APALI CLP 2014 Brian Cheung
Informative Interview (posted with permission from Glenn Osaka) 2/19/2014
Dr. Michael Chang graciously connected me with Mr. Glenn Osaka. Mr. Osaka generously shared his extensive experience in planning his career path, leadership, hi-tech companies, his thoughts about engaging businesses to give back to the community, and his thoughts about social entrepreneurship. While I did not record our conversation audibly, these are my best recollections of Mr. Osaka’s sharing.
Brian: How did you get to where you are today?
MR. OSAKA: I have an ability to see what people want and help them to get what they want. I was able to complete every career step and work in every position that that I wanted to do over 35 years.
I have worked at large companies, small companies, start-ups, and a venture capital group; I have been a Vice President at HP, Cisco, and most recently a Senior VP at Juniper Networks and as (board) director of several organizations. For the most part, every step was planned. These things helped: hard work, having an overall plan, and luck. I studied Bio-Psychology at UCLA and after I graduated, I attended graduate school there to earn my MBA.
From the beginning, I was careful to pick companies with a culture, community, organization, and resources that I wanted to be around.
I was not an engineer, but I needed to find a way to gain value in HP (Hewlett Packard). So I decided that I wanted to understand customers better than anyone else. So I chose to start my career in a sales role (my parent’s weren’t pleased).
When I saw limited opportunities to advance (in my career), I took a risk, and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. This was a big change because I grew up and lived in an area with a large Asian American population. Where I moved had very few Asian Americans.
For 10 years, I picked jobs based on the skills I wanted to build. In many respects, I moved laterally in my career; at times taking lower paying jobs to learn skills. My peers were getting higher paid positions and at times, I wondered if I was falling behind.
Learning often happens when we are in uncomfortable places. We often want to stay comfortable and remain where we are. But, it is when we put ourselves in a zone of discomfort then we often grow. For example, skiing; if you want to stay as an intermediate skier, you can just ski in areas you are comfortable with. But if you want to be an advanced skier, you have to put yourself on the slopes where you can fall.
Positioning is important. Position yourself to be at the perfect place at the perfect time. I’ve learned in business that picking the right sector, the right technical trend, the right organization, and the right position is key to being able to learn, grow, and achieve success.
Timing is important. High Tech goes through cycles. Things get hot and then, they are not. Place yourself in the world when things are about to get hot. Is your current field getting hot? (“Hot” meaning – delivering great value to customers, fast adoption growth, financial success, broad recognition in the marketplace)
I have created personal 5 year plans five or six times over my career. What do I want to do in 5 years? Where do I want to be? What am I lacking to get there? I periodically create these plans, when I am on a long flight or riding a train and have the chance to reflect. I’m in one of these planning phases now.
How did you find mentors?
Some of my mentors were just “accidental” or by luck.
My first true mentor (in Albuquerque, NM) arose out of a day spent with much more senior manager making sales calls in my territory (the northern half of the state of New Mexico). The day (and the drives) were long and we had a great opportunity to get to know each other. In most cases in business I would only get the chance to spend 15 minutes with someone several levels above me. I didn’t plan it, in fact I wanted to avoid all this visibility – but at the end he promised to help me with choosing the right path for my skills and aspirations. He ultimately helped me gain 3 critical job assignments over the next several years.
Sometimes help comes from unexpected places. I had a woman working for me on my team and we got to talking about our goals and aspirations. I mentioned that I was ultimately interested in being a VP Marketing for a tech company. It turned out her husband was a new CEO for a small company recruiting for such a role. While it was too early for me, she offered to help me by getting access to some resumes (anonymously) of the candidates her husband perceived as strongest. It really helped me build a roadmap to may goals.
Asians sometimes view that they cannot ask for mentors. We think that we have to earn it. It is okay to ask. It is relatively safe, but they can say no. Also, when you ask, ask for something reasonable, know the limit, and don’t stretch it too far. A great way to start a dialogue is to ask people you respect to share their stories and views on how they achieved their goals and success. People mostly like to talk about themselves. 3-4 key questions can get a good conversation going.
Mentors provide guidance and counsel, but sponsors are even closer than mentors.
Sponsors put their reputation on a line to create a position for you. They step out on a limb for you. I was fortunate to have a few sponsors.
What values have brought you where you are?
Honesty; being true to your mission; and being clear about what you are willing to give up.
Business is often described as being about making most profit and “killing” the competition. These areas are important be but there is a need for a balanced view.
To me balance means having a healthy community and environment for employees and their constituents. There is a lot of lip service for this today, but it is actually hard to find.
