The Answer Is Within You: Interview with Nizar Ladak, Former CEO of Digital Research Alliance of Canada
I recently went one-on-one with Nizar Ladak, former CEO of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.
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?
Nizar: Over 50 years ago, I arrived in Canada on May 14, 1973, as a refugee. Approximately 80,000 South Asians were exiled from my birth country, Uganda. We were stripped of our birthright, citizenship, and forced to leave all our assets and possessions behind. It was a form of ethnic cleansing.
Growing up in inner-city Toronto, I experienced racism and other setbacks that I describe in my book using a vulnerable story-telling format. However, the focus of my story is that I personally benefited from Canada and Ontario’s social assistance programs and subsidized post-secondary education. As a result of these social programs, I was able to pursue my academic interest to the Ph.D. level. When it came time to decide what career I wanted to pursue, I chose what is arguably more Canadian than the maple leaf – healthcare.
What motivated me to write “The Power of Scars – My Journey from Refugee to CEO” is the conspicuous absence of leadership books written by everyday people who struggle with earning a living, marriage, and children. There are few books that describe experiences the average reader is likely to encounter and, more importantly, learn how to contend with.
To directly answer your question about experiences that were most instrumental to my growth, a distinguishing feature of this book is the prose. It is part autobiographical and written in the narrative style of a novel. As I describe my various experiences professionally and personally, I always derive a lesson that I learned from the experience, and by writing this book, I wish to share those lessons with others, so they don’t feel alone if they experience similar things. Writing this book was both cathartic and a labor of love, and I hope readers find it inspirational and informative.
Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?
Nizar: I feel I have a lot to share from over three decades in senior leadership, and I have the scars to prove it. Hence, the title of my book, the Power of Scars. When writing this book, my goal was to share lessons learned over my career with a broader audience. Writing this book was an attempt to extend my enjoyment of mentorship which I regularly practiced as a senior leader. However, I wanted to go beyond individual one-on-one conversations and reach a wider audience.
My broader aspiration is to help preserve and strengthen the societal attributes and social safety net that enabled me to reach the levels to which I professionally aspired. By sharing my journey and the lessons learned along the way, I hope to inspire not just opportunities for personal growth in others, but also societal progress.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Nizar: I have always felt that different leaders are required for the various stages of an organization’s development. For example, when an organization is facing a crisis, an autocratic leadership style is perceived to be most effective as there should be no doubt who is in charge.
In that context, “effective leaders” are those who can adapt their styles based on the situation facing the organization.
One of the ideas that intrigued me which I explore in my book, is the question of whether future leaders need to also adapt their leadership styles based on the demographic make-up of their teams. Specifically, in 2025, over 50% of the workforce are millennials or from Generation Z. The expectations these two groups have for workforce relationships are substantially different from those of prior generations like Gen X or Baby Boomers.
The leadership conundrum that has emerged is that we see a generational gap between Gen Z (occupying staff roles) and Baby Boomers (typically now on Boards). The two demographic groups hold markedly different expectations for senior leaders in organizations. In my book, I refer to this as the “Intractable Problem of Leadership Style”. However, the red flag I raise is we are experiencing a dearth of leadership in society. As a result, we see fewer prominent leaders who seem genuine and highly capable. Even more seem to have run out of ideas or simply appear unable to craft the necessary consensus to lead. It is a concern I outline in my book that using data I demonstrate we lack sufficient numbers of individuals being trained for leadership through lived experience, and the impact of these rapid-rise-to-the-top leaders will be born by the economy and its workers.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Nizar: Speaking from experience, aspiring leaders will likely encounter a series of challenges in their career just as I and many others have. I believe self-reflection informed by readings will be key to ‘taking their skills to the next level’, as you say Adam.
A theme in my book is one of individual purpose. I had an epiphany late in my career. The epiphany I had is one’s character will always define your opportunities. To be very clear, my advice to aspiring leaders is your character will define the opportunities you are given and earn during your career. When you abide by a moral code, define your actions against that code, and make decisions aligned to your values, you will undoubtedly succeed and progress to higher levels in organizations.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Nizar: In a word Adam, the book is about resilience. Resilience is something that can be taught. One purpose of my book is to teach a broad audience a key to their success both professionally and personally, is a function of the resilience they demonstrate when faced with hardships that life will undoubtedly throw at you. Therefore, as opposed to just three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders, I offer six which are described as the conditions for building resilience. These are: 1. Building strong connections, 2. Find purpose, 3. Learn from the past, 4. Cultivate hope and perseverance, 5. Practice self-care, and 6. Take decisive action.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
My best advice in building teams is two-fold. For the leader, use the principle of complementarity. That is, the leader requires enough self-awareness to recognize where their shortcomings are, and what are their blind spots. Then when given the opportunity, surround yourself with teammates who possess as strengths, your areas for development, then listen to them carefully when making decisions. The second part is, every team must be diverse in every aspect of the word - racially, in gender, experientially, and in subject matter. Your team should be a microcosm of the market you serve. This will ensure you avoid groupthink, but more will ensure the product or service you are offering considers the unique perspectives and lived experiences of your consumers.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?
Nizar: The best tips I give sales or marketing teams and organizations seeking my advice are what I consider to be the tactics for disrupting industries.
1. Break Down Barriers to Access: when a company penetrates what has been an almost impenetrable market, innovations emerge. Take for example, the taxi industry which traditionally had huge financial barriers to entry (i.e., $100,000 taxi licenses) and were notoriously averse to change. Poor customer service and exorbitant rates were routinely charged to consumers even before the vehicle moved. This gave rise to Uber which has all but destroyed the traditional taxi industry model.
2. Seek an alternate perspective. Over time, sales and marketing teams suffer from tunnel vision. Legitimately, they are so close to their business, they fail to see alternative ways of conveying value-proposition. This is when it is important for them to seek out talented and creative individuals who can suggest different ways of doing things. Disruption often comes when we challenge ‘the way things have always been done’
3. Technology is a disruptor. I have spent my career promoting the use of technology. Technology is responsible for practically every advancement made in recent years. Think deeply about the industry you work in, and without a doubt, you will find it is not maximizing the use of technology. Technology adoption and development is easily the best way to disrupt any industry, and it often holds the key for marketing and sales teams to differentiate themselves from their competition.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Nizar: The best piece of advice I received was from a mentor who told me two things that I have repeatedly practiced over 33 years and in seven different organizations. First, do not try to be what you believe your teams want from you, or what profile your board may want. Authenticity is vital to acceptance of your leadership, and the willingness of others to follow. Secondly, when you are faced with a situation that you cannot seem to think through or navigate, know the answer is within you, and it is the chaos of the moment that is preventing it from rising to the surface. You will find the answer, provided you spend time self-reflecting, educating yourself and then following your decision-making practices. Those practices however are not fool-proof and that is where self-reflection and life-long learning as a repeated cycle must be part-and-parcel of your decision-making principles.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Nizar: The maxim that has guided my life and is a repeated theme in my book is: “A Rising Tide Lifts all Boats”. I believe that what unites us is our humanity and our intrinsic desire for good. If we lean into that versus focussing on our differences and what divides us or what is in self-interest, we run the risk of degrading as a society. If we each seek to regularly demonstrate the best version of ourselves, I feel it will collectively serve as a rising tide to lift all of us. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world if we could achieve it? The decision to do so remains with each reader.
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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