Report on Sun Leadership Connections for VPs/Directors

Last week I was in a new class for Sun Directors and
Vice Presidents. The class is called “Leadership Connections”.
See my
September 05, 2008 blog entry for what it took to prepare for this
class.

“Leadership Connections” was challenging, hard work, and very interesting. There were
over 100 Sun Directors from all over the world and every professional area
split into 16 teams, each with a VP advisor. The teams competed in running
simulated companies for three days (or three years in the life of each company).
We had to create a strategy and then modify our company numbers to support it.
There were screens for each of the major Engineering areas, Sales, Service, etc.
with maybe 100 fields we could modify. How many in the salesforce? How many
software vs. systems Engineers? What kind of prices and discounts would we offer?
Which companies would we bid to acquire? We took turns being keyboard jockeys for
the laptop running the simulation. Every morning each team was presented with
the financial and competitive results of the prior day’s decisions and the
companies were ranked in order of their success.

We named the company for our team of six Eclipse. Eclipse included staff from Sales,
Service, Finance, and Marketing in addition to me. I got to be Chief Engineer (only in a
simulation!). Out of the four Red World companies, Eclipse came in 3rd the first day,
4th the second day, and 2nd the final day. That is, we did not win but
we competed well and improved. On the last day, each of the 16 teams presented
their strategy and results to a member of the Executive Leadership Team (CEO’s
staff). After the presentations, the winners in the Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green worlds
competed for overall winner.

In addition to the company simulations, we discussed team communications, played games,
built a product, and ate too much. There were three panels of Vice Presidents
for us to question, plus a talk by Sun’s CEO and President,
Jonathan Schwartz.

On the morning of 11 September, we stopped for a minute of silence to honor the memory
of Sun Director Phil
Rosenzweig, who was among the victims killed in the crash of American Airlines
Flight 11 at the World Trade Center in New York City seven years ago.

The best part of the class was getting to know some of the extremely capable people with
whom I have worked for years without actually meeting. Also, it was great fun to learn
which Director wears socks patterned with baseballs and which Distinguished Engineer
is amazingly good playing Guitar Hero. Here
are some photos from “Leadership Connections”:

Eclipse Team

Mary and me

Executive Leadership Team panel

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson