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The Moment explores the pivotal moments that changed the lives and careers of the world’s leading CEOs and defined their leadership journeys.
Claire Blake (00:04):
From World 50, this is The Moment where we explore the pivotal moments that changed the lives and careers of the world's leading CEOs and defined their leadership journeys. Today we're talking to Omar Abbosh, CEO of Pearson.
Omar Abbosh (00:18):
When you sit there and a lot of the things that are part of your armory and part of what makes you bulletproof all just go away and you're sort of left there exposed, then you go down to the core of what is really important and what really matters.
Claire Blake (00:32):
After a 31-year stint at Accenture, climbing the ladder into various executive roles, Omar eventually found himself at the helm of the global educational technology and services provider, Pearson. But that journey upward wasn't as simple as stepping on the next rung. Omar shares how marital strife, a young family, and a global financial crisis, transformed the way he thinks about the power of relationships and trust and leadership.
(00:57):
The first question I have for you, very serious question. Favorite podcast host, Claire Blake, or will.i.am?
Omar Abbosh (01:08):
Oh, for sure Claire Blake.
Claire Blake (01:12):
I had to sneak that in there somehow. In all seriousness, you host a podcast with will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas. So I guess it begs the question for me of what's your favorite Black Eyed Peas song?
Omar Abbosh (01:23):
Oh my gosh. I mean, I was a fanboy of Black Eyed Peas long before I met Will, and I still have great memories of me and the two boys, including one of them in nappies, dancing in front of the television to a whole range of songs. I mean, so I really, really do like a lot of the songs, but probably the one that touches me the most still is Where Is the Love? I think that's just a beautiful song. It's one of their earlier songs, and it's just a very powerful song.
Claire Blake (01:49):
That's really good. I'm going to shift us now into some more of what we came to discuss. Disruption, technology, innovation have all been huge themes throughout your career at Accenture and Microsoft. We talked a little bit about the fact you co-host a podcast with will.i.am, but you also co-authored a book that hit on those same topics. I'm curious where that passion came from and what really drew you to Pearson as a nice tie between kind of this whole career on disruption, tech, innovation, et cetera, et cetera.
Omar Abbosh (02:20):
Firstly, when I studied the company, I realized it was a good company, great financials, great cash flows, great balance sheet, good growth options. Secondly and incredibly importantly was the mission. I'd worked for two very mission-driven companies before, Accenture and Microsoft, but one thing that you always feel when you're in a corporation that's serving corporations is that your benefit to the world is indirect. At Pearson, the benefit to learners, to human beings is extremely direct. You can point at the nurse who qualified and got a job, the kid who learned English and moved country, the person who learned technology skills and got promoted. And that direct part of the mission is very, very motivating. So that brought me to Pearson. The third thing though that goes to your point about disruption is the role of AI. Having just been in Microsoft's enterprise business, thinking hard and working with customers all around the world, the biggest customers around how do you deploy AI and how does that change business?
(03:11):
When you stop back and think, what area of the world will be seriously impacted by AI in a positive way? The area of education learning just jumps up. And I felt that I could bring something valuable to Pearson in that space because of my technology background and thinking about how to use this modern technology in a way that helps learners around the world and helps the business.
Claire Blake (03:29):
It's interesting to know and be reminded of the important work that you guys are doing in that domain. This podcast is all about unpacking the defining moments in the lives and careers of some of the world's leading CEOs. And I think we're here today to unpack something that happened a lot earlier than the timeframe we're talking about right now and the buzz of being a new CEO and in an AI kind of huge, massive wave. And I understand that your moment started in September of 2008 where you had just accepted a new role owning a very large P&L for Accenture. Six days later, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Accenture revenues went down 30% in three months. Before we dig into your moment, I do want to set the scene a little bit. What was the experience in the workplace at that time? Just give me a little bit of sense of what was happening given everything I just described.
