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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 (00:05):
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. I'm your host, Claire Blake.
Raj Subramaniam (00:18):
I joke to people that there's someone in FedEx who is continuously monitoring my comfort zone and that the minute I feel even a half a bit comfortable, that comfort zone is taken away and something else happens.
Claire Blake (00:33):
Raj is here to tell us about how a life spent on the move enabled him to take more risks and shaped the way he views the world. There he is. The man of the hour. Let's start in the very beginning by you just telling me a little bit about your childhood growing up in India.
Raj Subramaniam (00:52):
Growing up in India in the '70s, in a small town of, I guess in India, a small town of a million people, a middle class family. And my dad, policeman, my mom was a doctor, but heavy focus mostly on was education. All the schools usually finished at 10th grade and then there's an interim step, 11th and 12th. And that's called a college. So my dad said, "Okay, well, you're grown up here, but you need to really understand the world." So at age 15, I was unceremoniously booted out and sent to the big bad city of Bombay at that time and living in a one room kitchen kind of set up. And so I finished my 11th and 12th grade in Bombay and it was one of the most fascinating experiences. The first two or three months was a little bit nerve wracking, but after that I kind of took to it like duck to water.
Claire Blake (01:51):
Well-rounded experience, taking some risks, being alone in some ways at 15, but then you were alone at another point after graduating from IIT, which I believe landed you on a trip to the US. Tell me about that transition. Tell me about how that came about. Fast forward for me a little bit into the experience of coming to America.
Raj Subramaniam (02:12):
Well, it's a well-worn path, to be perfectly honest with you. When you are graduating from a school like the Indian Institute of Technology and you're done reasonably well in school, the next step is going to a master's program in engineering in the US. At that point, Syracuse was top 20 chemical engineering school. I got scholarship to go study there, and I still remember going to the US Councilate in India to get my visa. And she said, "Yeah, it's going to be cold in Syracuse." I'm like, "Yeah, cold, whatever." There's no Google, there's no nothing. I mean, I have not seen temperature below 80 degrees in my life.
Claire Blake (02:50):
Oh my gosh.
Raj Subramaniam (02:51):
And I show up in Syracuse. So people told me I'm going to have a culture shock. I had no culture shock. I'm adaptable pretty good. I had weather shock. But that's how I got to Syracuse and to do a master's in chemical engineering.
Claire Blake (03:05):
Is it a well-worn path to go from engineering to starting out as a marketing analyst?
Raj Subramaniam (03:09):
Well, there's an MBA bit in the middle of that. And I think I realized after six years that engineering may not be the right path for me, that I needed to broaden my horizon. And the only way to broaden my horizon was to get an MBA as far as I knew how to do. And over the course of two years, I'd gathered up enough money for tuition for one semester from University of Texas at Austin, because other schools are much, much more expensive. And so it was a cheapest top 20 school and I had money for one semester. So that's why I went so went to UT Austin. It was not much of a deliberation. It was pretty much that was it. So I plopped that money down and showed up in Austin with the MBA program. That's how that happened. And then fortunate enough to be picked up by FedEx from campus from Austin.
Claire Blake (04:00):
You started out in 1991 at FedEx as a marketing analyst. Was there a moment in time after a few years or over the course of your very long tenured career at FedEx that really changed you, the way you lead, that was really impactful on your journey that you can think of?
Raj Subramaniam (04:18):
100%, yes. 1996, I had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong as, at that point, managing director in marketing, I would say as a significant turning point for multiple, multiple reasons. So I would point to that one move that was a big, big turning point.
Claire Blake (04:43):
So you were about five years in. Tell me a little bit more about this moment. I mean, who called you? What was the conversation? I'm assuming at that point, you had a wife and a child, yes?
Raj Subramaniam (04:54):
Me and my wife, both of us were peer managers in marketing in FedEx. So both of us are just coming up through the ranks at FedEx. This child was born three months old at this point. It was kind of funny because we had one car and so we used to drive to work. Our office was literally 10 feet from each other and we had a daycare center, which was next building. And that was the setup when this was all kind of going on. Within FedEx, over the five years, my main focus was international expansion of FedEx. So I had drawn up a lot of different concepts, a lot of different models, and I've drawn up these different expansion opportunities, creating a hub and spoke system in Asia, and we had literally launched that. So one day I was, I mean, the current managing director of FedEx Asia in Hong Kong, he has come to visit Memphis and I had lunch with him and I was just casually, honestly, I didn't think anything of it.
