in sales, you really have to live and breathe your customers and try to understand what it takes to make them successful. That's your roadmap for success. 

When thinking about marketing, I encourage others to embrace digital tools. We have to think about reaching a world where there are so many more means of communication or interaction than we've historically had. Because there are so many outlets for customers to spend their limited interest, we need to engage them in a much deeper way than we have in the past.

For branding, it needs to be authentic to the company you are. The brands that really resonate with customers engage their external audience by reflecting the true nature of the company. Whether that's Nike, Intel, or Starbucks, these organizations really understand who they are at the heart of their companies. That’s what they project; that's what makes branding easy.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received? 

Anand: Be the leader you want to work for. It's almost like a golden rule for me at this point. Of course, employees have different things that they think would make a perfect leader, but in general, they will want to see their leader – or any ideal leader – embody what they’d like to get out of your leadership. Model the behavior you’d like to see.

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Anand: Throughout my career, whether on purpose or not, I’ve built this willingness to take risks. That is one thing a leader needs to embody and actually encourage. As leaders, we make decisions all the time; often when it’s not clear which way to go. In those moments, it may be worth taking educated, deliberate risks. It’s important for leaders to demonstrate their willingness to do that. In my career, if I look back and ask myself how I became a leader, it's because I took many calculated risks. Once these risks worked out, I took larger and larger calculated risks. Risk-taking is a skill that needs to be practiced.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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