Hey there and welcome back to Lead the Team.

What happens when a leader blends the cultural insights of Bangladesh, the innovation of Sweden and the entrepreneurial spirit of America?

Well, meet Anante Islam, the CEO of Kerber Business Area Supply Chain Americas, a division of the global technology powerhouse headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.

With operations spanning continents, Kerber is at the forefront of supply chain innovation.

His journey is from the roots of Bangladesh to his formative years in Sweden and now leading the US has instilled in him a very unique perspective on adaptability, resilience and visionary leadership.

His passion for sports like tennis, which is a passion of mine and pickleball, also mirrors his approach to business, which includes strategic, competitive and team oriented strategy and vision.

In this episode, we're going to dive into navigating leadership across diverse cultures and generations, building high performing teams rooted in trust and collaboration, and fostering a culture that balances financial success with human centric values.

Anante, welcome to Lead the team, my friend.

Thank you, Ben, thank you.

Pleasure to be on.

Yeah, so much fun today.

So how can future leaders tackle the challenges between different generations of leaders and leadership styles?

Yeah, Ben, you know, for me, I think this is a topic which is very near and dear to my heart.

Early on in my career I had leaders that had very different styles.

So I worked for a company known as Gaia, where our president, CEO of Gaya, had what I'll call a very traditional old school style of leadership.

You know, do as you're told, military show up at this time, do your job, get the hell out.

Whereas our vice president had a very different approach.

Right.

So the approach of, you know, how can I support you?

How can we raise up the organization together?

Right.

And you know, I always struggled with which direction to go and what was appropriate.

But very early on, personally I could relate much better to our vice president.

And that for me I found as more effective, but I just didn't know what was appropriate.

And I took a course with American Management association and they were very particular about defining what the old school style of leadership was and what the new school style of leadership is and what may be more effective moving forward.

So for me, it was sort of a validation of what I thought to be right.

And I took that to heart.

And then, you know, moving forward from there, as a young leader, I learned to adapt my style to the audience that I was leading.

Right.

So I was born in 1981, so I am right at the beginning of being a millennial.

But then you have and work and lead Gen X, Gen Z, and different generations respond differently to different styles of leadership.

And for me, I consider it my job to be fluid, dynamic, and to be able to adapt to my audience.

Right.

I view that as a responsibility of being a leader.

So for me, that's very important, and that's something that I consider key for leaders to be effective moving forward.

Yeah.

What a great story.

And words that come to mind for me are leadership flux.

Yep.

Like, you're flexing your muscles.

You know what?

I'm flexing my leadership style, but not in the way you would think to be more adaptable.

Is there a time, like, once that light bulb went off for you, like, where's.

There was there a time where, like, you know, like, you had your one approach and you thought this was going to be the way to work as a leader, and then you remember that course, you remember that vp, and you're like, wait a minute, I need to try a different way.

And then that different way, a different approach paid off in some way.

You know, what pays off for me more than anything else is how you see employees respond.

And I could see that me being able to pivot or flex, as you said, would generate different responses from different individuals.

And for me, more than anything else, that was a validation of, okay, you know what?

At the end of the day, that is my obligation and my duty as a leader.

Right.

Is how do I get people motivated?

How do I get people driven?

And when I saw that validation, that for me was, okay, you know what?

That's the path I need to continue going down.

So how in the world does that work in a big organization with so many people globally?

Because you can't possibly.

Maybe you can.

I don't want to say you can't do it, but it's hard to get to know so many people when you're working on the business.

So you flex or adapt to.

Yeah.

When you, as you rise as a leader, it probably gets.

Sure, sure, sure.

I mean, first off, I guess my leadership sphere of influence is mostly my direct reporting line, which is, you know, eight or 10 people, if you consider direct or indirect.

But in that leadership team, I have leaders that are in their mid-30s that have worked mostly with Amazon, which you can imagine.

There's no emails, everything is text teams, nothing.

Nothing is recorded.

It's fluid, it's dynamic, and things change on the drop of a dime.

Then I've got leaders that come from big fortune, 500s, decades of experience, ton of know how that are very traditional in their approach.

So that's where I have to flex in how I operate.

Right.

I really try to emphasize that, that.