Omar Abbosh (04:17):
At the time, Accenture was organized in industry P&Ls, and then they were broken down into different geographies. And I was part of one of the industry global leadership teams. And one of the units, UK and Ireland was having a problem. Even though the markets were actually very favorable. So think about the summer of 2008, the markets were still reasonably in a good shape. The leadership at the time said to me, "Look, Omar, we need you to go in and fix it." And I was like, "Oh, really? Do I really want to do this?" It didn't feel like something I was that enthusiastic about, but people weighed on me and just said, "Look, we need someone that we really trust to be in there and help fix the leadership culture." And so yeah, I accepted the role and took it on, and then six days later, Lehman Brothers happened.
(05:02):
The revenues of that unit went into freefall. But as I said, there were preexisting situations that made it bad anyway without what was going on with the financial markets. And so yeah, that was the moment where a few things started to go wrong in my world.
Claire Blake (05:16):
So it's a pretty stressful time at Accenture. Do you remember at all where you were or what your mindset was or how you were feeling when everything happened with the Lehman Brothers? Given you just made some major moves, you just took it on a new role. It's becoming very apparent that financial crisis is about to take ship.
Omar Abbosh (05:36):
So many things come to mind when you ask that, Claire. So the first thing to mention, which I think people on your podcast will all know, Accenture is a professional services company, which means it's just people. And so when the markets go down, your cost base is people. And in many cases, these people are your friends. And like in my case, spent 20 years with, you immediately understand the implications of when revenues start going down, you're going to have to adapt costs. And so that's something to think about. In terms of a particular moment around Lehman, I had two finance people that weekend who were basically explaining to me, one of them was taking out $50,000 worth of gold bullion and taking it home.
Claire Blake (06:14):
Oh my word.
Omar Abbosh (06:15):
And the other one was taking out $50,000 of cash and taking it home because they literally believed that the ATM networks, the cash systems of the world were going to break. I had a client of mine who was a CEO of a AAA rated network utility company, so like the most bombproof cash flows in the world telling me that they could no longer raise finance.
Claire Blake (06:37):
Wow.
Omar Abbosh (06:37):
And this is a AAA rated company. And so these things coming together made me think, oh, this is really different from what we'd seen before.
Claire Blake (06:46):
Yeah. I love taking us back there because I could think in the world of what we've all recently been through with the pandemic. We actually forget how insane this time was back in 2008. So I mean, it was insane from a business perspective, from a company perspective, but it became insane for you for another reason because at that point, a final shoe effectively dropped and that was kind of what was going on in your personal life. Give us a sense of what was happening, not just of Omar as the executive, but Omar as husband and dad.
Omar Abbosh (07:17):
So I was married to Lisa and we had these two young boys, three and a half and less than six months. And we had got married for all the right reasons, but actually had struggled for the past 10 years and to really make it work. And around that point, we realized that the marriage was falling apart and we had to acknowledge that. Lisa, who's an amazingly impressive person with her own big career, which I wanted to support, and we decided that time that she would go off and do her MBA in Switzerland, which she did. And so here I was in this reasonably intense operational role at work, but also with two very young kids at home and trying to figure out how to navigate it all while at the personal level, I was raised a Catholic. So you're sitting there thinking like, this is an enormous failure and how could I have failed in this way in the most important thing, which was my core family.
(08:12):
And all these questions you ask yourself about what you did wrong and how it went wrong and how could this happen and how could it happen now when all these other things were going on at work? So there's no question for me that that moment in time, personally and professionally, because it was so hard, ended up growing me tremendously and has for sure colored in a very heavy way who I am now.
Claire Blake (08:36):
Working through a divorce as a senior executive in a senior role with very young kids, I mean, there were a lot of moments throughout your career that I'm sure you could have pinpointed here. What was it about this moment that really defined what you came to understand about what an executive in your type of role can really go through as a person?
Omar Abbosh (08:55):
I think when you grow up and when you're younger, you hold some things to be true about how things should be. In this situation, so many things were not playing out the way I thought they should be. And so that can make you question an enormous amount about yourself, who you are, why you are, the things that you believe in. And it forces you actually to strip away all the superficial, all the nonsensical, all the presentational stuff and go down to the core of what really, really matters. At the end of the day it's about the relationships. When you sit there and a lot of the things that are part of your armory and part of what makes you bulletproof all like just go away and you're sort of left there exposed. And by the way, this stuff becomes visible to other people. You can't ultimately hide it all.
(09:42):
Then you go down to the core of what is really important and what really matters. And I think that was very helpful for me in terms of just changing how I think about the world.
Claire Blake (09:50):
In all honesty, when I'm thinking about that timeframe, burnout, wellness, mental health, they were not buzzwordy back then. How did you kind of balance your work when you were so emotionally exhausted with what was going on at home? What did you learn about yourself and how you took care of yourself? I mean, who did you turn to?
Omar Abbosh (10:09):
When I think about the learnings from that era, I think of sort of three things. One is about relationships, which we can get into. The second one is about structures and routines and support networks. And then the third thing is just about resilience and self-reliance. When everything that you hold important in the world goes wrong and you realize actually you still pick yourself up the next day and go again. Because by the way, yes, I had the two small kids at home. I also had a whole load of frightened people at work.
Claire Blake (10:38):
In a people business.
Omar Abbosh (10:40):
In a people business, frightened for their jobs and frightened for the future. And so you have to show up and breathe confidence into people. You have to show up and breathe energy into people. And so my problems at home, while very real, I couldn't make them everyone else's problem.
Claire Blake (10:56):
Yeah. There's a lot of conversation around bringing your whole self to work now that again, in time and place, I'm just kind of curious. To your point, there was a lot going on. And so that was probably playing into your psyche. You just mentioned it. My problems don't need to be everybody else's problems. But were you open about it at work with what was going on?
Omar Abbosh (11:13):
As you said, Claire, I mean, at the time it certainly was not fashionable, but at the same time, I was very lucky that having been there for 20 years, I had people who, they were work colleagues and they were friends. I think each of us has to have people ... Some people talk about their personal board of directors, people in your personal life who you can lean on, reach out, call, speak to. And I had a bit of that with friends and family, and I had a bit of that at work. And I just tried to balance. And again, at the end of the day, what I quickly realized is that what was going on in my world was a bit tragic, but it wasn't terminal. As soon as I tried to stop feeling sorry for myself and focus on actually what was really going on, what was important, then it didn't overly drain me. The stuff that drained me personally was the fact like, how did my marriage go wrong?
(11:59):
That took years to probably get my head around, because of course, I don't think anyone gets married thinking that they're going to end up that way.
Claire Blake (12:06):
I want to give you the opportunity to share a little bit more about what you learned about structure and routines. In the midst of navigating a demanding job and a demanding time, is there anything you learned in that moment that's applicable to what you're still doing today?
Omar Abbosh (12:19):
The advice that I give to people all around me, and I have done for many, many years, is big companies are just made up of people, but the big company is also not a human. It's a set of processes, a set of systems, and it will take as much as you can give. So you as an individual have to draw the boundaries around yourself and define what you want to give. So I quickly decided that I had these two young guys, so between 6:00 and 9:00 PM every day, I was going to be home, no matter what, because that was bath time, suppertime, and reading time and bedtime, and I wanted to be there. And so the EAs at work got to understand that no calls for Omar between 6:00 and 9:00 PM, and I ended up doing calls after 9:00 PM till midnight. So I'd make it up by spreading myself out across the day.
(13:06):
That was a difficult decision in a business where the sales part is based on relationships, and a lot of people built relationships going for dinner, that kind of thing.
Claire Blake (13:14):
Yeah. And in a services industry where you need to be on all the time. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Omar Abbosh (13:20):
And I believe that my career was a marathon and a series of marathons, not a sprint, and this was going to be a tough period of time that I needed to get through, and so I needed to manage that.
Claire Blake (13:34):
I think it's actually important to discuss another marathon in your life before your corporate career. I understand you grew up in Iraq and you had to grow up very quickly when your family was faced with a decision whether or not to leave. I'm thinking about the fact that you were around 14 or 15 years old when you left Iraq, and now your youngest is around that same age, if I'm not mistaken. And so in many ways, I'm having this big full picture moment talking to you about the marathons of your life, and I'd be remiss if I didn't at least ask you to help us understand that marathon that was very disruptive, that relied heavily on relationships and some other key things that you learned. Was there anything that happened at that point in your life that helped you in this moment that we're talking about right now?
