I recently went one-on-one with Dr. John W. Mitchell, CEO of Global Electronics Association.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
John: If you look at my education, it looks like I am still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. I have three very different degrees – electrical engineering, business, and an education doctorate. On the engineering side, I started at General Electric Aerospace before moving into leadership positions at Alpine Electronics and Bose. When I was working on my doctorate, I was also CEO of Golden Key International Honor Society, working with around 400 universities worldwide. For the last 13 years, I have combined much of my background to oversee a leading association that focuses on the entire global electronics ecosystem, working across thousands of member companies, partners and dozens of governments around the world.
With respect to challenges … there was a time when I felt like I could pull off the projects I was responsible for through sheer personal effort, if it got to that point. Eventually, projects get so big that it becomes impossible to rely on just yourself, and you realize you must surround yourself with excellent people.
Adam: What are the best lessons you have learned from leading an association?
John: Leading an association is unique because many associations and nonprofits are led by passion for a cause, but don’t necessarily bring business acumen to it. Our strategy at the Global Electronics Association, known previously as IPC, has been to incorporate both.
Companies used to be very profit-focused – look at our stock, look at our delivery for shareholders. That has shifted. Companies now need to be purpose-focused so consumers know they care about more than just money. In leading an association, that purpose is implicit – you have a special interest group that you’re caring for. Ours happens to be the entire electronics industry.
The key lesson is that bringing business acumen along with the importance of your special interest group allows you to succeed and accelerate success. In many ways, we act very much like a for-profit because we know those fundamental business principles are core to being able to build and deliver capabilities that allow us to better serve our constituency.
It’s not enough to have passion alone – you need both the vision and the work, both the mission and the money. If I want to be a great triathlete and watch YouTube videos and read books about the skills required, but I never get off the couch, it doesn’t make much difference. Your passion must be matched by professionalism and execution.
Adam: What are your best tips for fellow association leaders?
John: First, don’t fall into the trap of thinking there’s “the human side” and “the business side.” The people ARE the business. As Paul Baldassari, president of global manufacturing and services for the nearly $20 billion organization Flex, recently told me: “We can all buy the same parts, we can all buy the same machines – it’s the people that make one company better than another.”
Second, invest heavily in your people because they’re your greatest resource. They’re the intangible element that makes all the other parts work together.
Third, be prepared for difficult decisions. Sometimes the human side and business side do come into conflict. The hardest things I’ve had to do involve letting people go. During the pandemic, before we made the difficult decision to slightly reduce our team size, our executive team first took severe salary cuts. The reduction of staff was our third action, not our first.
Finally, maintain both caring and accountability. We’re not a family – we’re a team. I told our organization this directly in an all-hands meeting, using the Chicago Bulls as an example. When someone isn’t performing on a basketball team, you bench them. If they’re really not fitting, you trade them to another team where they might become an all-star. It’s direct, but honest about the reality of organizational leadership.
Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
John: Leaders need to care. That caring goes in multiple directions and is often misunderstood.
People sometimes think of executives as being cold when they have to make hiring and firing decisions. But even when letting someone go for cause, it’s still hard because of the impact on that person and their family. There’s caring on the people side, but you also need to care about the work you’re doing.
I’ve interviewed close to 3,000 people over three decades, and in almost every interview I ask the candidates to share something they’re passionate about. I find that passionate people, whether they’re passionate about climbing mountains or caring for dogs, will leverage that sense of passion in other aspects of their lives. This includes work. People of passion tend to care about the output they produce and in turn make great team members.
We recently hired someone, and when comparing two similarly qualified candidates, we chose the one who was asking the best questions: “Can you tell me about why you do this? How do you go about X?” You could tell the person was already starting to care about our organization and what we were trying to do. We look to fill our organization with people like that, even in entry-level positions, because they’re going to grow to be leaders.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
John: Mentors. The value of mentorship is amazing, and you’d be surprised how many people will say yes to an opportunity to mentor you.
I used to have monthly lunches with Charles Knapp, who was previously the University of Georgia’s president when I was working on my doctorate. I asked if we could meet because I wanted to understand more about running universities. That experience was invaluable.
But here’s the crucial caveat: if you don’t do the things your mentor recommends, you’ll find them not interested in talking to you for very long. Mentorship is a relationship. It’s “I see what you’re recommending, is this how I would go about doing this?” Then next time: “I tried some of these things you talked about, here was my experience.”
An intern I mentored took this to heart, and by the end of his internship, because he was doing things I counseled him on, he ended up reporting directly to that company’s CEO. I told him to bring solutions, not complaints, to leadership. When the next project comes up and people ask who should be on the team, they’ll call the solution-finders, not the whiners. I believe by mentoring a young professional who’s been working for less than five years, I can help cut roughly three years off their next five-year professional progression just by working with them – but only if they actually implement what we discuss.
Selfishly, mentoring is also an incredible way for leaders to up their cultural intelligence. Like few other experiences, it helps you understand different generational expectations, cultural perspectives, and work styles, which expands your capacity to care for your team.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
John: Again, it comes back to caring. I like to make sure everybody gets heard, which can be difficult because we all have our own ideas and thoughts. One of the hardest things for me is to shut up until everybody’s had a chance to talk, because you can suck the oxygen out of the room.
My team knows me well enough that they can tell me, “John, that’s a terrible idea and here’s why.” That type of respect and intimacy is important. To lead effectively, you need your team to be able to tell you, “There’s a better way.”
The challenge is knowing when to stop the discussion. At the end of the day, it’s the leader’s job to say, “Okay, enough – here’s what we’re going to do.” I do the final interview for everybody in our organization because I want them to understand my vision and know that they can reach out to me once they’re part of the team. But I also want them to understand that just because everybody is passionate about something doesn’t mean that’s what we’ll do. We pick and choose strategically based on the goals for the Association. We may fail sometimes, and that’s okay.
The key is balancing individual input with team accountability.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
John: First, I think it’s important to acknowledge where we stand today. We’re not just experiencing workforce changes – we’re in the midst of a complete reimagining of how organizations operate. This “Great Reimagining” I wrote about in my book, “Fire Your Hiring Habits,” is a tremendous opportunity for leaders to be bold.
Second, don’t just “find your passion.” Instead, find what you’re good at and work at it so hard that you become passionate about it. Passion follows mastery and effort, not the other way around.
Third, it just takes work. One of the best compliments I was ever paid was when I was interviewing for this role. A prior boss at Bose, when pushed for details about my performance, called me “tireless.” Coming from someone who was himself an incredibly hard worker, that meant everything.
There’s no substitute for the work. Resourcefulness, creativity, innovation, problem-solving – they all stem from being willing to put in the effort to figure it out and find solutions with whatever resources you have. Don’t sit there and say, “I need a billion dollars” or “I need 47 people.” Use your existing resources to figure it out. That will often demand creativity.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
John: While I’m sure somebody told me this somewhere, I’ve tried to live by it: surround yourself with great people.
I’ve been fortunate to have excellent people around me here at the Global Electronics Association for over 13 years, to the point where if I were out of commission for six months, I believe the organization would run as good or maybe even better. That’s not self-deprecation – that’s the power of building a team of people who are better than you at what they do.
This advice encompasses everything: hiring, mentoring, team building, and creating a culture where great people want to work and can thrive. If you get this right, everything else becomes possible.