That'S a very important distinction because I think for leaders to be thinking about how you communicate and flexing your, not just leadership style, but actually how you talk to people, how you communicate the message using the technologies that they're most likely to receive and respond to.

I think of, I think of it too, when you're in a big meeting and some people will not participate in a chat because they feel like it's beneath them as a leader.

But meanwhile, all the younger generations, they're just like loading up the chat with all kinds of stuff.

And also, leaders oftentimes do not like to use emojis.

At least that's right.

What's your take on emoji usage in the world and do leaders need to become more fluid with that?

You know, just coming from Gaia to Kerber for me was also eye opening.

Gaia was stock listed.

Also a German engineering conglomerate approach was different.

Much more, I don't want to say, maybe regimented is the word, but you at a certain level, executive, you operate in a certain way.

At Kerber, privately owned culture approach is different.

I'm not saying, you know, right, wrong or indifferent, but big user of emojis.

And you'll see on LinkedIn, our chairman of the board is using emojis.

And I think that to me also sets certain sort of a culture in the organization.

So I'm a free, willing user of emojis.

I don't hesitate.

And at the end of the day, for me, how do you spice up the message?

How do you draw attention?

How do you get people excited?

It's not just black and white text.

You gotta throw some emojis in there.

A funny thing, as a Gen Xer, I was so annoyed by emojis and so annoyed by the people that use them.

Initially, I'm like, why are we doing this to ourselves?

We just send the text message, right?

I have a teenage daughter and you know, some younger team members, younger members of my team, and they use them a lot.

And like, okay, now I'm, now I'm appreciating a lot more.

I know I probably like sound really old when I say that, but it's, it's like to your point, we have to get curious.

We have to adapt.

We have to like, if you need, if you're going to reach people, you got to reach.

Yeah, they can appreciate it.

Absolutely, absolutely.

No, so, so there are a couple directions and that I like to go here, but there's one Specifically, like in the introduction, being born in Bangladesh, being raised in Sweden, working here as a leader in the Americas.

What.

What is that secret sauce that you think having this diverse upbringing has given you in terms of how it informs your leadership?

You know, I think it's on a couple of fronts.

The obvious one is I've had exposure to people from all walks of life, cultures, languages, you name it.

Right.

Bangladesh, Sweden and the US are very different parts of the world that appreciate and value different things.

So from that standpoint, it just gives me, I feel like a broader perspective just having had that exposure and being able to relate to people on different levels.

But then the fact of the matter is, immigrating from Bangladesh, my father went to get his PhD at Uppsala University right outside of Stockholm.

And then moving from Sweden to here.

There are languages, language, cultural barriers that you have to overcome, and you have to set the foundation again.

You're almost starting from scratch when you're immigrating from one country to another.

So from an upbringing perspective, it was never easy.

We didn't have the things I'm handing my kids today we never took for granted.

So it gave me an ability to, you know, power through difficult circumstances as a leader.

You're going to have ups and downs.

In our journey at Kerber today, we're going through and looking to double our top line by being a product, from being a product supplier to an integrator.

This is not an easy journey.

Right.

And the.

I always say the line is never like this, Right.

It's, it's, it's zigzag.

And as a leader, having had those childhood experiences for me, enables me to put everything in perspective.

Right.

On a broader basis.

Yeah.

On one hand, people might hear that story like, hey, that, that was stressful, or you're taking someone from one country, a completely different culture, putting them another one, and now he's having to lead a company in a completely different one.

But on the other hand, it's been an advantage because you had to, it sounds like, face some pretty difficult situations early on.

You're like, hey, double the top line.

I got this.

Sure, sure, sure.

It's not going to be easy.

Yeah.

And it's simple things, right?

As a fourth grader joining a rec league basketball team, we never played basketball back, you know, in Sweden, basketball was not prevalent like it is here.

And, you know, I'm taking a ball and I'm just walking in.

I'm not passing the ball in off the end line and everyone's looking at me saying, what, what is this guy doing?

And you know, those kinds of experiences.

It might sound minute, but as a fourth grader, you know, everyone looking at you, shouting, shouting at you, you know, it, it forms who you are.

You, you, you grow a thick skin, right?

Yeah, it's, I'm sure it was hard as a fourth grader.

Those are, those are difficult years.

And you got middle school.

Oh gosh.

But absolutely.

