Rolls-Royce CEO: “The Future Is Waiting To Be Written”

This week, Glassdoor announced the Highest Rated CEOs in the UK for 2017. So, we caught up with Rolls-Royce CEO Warren East to find out what it means to be a top CEO (#6 in 2017), how to create the best environment for thousands of employees, how he manages his schedule, and we dive into exactly why he thinks he’s featured so highly this year. Glassdoor: What was your first job? Warren East: Design Engineer. Glassdoor: What is your typical morning routine? Warren East: If I’m not travelling, I get up shortly before 5.30 take about 45 minutes over the getting up and having breakfast routine and leave for work shortly after 6.00. I either drive to Derby which gives me time for thinking and a few phone calls or drive to the railway station and take a train to London, in which case I use the journey for email. Otherwise I’m travelling and that generally means an early start to do all the normal work stuff which still goes on when you are elsewhere in the world. Glassdoor: What does “leadership” mean to you? Warren East: Huge question, it’s lots of things. In short: it’s creating the environment within our company for everyone to succeed in their jobs so that we are successful as a whole. Adding colour: it’s to a) ensure we have a vision for the impact our company will have on the world in future; b) orchestrating our strategy to pursue that whilst recognising that strategy continually evolves and needs rework at a detailed level; c) explaining and personifying the company for the outside world of customers, partners and investors;  d) being available for people inside RR;  and e) being available for my team of direct reports filling in the blanks when they are pulled to other things so that they can help me achieve all of the above. Glassdoor: What has been your most rewarding moment as CEO? Your most challenging? Warren East: The most rewarding was in my previous job, on seeing the value of ARM based processors annually match that of Intel, an outstanding company with a formidable track record. The most challenging was also with ARM, when we realised that we had completely messed up explaining to the financial markets our rationale for making a large (40% of mkt cap) international acquisition, realising it would take some years to recover, evidenced by a 30% collapse in the share price. Glassdoor: What do you do to foster employee trust and engagement? Warren East: I try hard to practice what I preach, so if people see me doing things they can relate it back to what I’ve said and realise it’s genuine. Supporting this I try to be as transparent as possible with information about the company. I also try to be available for people in the business. If they want to contact me and get a direct response I encourage it. Glassdoor: Your employees love working here as we see the strong rating on Glassdoor - How do you make this a great place to work day in and day out? Warren East: That’s not me, that’s a team effort and everyone is involved. We are helped hugely by having a great brand built on a long history with highs and lows. Alongside the brand, people work on products which they know touch the lives of millions of people every day and on which those lives depend. This naturally engenders a sense of pride. My task is to encourage our management team to remove barriers every day to make working life easier for all those people. Good leadership is not just one person - How do you work with your leaders and management teams to make sure employees have great leadership here? Warren East: We’ve grown from a relatively small company where decision-making was held by a small number of people. The transformation task that I am driving on which we are now engaged is about creating simplicity, pushing that decision-making away from the centre in a measured way avoiding chaos whilst achieving scalability. That means lots of communication encouraging people away from “committees” which imply lots of discussion and slow (if any) decisions, to small active and fast “teams” which take decisions, act on them, and learn quickly if mistakes are made. The top 150 people, our senior leadership team is a vital link in this process. Glassdoor: Any advice for leaders of other companies? Warren East: Start-up businesses often lack funding and track record and see this as a disadvantage. In the start-up phase purchase orders are better than “funding” this helps address both issues. The start-up advantage is that they start with a blank canvass when it comes to organisation, business model, culture and so on. As you grow, remember that nimbleness. Think, if we were a start-up what would we do? And then ask why can we not do that today? What would we need to change to act like a start-up with the advantage of scale and track record? My other key theme is to be forward looking. We can’t change the past, but the future is waiting to be written, by us, the people of today. If you don’t write it somebody else will. Glassdoor: Why do you think you get such high approval from your own employees? Warren East: We are helped by having a great brand and a business where people do some very satisfying work.  We’ve had a tough time for a few years. I’m being very transparent with the organisation about our situation and now we are working hard to transform the business to be 21st century combat capable and fit for the future. This is an exciting mission. Glassdoor: It’s clear you inspire many of your own employees - who inspires you? Warren East: No one person in particular. I look to many heroes of mankind’s conquest of knowledge throughout history particularly around science and engineering. On a day to day basis it’s probably my wife! Glassdoor: What type of people do you like to hire and why? I try to hire the person not the CV, (obviously with sufficient knowledge and experience to do the job!). Generally if I’m hiring senior leaders I’m looking for curious, energetic, quick witted, intelligent people, who can get on with others, and define their own goals and milestones to achieve those. Ideally also people for whom I would be happy to work. Glassdoor: If you weren’t a CEO, what would you be (in terms of a job or career)? Warren East: I’d definitely be an Engineer and probably an entrepreneur with my own company. I would need to be creating and growing my impact on the world.

Does Warren sound like someone you’d like to work for? Apply for jobs at Rolls-Royce here.