Omar Abbosh (14:15):
I mean, so as you know, Claire, I was born in Baghdad, in Iraq, which at the time was a very stable secular nation under an autocrat called Saddam Hussein. And then we went to England for a while while my dad was doing his surgery exams, and then we were back in Iraq. When the Iran-Iraq War broke out, we were being bombed three times a day, so that was one part of it. But more importantly, that my grandfather, because it was a police state, so anyone who studied Iraq will understand that Saddam Hussein modeled himself on Stalin down to the mustache. My granddad, age 79, was taken to prison for economic espionage. I mean, he wasn't working, but anyway, and he died in Abu Ghraib prison. I'll never forget going with my mom and my grandmother being frightened by the prison guards who would put their hands in the food that they'd brought him to check that they weren't hiding something and the kind of ritual humiliation that they liked to dole out to people.
(15:07):
So I just didn't like the whole setup of a police state. And as a kid, I was nagging and saying, "Let's get out of here." And it was when a year or so later after my grandfather passed that a couple more of the same types of characters who'd come and taken him away came to interview my mom and she got the fright. And I was like, "Look, we should just go." And that weekend, we packed bags, got into a taxi because the air system was shut down and drove 14 hours across the desert to get to Jordan and left the country. And then two weeks later, Saddam Hussein shut the border for eight years. So I often feel that so much of how my life has played out is just pure luck. But what that era taught me, and I remember thinking this is, of course, it makes you just grow up very quickly when you see these things as a kid.
(15:48):
So it just taught me the difference between what was really important and actually what is just trivial nonsense. And so when I'm at work and people are all stressed out about a deadline, I'm like, "It's just a deadline."
Claire Blake (15:59):
Yeah, that's right.
Omar Abbosh (16:00):
In the scheme of things, it just isn't that significant compared to what's going on in humanity around the world. And so I find that era always just keeps my feet on the floor.
Claire Blake (16:12):
When I asked you to join for this conversation and the conversation you wanted to have was being transparent about your marriage falling apart, I don't know many executives and CEOs who'd be willing to have that discussion. It does beg the question, my opinion, what can we learn from the fact that you and Lisa are still friends, right? How did you manage two demanding careers? You guys made decisions on your careers and partnership as exes, right? And so where did that come from and how did you manage that?
Omar Abbosh (16:40):
So obviously we're very lucky because some things don't work out for people, but I mean, Lisa, as you said, is an incredibly talented person. She's been working and living in the startup world for many years as COO, as CEO of various companies. So as you said, incredibly driven, very intelligent, very talented person. I mean, so part one is the realization that why would I expect her to do something that I wouldn't want to do? Relationships are fifty fifty. Very early on, I had to conclude that even though I wanted to blame or I wanted to be bitter or I wanted to be angry, I had to realize that half of it was me. And understanding that is a very, very important realization. Now, understanding it alone doesn't get the pain out of your body. And so actually I got some brilliant advice at the time, which was write down your pain.
(17:26):
So I had a little book and every time I had negative thoughts, I wrote them. No one has ever seen the book, but I got the up and down emotions, the vitriol, the anger. I just got it out of my body and just dumped it on a piece of paper that I then throw away. And I think that was very important. When relationships fall apart, the really hard bit is when third parties get involved. And what I realized when Lisa met Paolo, who's a brilliant guy, I was like, "Huh, this guy could become my kid's stepdad. So how am I going to treat him and how am I going to behave? And how am I going to make them feel when they move from my house to their house?" And I realized I had to get myself out of this river of emotion and just stand aside and watch the emotions flow and make decisions that were in the interest of the objectives I really wanted to serve, which was I decided very early on that my main objective was that the kids would be okay.
(18:12):
And if I could focus on that, then actually I would make good calls. And of course, like I said, I was lucky because it wasn't just me doing this. I mean, Lisa had to do this, Paolo had his role to play, et cetera. So those are some of the things I take away from it.