And you come on the other side and you're like, hey, you know, I've faced some tough situations.

Absolutely.

And it sounds like it's.

And, and also I like the fact that you, like, you acknowledge that success and progress does not happen up into the right all the time.

There are dips along the way.

And shifting that expectation for yourself and for others helps you keep going.

Because now you.

Absolutely, Absolutely.

What was.

So thinking back to the early days, what was your first job and how does it still influence your leadership today?

You know, it's funny, I graduated from University of Maryland.

Go Terps.

Right.

As a, as a chemical engineer.

And my first job out of school was working for a company called Teledyne Engineering, working as project engineer on developing fuel cells for automotive industry.

And those three years I learned a lot about myself.

For better or worse, I learned I was not a very good engineer.

And I'll tell anyone and everyone that, right.

I was not intuitive in working with my hands.

So doing design, build, engineer, test.

Right.

Was not intuitive for me.

So what, what it helped me learn is that I better, well start to pivot you leveraging my degree and what I know into areas that I can, you know, be more successful, honestly speaking.

And I would go on road trips as the technical resource on, you know, with senior level sales guys said, holy cow, man.

Talking for you is intuitive.

Selling is intuitive, Business development is intuitive.

And then slowly I found leadership to be intuitive too.

So what I always say is those three years help me understand what I am not good at and then help me pivot into areas where I feel like I am better at.

And that's how, that's how I've adapted over time.

Love that.

And so many things are to really reveal.

One is do you had the, you had the courage to make a change in a career that you invested three years in.

Now for some people like three years is nothing in like a 30 year career or whatever.

But at that time it probably felt like a big deal because you'd only been working for three years.

Absolutely.

And don't forget, I went to school for chemical engineering, which you know is not, not easy, right.

So four years of doing that and then three years of working in the field and I said, my God, you know what?

This ain't for me.

Wow.

Yeah.

So when you had that realization, what, like how quickly did you get through that difficult decision making and then make the, make the change, Was it a quick shift or did it take a while to.

You know, I think it was iterative.

I, I could see that, you know, Teledyne was also somewhere where I'd co opt and intern during school.

So for me, I think it was my, my first gig.

Right.

But a recruiter came calling and there was an opportunity for business development role, sales engineer role with Gaia.

And I interviewed and I didn't have a lot of direct experience having worked as a sales engineer.

So those first 12 to 18 months working in that new role was a lot of learning on the job as well.

But again, right when, when something feels easy or intuitive, I think it's much easier to, to succeed as opposed to, as I say, right.

Trying to fit a, fit a round peg, which I was in a square hole.

You had a very similar experience where I was an industrial engineer coming out and started in that role.

And I really wanted to travel the world.

Right.

Saw that as a way to help facilitate that.

And it did.

But eventually I was like, man, okay, the travel is one thing, but I'm doing the work that I'm really not cut out for.

Exactly.

But it was a hard decision to make.

But it sounds like for you, you, like you said, like you mentioned the word intuition.

Yes.

And I'm curious what other roles or what's the role that you believe intuition plays in your leadership approach and you know, what's the time maybe other than, other than your career, where you had to rely on it?

Yeah, great question.

I think intuition plays a big part in how I operate, in how I lead, and sometimes almost too much so where I have to consciously tell myself to not rely so heavily on, on the intuition.

I think, have you been bitten before?

You're like, have you had a situation then where like your gut was telling you this is the right thing and you relied upon it like, oh, that didn't work out the right, the right way.

So now.

Absolutely.

I mean, I always say every bone in my body is wired as a sales guy.

Right.

I'm about top line growth.

I'm about making deals, I'm about growing the top line.

If you're looking for someone to scale back, shut down an operation, that's not me, which is why I'm at KERBER Right.

Kerber's looking at big growth plans.

So sometimes that business development, sales, making deals side of you, you have to be conscious of.

Are you making the right deals?

Are you mitigating the right level of risk?

Right.

So from that perspective, as a leader, I always try to make it a point to surround myself with people that will say no to me and say, you know, check me.

Right.

Because you have to have that healthy balance.

So.

But that requires me to know who I am and.

And be conscious about it.

Yeah.

So good.

Know what your strengths are, but don't let them run unchecked as the leader, because then you could get the team way off.

That's right.