Sometimes you can walk into a building and just sense the nature of the environment and the values
HP had this back then, 20 to 30 years ago. They called it the “HP Way”. HP was committed to helping their employees succeed in a ways that others did not. HP gave employees the opportunity to experience, and grow, and be a part of any place in their organization.
Get out of places that don’t have values. This can be difficult because some places offer lucrative opportunities, but I know many people with money who are not happy.
What are your thoughts about businesses giving back and supporting social causes?
It is possible but not as common as we all might like. Many businesses just do not have a healthy eco-system needed to benefit the world. HP did it 20-30 years ago. They did this because of the foundation of their leaders, Hewlett and Packard. As a public company with a significant share owned by the founders, they had a lot of control; they did not have to follow the bids of investors. Private companies can have a lot of impact on communities if the owner/founders have the desire. In the valley now there are some companies that I think have the culture, values, and leadership to give back and contribute to social causes. Notable are Salesforce.com, Xilinx, NetApp, Workday…I’m sure there are others.
There are also a few companies that are built specifically with a profit motive and focus on social causes. One was run by a friend/colleague in Texas focused on fund raising software for non-profits. When the social cause and profit motive connect it can be pretty special.
What are your thoughts on Social Entrepreneurship?
I loosely define this as investors and entrepreneurs making bringing their skills, models, and sometimes money to creating new entities that change the ways that problems can be solved.
This is a new field. It is hard to identify success stories. There is more success in internationally - like companies - helping extreme poverty, the microloan program in Africa, anti-malaria campaigns, and water purification.
When a social organization gets money from investors, it is not free. They have to answer to them (investors). You don’t always get the freedom to do things to be successful. You have to address the ego and motivations of the investor. This can complicate things, like the mission. Millionaires care about where their money goes, and some want to be acknowledged. This can make social entrepreneurship challenging as you work to achieve your mission and satisfy all constituencies.
I am mentoring a CEO for a nonprofit in SF. They face many challenges but are achieving some success. Their program helps to create paid government internships for people. The government loves the free labor, but it is difficult to convince investors that this is effective.
One of the problems with getting hi-tech companies engaged in social entrepreneurship is that most of them are global in their focus; they are interested in internationally and often choose to focus on causes and programs that have very broad impact worldwide. As a result getting them from a corporate perspective to focus on the South Bay can be difficult. Companies that have local interests or segment their approach to business regionally can be easier to engage. Great examples of corporations that operate in this way and therefore contribute locally are PG&E, Wells Fargo, and Southwest Airlines.
Informative Interview (posted with permission from Glenn Osaka) 2/19/2014
Dr. Michael Chang graciously connected me with Mr. Glenn Osaka. Mr. Osaka generously shared his extensive experience in planning his career path, leadership, hi-tech companies, his thoughts about engaging businesses to give back to the community, and his thoughts about social entrepreneurship. While I did not record our conversation audibly, these are my best recollections of Mr. Osaka’s sharing.
Brian: How did you get to where you are today?
MR. OSAKA: I have an ability to see what people want and help them to get what they want. I was able to complete every career step and work in every position that that I wanted to do over 35 years.
I have worked at large companies, small companies, start-ups, and a venture capital group; I have been a Vice President at HP, Cisco, and most recently a Senior VP at Juniper Networks and as (board) director of several organizations. For the most part, every step was planned. These things helped: hard work, having an overall plan, and luck. I studied Bio-Psychology at UCLA and after I graduated, I attended graduate school there to earn my MBA.
From the beginning, I was careful to pick companies with a culture, community, organization, and resources that I wanted to be around.
I was not an engineer, but I needed to find a way to gain value in HP (Hewlett Packard). So I decided that I wanted to understand customers better than anyone else. So I chose to start my career in a sales role (my parent’s weren’t pleased).
When I saw limited opportunities to advance (in my career), I took a risk, and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. This was a big change because I grew up and lived in an area with a large Asian American population. Where I moved had very few Asian Americans.
For 10 years, I picked jobs based on the skills I wanted to build. In many respects, I moved laterally in my career; at times taking lower paying jobs to learn skills. My peers were getting higher paid positions and at times, I wondered if I was falling behind.
Learning often happens when we are in uncomfortable places. We often want to stay comfortable and remain where we are. But, it is when we put ourselves in a zone of discomfort then we often grow. For example, skiing; if you want to stay as an intermediate skier, you can just ski in areas you are comfortable with. But if you want to be an advanced skier, you have to put yourself on the slopes where you can fall.
Positioning is important. Position yourself to be at the perfect place at the perfect time. I’ve learned in business that picking the right sector, the right technical trend, the right organization, and the right position is key to being able to learn, grow, and achieve success.