(05:52):
I was just casually asking him about his lifestyle in Hong Kong and what it was like. And I didn't know that he was thinking of finding a way back to the United States and he was looking for a successor. So he went back and told his bosses that, "Hey, I got this kid who wants to come to Hong Kong. I never said it. And I think he'd be pretty good in this job." That's how that ball started rolling down. Talking to Uma, her simple analysis was, "If we're not going to do this now, we'll never do this. " I mean, so let's just do it. If we had literally thought about it and gone through what it actually took because of where we were in our green card processing and all that stuff, I would've said, no, never. But luckily we didn't.
Claire Blake (06:36):
And let's also make note of a very brave, bold wife that you have with a three month old baby willing to make that decision to move.
Raj Subramaniam (06:43):
100%.
Claire Blake (06:44):
All the way around the world.
Raj Subramaniam (06:45):
And it was an amazing choice to make. And then by the way, while I was going through this process of getting my job, and I said, "Well, you better start looking for a job in Hong Kong." Well, she landed one in three days. She said, "Okay, I got it. Where are you? " And I'm like, "Oh, but you got to wait. I'm not done yet. I got to go through my process here."
Claire Blake (07:06):
I'm assuming that a big move around the world with a three-month-old baby wasn't very easy.
Raj Subramaniam (07:11):
One of the trips to Hong Kong, we're still in the process of figuring housing or whatever. So Uma brought Arjun, at that point, six months old, separately and we were supposed to meet in the Hong Kong airport and I was coming through Dubai. And so we met and we landed about 30 minutes apart. We got there and she, "Here, take your son. I don't want to see the two of you for the next 24 hours." So yeah, there was a lot of interesting moments where it doesn't work out exactly like the way you think it's going to be, but it was just overall, it just felt right.
Claire Blake (07:47):
Culturally, were there learnings there? Was there something about the whole scenario that was particularly tough?
Raj Subramaniam (07:52):
Well, it kicked in day one in my job. I got to see my team of at that point, I would say 60 people of 27 of them were in Hong Kong. So I met with the team and then culturally I started talking about, "You all are the experts in your job. My job is to make sure that I provide guidance and direction, but also remove barriers to execution, but you are the experts in the job." And they looked at me like, "If we are the experts, why are you the boss?" Took a little while for me to understand that mentality, but we became so close. Even today, some of the people are still there. We built a bond over time that was just fantastic. One of the interesting things is I couldn't communicate worth anything. That was not really part of the job description on communication when I was in Memphis.
(08:46):
It was much more numbers and things like that and models and so on. Here, I'm now traveling around Asia, have to communicate different cultures, different things, different ... And yeah, got some media training, this, that, and the other thing, but I also became a spokesperson for FedEx. I don't know how that evolved in my head, but I moved from not being able to talk to five people without my knees hitting each other to somehow a spokesperson for FedEx in Asia in that seven years too.
Claire Blake (09:21):
I'm curious why this moment was so pivotal. What was it about the experience in Hong Kong that truly kind of changed your trajectory?
Raj Subramaniam (09:28):
Well, in so many ways. First, I worked on these theoretical models and they started to come up on the ground in Asia and now you're on the other side of it, not just analyzing things, but actually doing something with it and, ya know, test your theory, so to speak. And the number of times I was wrong about theories. I mean, actually living with it was very important. The second fact that China was just starting to come alive. When I got to Asia, our revenue out of China was probably less than what we do out of Memphis. And in the seven years, it just grew to be the biggest region after United States. And so being on the ground in the moments when things took off in China, that was a huge moment. Three is on a professional level, your scope of responsibilities when you're working in a region, in a big company, alright, but in a smaller region, you get to do a lot of different things.
(10:27):
And I was put in a position to do multiple things, no job title will ever describe it accurately. I ate that up. For me, that was just perfect for me. It may not be perfect for other people, but it was perfect for me because it was not like, "Oh, this structure, this silo." It was like, "Do what you got to do." And then on a personal level, just being in Hong Kong and really being able to travel and understand all the way from Japan to New Zealand and everything in between and live in this incredible city that was Hong Kong, I just couldn't be more grateful for that opportunity.