And you've built a team for balance, it sounds like.

That's right.

Not just based on a team, their strengths, but also how their strengths play with each other.

And you.

So you have a.

Have a balanced approach there.

Absolutely.

So good.

So what's the trait that you wish you could instill in every employee?

And why do you think it's important?

This is an easy one for me because if you hear me talk, if you hear me engage, if I'm interviewing someone, if I'm meeting a new employee, I always say, right.

Anyone that will listen to me knows I have two rules, okay?

Rule number one for me is the customer is always right within reason.

And rule number two is go back to rule number one, period.

End of story.

And that applies not only for sales.

People think that's always sales.

That is also finance, that is execution.

That is all walks of life within our organization.

And my experience has always shown that in the long run, if you take care of your customers, your customers will take care of you.

Right?

And classic example, Jeff Bezos, Amazon.

Right.

He would always have an empty chair in their boardroom that represented the voice of the customer.

It's very easy to sit in a boardroom minus the customer, make decisions that will have impact on our customers.

But if you always have the customer top of mind at every level of an organization and every single member of the organization, our customers will feel that.

Right.

And despite what a contract might say, despite what the language on a piece of paper might say, I always have the firm belief that business also comes down to people, relationships with people.

And from.

From that standpoint, that.

That is the mentality, that is the mindset that I want every employee of our organization carrying.

And.

And, you know, that's really it.

So it's.

It's simple, but it means a lot.

Do you ever run into push back on it, saying well, let.

Remember that Henry Ford quote of people or customers.

I'm not sure which one he said, but people what they wanted, I would.

They would have asked me for a faster horse.

Of course.

I mean, you talk to any.

Anyone in execution or engineering or legal.

Right.

Those are parts of our organization.

They're, you know, they're wired in a different way.

And I, I fully appreciate it.

I.

I get it.

I mean, like I said, you need checks and balances.

But at the end of the day, like I said, I have a firm belief, and it's always proven true, that this type of an approach will validate itself.

And it also goes in line.

Kerber has an ethos.

We want to be our customer's number one choice.

Customer's number one choice.

And again, on paper, it sounds very simple.

But if you talk to our accounts and they say, you know what?

Herbert delivers on what they say they have a quality and a value differentiator that separates itself from others.

That's where we want to be as a company.

Yeah.

Very powerful.

And I think, going.

Thinking about that Henry Ford quote too.

It probably depends on your industry.

You know, if you're doing a product versus, like an integration where you need to really tailor and customize.

Right.

You know, really to meet the needs of the customer and they keep you in business.

And I know from personal experience, it's hard sometimes you work like you develop something, you've got a product you believe in, and dang it, the customer's like, you know what?

I just don't like it.

It doesn't work for me.

It's hard.

Hence, the customer is always right.

Within reason.

Right?

Within a reason.

Within reason.

So, yeah, within a reason.

When's the time you had an unexpected twist or failure in your career and how did it lead to your success or growth on.

Down the road?

Yeah, you know, I.

I'll.

I'll go back to what I said earlier.

I guess, you know, it's.

It's my time working as an engineer.

Right.

And honestly, when it's not intuitive, it's hard for things to go right.

So I would have issues in designing a fuel cell that would lead to issues in the field that at the end of the day, I had to take ownership of.

And honestly speaking, I really struggled in that role.

So I think it was unexpected because I graduated as a chemical engineer, and that to me, was sort of a stamp on a piece of paper saying, I'm an engineer.

That's great validation.

I know what I'm doing.

Yeah, you got to introduce Yourself at a cocktail party, what do you do?

That's right.

But that stamp only goes so far.

When in the field you have a lot of unexpected twist twists or failures.

Right.

But again.

Right.

It taught me to be nimble, to be dynamic, to pivot.

And even today I always look at those experiences and that experiences to look at opportunities of how I should be evolving.

Right.

How I should be pivoting, how I should grow.

So I always hold that in the back of my head.

You strike me as a very self reflective leader.

Is this something that like a muscle you've cultivated and you have a, like a frequent process where you like reflect on your goals, reflect on the past and channel them forward or just something that's sort of natural to your, to your approach?

Yeah, good, good question.

I have had executive coaches that have said that it's important to self reflect and say, you know, your brain is a muscle just like your bicep is a muscle.