Timing is important. High Tech goes through cycles. Things get hot and then, they are not. Place yourself in the world when things are about to get hot. Is your current field getting hot? (“Hot” meaning – delivering great value to customers, fast adoption growth, financial success, broad recognition in the marketplace)
I have created personal 5 year plans five or six times over my career. What do I want to do in 5 years? Where do I want to be? What am I lacking to get there? I periodically create these plans, when I am on a long flight or riding a train and have the chance to reflect. I’m in one of these planning phases now.
How did you find mentors?
Some of my mentors were just “accidental” or by luck.
My first true mentor (in Albuquerque, NM) arose out of a day spent with much more senior manager making sales calls in my territory (the northern half of the state of New Mexico). The day (and the drives) were long and we had a great opportunity to get to know each other. In most cases in business I would only get the chance to spend 15 minutes with someone several levels above me. I didn’t plan it, in fact I wanted to avoid all this visibility – but at the end he promised to help me with choosing the right path for my skills and aspirations. He ultimately helped me gain 3 critical job assignments over the next several years.
Sometimes help comes from unexpected places. I had a woman working for me on my team and we got to talking about our goals and aspirations. I mentioned that I was ultimately interested in being a VP Marketing for a tech company. It turned out her husband was a new CEO for a small company recruiting for such a role. While it was too early for me, she offered to help me by getting access to some resumes (anonymously) of the candidates her husband perceived as strongest. It really helped me build a roadmap to may goals.
Asians sometimes view that they cannot ask for mentors. We think that we have to earn it. It is okay to ask. It is relatively safe, but they can say no. Also, when you ask, ask for something reasonable, know the limit, and don’t stretch it too far. A great way to start a dialogue is to ask people you respect to share their stories and views on how they achieved their goals and success. People mostly like to talk about themselves. 3-4 key questions can get a good conversation going.
Mentors provide guidance and counsel, but sponsors are even closer than mentors.
Sponsors put their reputation on a line to create a position for you. They step out on a limb for you. I was fortunate to have a few sponsors.
What values have brought you where you are?
Honesty; being true to your mission; and being clear about what you are willing to give up.
Business is often described as being about making most profit and “killing” the competition. These areas are important be but there is a need for a balanced view.
To me balance means having a healthy community and environment for employees and their constituents. There is a lot of lip service for this today, but it is actually hard to find.
Sometimes you can walk into a building and just sense the nature of the environment and the values
HP had this back then, 20 to 30 years ago. They called it the “HP Way”. HP was committed to helping their employees succeed in a ways that others did not. HP gave employees the opportunity to experience, and grow, and be a part of any place in their organization.
Get out of places that don’t have values. This can be difficult because some places offer lucrative opportunities, but I know many people with money who are not happy.
What are your thoughts about businesses giving back and supporting social causes?
It is possible but not as common as we all might like. Many businesses just do not have a healthy eco-system needed to benefit the world. HP did it 20-30 years ago. They did this because of the foundation of their leaders, Hewlett and Packard. As a public company with a significant share owned by the founders, they had a lot of control; they did not have to follow the bids of investors. Private companies can have a lot of impact on communities if the owner/founders have the desire. In the valley now there are some companies that I think have the culture, values, and leadership to give back and contribute to social causes. Notable are Salesforce.com, Xilinx, NetApp, Workday…I’m sure there are others.
There are also a few companies that are built specifically with a profit motive and focus on social causes. One was run by a friend/colleague in Texas focused on fund raising software for non-profits. When the social cause and profit motive connect it can be pretty special.
What are your thoughts on Social Entrepreneurship?
I loosely define this as investors and entrepreneurs making bringing their skills, models, and sometimes money to creating new entities that change the ways that problems can be solved.
This is a new field. It is hard to identify success stories. There is more success in internationally - like companies - helping extreme poverty, the microloan program in Africa, anti-malaria campaigns, and water purification.
When a social organization gets money from investors, it is not free. They have to answer to them (investors). You don’t always get the freedom to do things to be successful. You have to address the ego and motivations of the investor. This can complicate things, like the mission. Millionaires care about where their money goes, and some want to be acknowledged. This can make social entrepreneurship challenging as you work to achieve your mission and satisfy all constituencies.
I am mentoring a CEO for a nonprofit in SF. They face many challenges but are achieving some success. Their program helps to create paid government internships for people. The government loves the free labor, but it is difficult to convince investors that this is effective.
One of the problems with getting hi-tech companies engaged in social entrepreneurship is that most of them are global in their focus; they are interested in internationally and often choose to focus on causes and programs that have very broad impact worldwide. As a result getting them from a corporate perspective to focus on the South Bay can be difficult. Companies that have local interests or segment their approach to business regionally can be easier to engage. Great examples of corporations that operate in this way and therefore contribute locally are PG&E, Wells Fargo, and Southwest Airlines.