Bill McKeon

I've been very blessed with opportunities as being a CEO in Asia, in Europe and the United States.

And I think these journeys actually built on one another.

As a matter of fact, when I look back, most of my life, professional life has been spent outside of the United States.

And it's taught me a lot about leadership because what I've learned is your leadership style, what works in the United States doesn't work in China or London.

And while the basic principles that we think about in leadership, work ethic, in-depth analysis of a business, understanding, value proposition, product differentiation, those are solid fundamentals.

Those work in all business scenarios, but actually understanding what motivates people is very different in different parts of the world.

Let me give you a couple examples.

When we think about young companies and startups, and I've worked in major corporations as well as startups,

So in the United States, stock options is everything.

People will take very low salaries to get stock options with the hope that the company flips and those stock options are worth in many cases, millions.

What I found in the UK when we had stock options, it was really interesting.

I had employees coming to me asking to trade stock options for more vacation time.

And it really struck me because that would have never happened in the United States.

But in the UK, vacation time was really important to people, so important.

And when I talked about the numbers of how many millions they could be passing on, it really didn't resonate.

In Stockholm, for example, what was really important to them was title.

So if you offered to give someone a raise of $20,000 or $30,000, they were much more interested in how their title would change.

And when you understand kind of in a country, a socialist country, where

most of the income is taxed and many things are provided for, that the pecking order of titles was much more important.

So what I've learned is not to assume anything that if you don't really cut to the real hopes and desires and dreams of the people, that you really can't lead them because those things are so important on how they resonate and how they're motivated.