Claire Blake (18:28):
Really what I think is an interesting thread throughout your life and your career, this intersection of disruption is really what you've dealt with, whether it was your situation in Iraq, which you've told an incredible story there, but I mean, that was a massive disruption to you and your family, whether that's managing this situation with really two young boys, managing a massive disruption at work. So what is your candid advice sitting back now, this wise sage of kind of when you're faced with this disruption at home, at work, et cetera, here's where you got to dig deep and here's where you got to look at yourself in the mirror. I mean, what are some of those things that you would just have told yourself if you could?
Omar Abbosh (19:04):
I'll come back to you when I'm a wise sage, Claire.
Claire Blake (19:08):
Oh, please. You've given me more than enough advice over the years.
Omar Abbosh (19:13):
Introspection is very important for a leader. I think leaders should know themselves really well. And there's a big difference between the story we want to tell ourselves about who we are versus who we actually are. And I think that takes hard work to figure that out. And it takes friends you can trust who'll tell you stuff you don't want to hear and painful stuff. Then obviously related to that is the network, the people you have around you who compliment you, who challenge you, who question you, who make you better. That's incredibly important to get through any disruption, whether it's personal, professional.
Claire Blake (19:46):
For sure.
Omar Abbosh (19:47):
With disruption itself, I think there's this angle of like you just got to lean into it. Change is also beautiful. I wouldn't wish divorce on anyone. I mean, it's a painful process, but the net result of that is we've got an amazing friendship. We've helped grow each other over the last 15 years or so. And from work, yeah, the financial crisis was incredibly unpleasant in so many ways, but it built many times better business leaders, people who were very pragmatic, people who understood how to take the right calls, make the right decisions and so on.
Claire Blake (20:21):
From this person who has studied and observed thousands of companies who have gone through disruption in your long tenure at Accenture and then Microsoft, the advice to just lean into it is profound. It's even more profound in the context of your personal life as an executive amidst all of that. I do want to ask you, your point on having friends you can trust who are going to push you, have a network around you who's going to be honest with you. Have you been able to maintain that, at least thus far in the role as Pearson's new CEO? Because again, I think there's another myth that people become less honest with you, less candid. How have you really instilled that with a new team?
Omar Abbosh (21:00):
So firstly, I've got people that I speak to inside the company, outside the company, around the company, and obviously people who don't report to you are more likely to be able to feel free to tell you what they think than someone not. So for example, in our space, I'll go and talk to PE sponsors of education companies or learning companies who will tell me about how they see the world and how they see our company and maybe past missteps that we've made and just learning from that. So they challenge. Like I said to you, I've got a couple of people in my personal life who will often tell me I'm not smart and don't know what I'm talking about. And I find that very helpful because they challenge me and make me think harder about some of the things that I'm pushing on. Now at work, what I do and what I did here very, very early on, like within my first week, I sit down with the leadership team and I share with them my expectations and expectations of them and what I think they should expect of me in return.
(21:54):
And one of my expectations is that people are truthful and straightforward and transparent. And what I basically say is like, if I'm doing something wrong and you don't tell me, I view that as disloyalty, you have to tell me if I'm getting things wrong, because if you don't, okay, we're going to screw up. And I make it very clear in the public forum often that when people push back on me, that it's really welcome. And so I've had a couple of examples in the last six months, one in a very big forum with 60 odd people and one just with the leadership team where two individuals basically told me I was wrong or that I was being unclear and not ... And I really thanked them loudly in front of everyone. So I'm trying to send a signal to say like, "This is welcome."
Claire Blake (22:36):
Yeah. The boys keep you humble?
Omar Abbosh (22:39):
Oh, I mean, the boys just find all what I do ridiculous. I mean, they weirdly, they have this weird mixture of being proud and making fun of me at the same time.
Claire Blake (22:51):
That's right. That's exactly right. Look, I mean, I'm trying not to get emotional just thinking about the impact that you've even had on my life. I think that the transparency that you've just displayed in sharing your story super authentically and the way that you ensure people are candid, trusting, loyal, the way you invest in relationships. A lot of people talk the talk, but I think you truly walk the walk, Omar. And so I just want to thank you for doing this with us. This has been really, really, really helpful and there's going to be some incredible nuggets for our members.
Omar Abbosh (23:23):
I mean, thank you so much, Claire. Thank you to the whole team. I appreciate it very much.
Claire Blake (23:29):
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