Session: Walking the Walk: Leadership’s Role in Exemplifying Company Culture
A company’s leadership team is responsible for more than simply driving short-term business results - leadership must invest in the long-term culture and exemplify the values of their company if they wish to make a lasting impact. Leadership should not be acting as a separate entity within a company or organization, and members of the leadership team need to be knowledgeable, curious, and interwoven in day-to-day operations. This means frequently engaging various teams, from engineering, to communications, to sales, working across the company to help ease productivity concerns, take feedback, detect and develop talent and make the lives of employees easier — not more complex.
This type of value-based thinking for leadership stems from the kaizen mentality, meaning continuous improvement. By continually striving for improvement, both small and large, that mentality inspires new solutions to pressing problems and allows leadership to set ambitious goals to hold teams accountable through realistic action while supporting them.
Engaged teams and customer satisfaction go hand-in-hand, and they both start with a culture of excellence, dedication, and top-to-bottom teamwork. If we hope to inspire dedication, collaboration and engagement, it is essential to lead by example and equip our people with the tools and space to execute as a team. From hiring, to onboarding, to daily business, to facing adversity, the manner in which leaders carry themselves will impact tangible and intangible aspects of a company culture.
Hear from a leading technology company’s CPO and CMO for tips and considerations for building a “kaizen” culture of excellence from top to bottom at your company. By examining examples of leadership efforts, both good and bad, we’ll unlock the key for exceptional results, high engagement from teams and excellent customer satisfaction.
Bio
Maria joined Tektronix in September 2018. Prior to that, Maria worked 17 years in sales in the Semiconductor industry starting as an Applications and Technical Sales engineer at Texas Instruments in a leadership rotation program across Europe where she lived in three different countries. She stayed 14 years at TI and evolved in different sales positions across different industries (Telecom, Automotive, Mass market distribution, Industrial) ultimately in charge of South Europe, UK and Nordics as Sales Director with close to a 1B$ sales responsibility and a 100 person team. She joined NXP Semiconductors in 2015 driving its EMEA sales team on the Security Transactions business and then evolving as EMEA Vice President for NXP’s Mass Market and Distribution business. She joined Tektronix as EMEA Regional VP and added India to her responsibility a year later. She joined Tektronix's Leadership team as CMO in April 2023 reporting to the CEO and was recently promoted to drive all of its Product roadmap and strategy as of December 2023 as CPO. Maria has graduated with two master’s degrees in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science from Télécom ParisTech (Paris, France) and Universidad Politécnica (Madrid, Spain). She is originally from Spain, has lived in 6 countries and is now based in the USA, where she relocated in August with her family.