And if you don't work on muscles that you don't intuitively, you know, work on that are sitting dormant, then there's no way to evolve as a person over time.

And then I just think innately that's who I am.

And honestly, Ben, that's for better or worse, sometimes too much.

So do I think about how I'm being perceived or what people are thinking of me?

My wife always jokes, you will never find me on a dance floor at a wedding.

Why?

Because I'm always wondering, how will I be perceived?

How do I look?

I'm not a dancer.

I shouldn't be out here.

Just get out there.

Come on.

Everyone else.

It's not my strength.

It's not my strength.

You're thinking about your chemical engineer and you're like, I learned that lesson as a chemical engineer.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

But maybe you haven't just had the right kind of music yet played for you at a wedding.

Maybe.

So others might argue or beg to differ.

Right.

So yeah, it's so funny.

So they're pros and cons of that too, Right?

There's like a light, bright light side, shadow side or whatever.

Like you're thinking about how you're going to be perceived, how the business will, how your customers feel.

And it goes back from trying something potentially.

But you know, I think about it, there's this quote and I think it's by a Michigan or Michigan State professor.

Yeah.

Famous quote about if you've, if you don't self reflect.

Yeah.

20 years of experience.

But it may be the same year, repeated 20 times.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's spot on.

I think that's spot on.

And you see it, honestly, I see it in leaders at many different levels.

You know, they have one approach, they're not nimble, they're not evolving.

And for me, there's, as I go back to what I said off the top, that limits your effectiveness.

I really do believe that.

So good.

Well, starting to wrap this up and on tan.

It's been a fun one.

What are your three sort of go to success strategies that you believe every leader or employee.

Employee needs to know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think for me it's number one, it's about everyone says they have a strategy, but for me, a strategy is not a piece of document that you develop, put in a drawer and then dust off once a year.

Right.

And for me, a strategy, I always say, is a living, breathing document and a set of standards that's alive and you're using to measure your business on a daily basis.

If you look at tools like Hosh and Kanri, tools for taking strategy and developing a day to day, a week to week objectives, KPI's owners from that strategy, that to me is the number one tool.

You know, if you don't have a strategy that drives your business on a daily basis, then, then what are you doing as a leader?

Right.

That I firmly believe that.

Number two, I went to a leadership summit at, in Switzerland at the imd, which was campus.

Right.

Extended learning put together by Harvard and Nestle back in the day.

Right.

And that's now evolved.

And one of the things that stuck with me was this concept of finding your A.

So what is it that you as a company have has that your competitors do not have that your customers want?

I think it's always so critical to be mindful of finding your A.

Kerber is not about just being a commoditized Me too supplier.

Our tagline is market leadership through technology leadership.

And that to me is so key.

We want to be adding value that nobody else can add to our customers.

That's number two.

And then number three, big, big believer in processes.

So, you know, for driving sales, for driving operations, you know, root cause, countermeasure analysis.

To me, you want to try to minimize how much time you're operating in the gray and really try to spend more time in the black and white and lean on facts in your decision making.

And that to me is linked to processes.

So those would be the three very.

Very good, very concise ones there.

I just want to wrap up on this finding your A.

Because I feel like that was what your chemical engineering background was.

Right.

You're like, hey, this is not my A.

Yeah.

Went out and you found your A.

Yes.

Seems like that moment has now channeled.

It's coming to full sort of blossom in your leadership style with a company because you're like, we're going to find ra.

Yeah.

As a business.

And I love that because, like, we're not gonna go earn it.

We're not going to go make it up.

We're going to take what's inherent.

We're inherently good at.

Yes.

And we're going to find the A with.

With that.

Absolutely.

And build something great.

And Kerber's off to.

Off to do big things.

I mean, you got big goals.

Without a doubt.

Without big goals, but a big vision to match it.

100%.

100%.

We are big believers in our vision.

We have a chairman of the board and a supervisory board that is very ambitious in its vision.

We were less than 1 billion as top line revenue a few years back.

Today we're sitting at approaching three and a half billion with ambitions to be at 10 in five years time.

So you need that level of, you know, ambition, boldness and finding your A.

Right.

Finding your A.

Let's go.

Thanks for coming on the show today, Anante.

Absolutely.

A pleasure.

Thank you, Ben.