Claire Blake (11:08):
You walked me through your dad booting you out of the house at 15 and Bombay. You talked about coming to the US, not knowing anybody with $2 in your pocket to this move with Hong Kong. Do you feel like there's a theme here that you are willing to take risks and explore? I mean, and I guess I would say take that and then tell me now, how has this impacted the way you think about the world, frankly?
Raj Subramaniam (11:32):
A hundred percent. I joke to people that there is someone in FedEx who is continuously monitoring my comfort zone and that the minute I feel even a half a bit comfortable, that comfort zone is taken away and something else happens. And it's always been challenged to do this, do this, do that. And unquestioningly, I saluted the flag and said, "Okay, I'll do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing." I said about ability to adapt. And I think while sticking to your core values, I think as a global company like FedEx and you get the opportunity to be in different places and doing different things. And how do we do that? I think that ability to just be in that continuous learning mode and culturally put yourself in somebody else's shoes and see the world from the other side, it's amazing the perspectives that you come up with that are different than 99% of the rest of the people who are right there with you. And I think that has happened to me over and over and over again.
Claire Blake (12:35):
Sitting now as CEO and thinking back on this experience, what would you tell yourself back when you were Raj in Hong Kong about the 20 next years ahead? I mean, what do you think that you've learned now from these two experiences that you could tie together?
Raj Subramaniam (12:51):
If I knew then what I know now, I would keep my vision even broader, keep a much broader lens on what's possible. Honestly, I was just trying to take the next step, put one foot in front of the other and keep going with determination and grit. With a little bit of a wider vision, that journey would have been a little bit easier.
Claire Blake (13:12):
My assumption is nobody ever prepares you fully for the role. And until you're in the role, you really cannot possibly understand the magnitude of what you're faced with.
Raj Subramaniam (13:21):
The thing that I didn't fully appreciate and anticipate are two things. One is time management. I thought I was doing 90% of the job when I was COO. Fred had increasingly given me more and more things to do. So when I answered, "I'm ready," I figured it was a jump but manageable. But one of the things I didn't quite realize is the number of stakeholders around external and internal that ultimately want a piece of your time, and especially in a moment when the world economy was not in the best of shape, and so things were not performing so well. The second aspect of it is when I learned quickly that when I'm speaking, I'm not speaking as Raj Subramaniam, I'm speaking as CEO of FedEx, and there is a significant difference between the two. And so over this period of time, I have learned to be able to say, "Okay, what are the things I am most responsible for?"
(14:29):
It'll be culture, it'll be their strategic direction, it'll be the talent. Those kind of agenda items, which are much more higher level agenda items, I feel today that I'm in that fifty-fifty stage where I can start to think about a longer term horizon. I can think about some of these bigger agenda items whilst some of the operational executional type of things that I have a very, very strong team that can take it forward.
Claire Blake (14:57):
You get the corner office, your jokes start to become funnier. People are starting to tell you a little bit less than they were before. My guess is it's going to be a little bit harder for you to find people who are willing to kind of push you outside of your comfort zone. Now you do have a chairman whose name is Fred Smith, who I'm sure has no problem being very direct with you, but how are you thinking about that now as CEO? How are you building people around you who you know will be authentic, candid, direct, pushing on you? How are you getting that 360 feedback to continue to keep you on sharp and thinking ahead?
Raj Subramaniam (15:35):
That's an excellent point. Before, we used to travel somewhere, we'd sit together and now people run to the back and leave me alone in the front. That's a relatively new development. But having said that, I think I pride myself in the fact that I've built a team of folks who are unafraid to tell me what they're thinking. I'm a very active listener and I kind of keep my mouth shut for a long time when people can have the conversations. And over a period of time, these thought processes and different viewpoints come on the table. And honestly, having the chairman around, I mean, he's constantly thinking, pushing the edge of where we need to be thinking about. So there's no danger of being stuck in the comfort zone. You don't have to worry about that for one second with me. Even despite the role, I don't feel like that I'm being stuck inside a comfort zone at all in whatever manner.
(16:38):
It's on the contrary between a visionary chairman and a very active executive management team. I got enough to keep my brain going here.
Claire Blake (16:52):
Well, I think it says a lot about you and your leadership. I've known you for many years. I know some of those people on that team that are holding you accountable and who are not afraid to share what they think, but I think that you've built an entire career throughout your childhood to now that is all about taking in diverse points of view and perspective says a lot about the way that you lead and the legacy that I think you're leaving behind.
(17:14):
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