In this episode, I interview Sankar Sewnauth, the President and CEO of CDS Life Transitions. Serving throughout the Western New York region, CDS Life Transitions is a mission-driven, diverse family of companies focused on helping individuals with physical and intellectual challenges realize their dreams and lead successful lives.
We discuss how to overcome the difficulties of leading a complex organization through uncharted waters, how to recognize and nurture the success of team members, and how to balance both the strategic AND operational leadership in a company operating in a highly competitive environment. Sankar’s story is not one you want to miss!
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Podcast Episode 4: Leadership Strategies – An Interview with Sankar Sewnauth of CDS Life Transitions
Robert Mixon:
Hello everyone, and welcome to the continuing series of Level 5 Associates podcasts!
Today’s topic we’re going to focus with another distinguished leader here in the community on strategic leadership … and that individual is Mr. Sankar Siwanath, who is the president and CEO of CDS Life Transitions, a family of companies here headquartered in Webster, New York but reaches all across Western New York to help people fulfill their dreams who have some intellectual challenges.
Sankar, I’ve had the privilege of knowing you now for about 10 years and working with you.
I’ve really been impressed by your ability to lead a complex organization through some difficult times and I know the times were even more difficult before you and I met in terms of growing this company and your personal journey, where you came to America are basically fulfilling an American dream and came from the very basic level of responsibility in this organization to become its senior executive and thanks so much for being here and joining me today.
Sankar Sewnauth:
Well thank you Robert, I really appreciate the opportunity, the feeling is mutual. I’ve worked closely with you for the last 10 years, and you’re a man of a lot of talent and integrity and I really enjoyed our association with you and your wife as well.
Robert Mixon:
Thanks.
Sankar Sewnauth:
So, thank you.
Robert Mixon:
Thanks Sankar.
Today with our audience I’d like to basically pick your brain, about the concept of ‘strategic leadership’ and how that translates into the operational and tactical parts of leadership so that you can guide the enterprise, but still be very much in touch with everyone on the team.
So the first question I’d like to ask is, how do you separate strategic thinking from the operational and tactical thinking as CEO?
Sankar Sewnauth:
That’s a great question. Every organization that’s effective and accomplishes its goals usually has a strategic plan.
It has to engage in strategy, looking out on the horizon so where it desires to be whether it’s a three-year period or five-year period and even longer term 10-year period.
We at CDS we tend to look at the three-year cycle, for because in our business, because we depend on federal government, and state government for our funding … we have to look out about three years, and so when we look at strategy we try to predict what the next three years are going to look like looking at internally where we are as an organization which you need the benchmark … where you are, and then looking at all the opportunities that are coming forward.
So when you ask about ‘strategic thinking’ relative to ‘operational thinking,’ they’re really intertwined, because the strategic direction usually drives where your operations are … and you never separate it because if you do, you could become disaligned or unaligned at some point where you are going in one direction and you’ve lost sight of what your strategy is or you may have challenges going on in your organization that cause you to take a step aside … and so always on a daily basis I keep as a CEO, I keep the strategy in place… “what is our end goal.”
So for example, we are moving into the managed care space for people with intellectual disabilities.
We started up a managed care organization for people who are non-disabled. We used it as an incubator four years ago. We’ve now established a plan, it’s serving about 4,000 people in upstate New York in 22 counties. So we said to ourselves, where do we want to be in the next three to five years … and so making an assumption for people with intellectual disabilities how many of them will come into the marketplace, we have to do some things now.
So operationally, we’re aligning the organization by putting some infrastructure in place… personnel, information technology, building relationships with customers, providers, getting the necessary licenses for the state of New York. We’ve put those on a project plan with deliverables with target dates — and our people every day they know what they need to do.
So you always want to remind them — and you don’t do that every day — but you remind them “here’s our end goal, guys” and “here’s how we’re performing against the end goal.”
Robert Mixon:
Okay.
Sankar Sewnauth:
Does that make sense?
Robert Mixon:
It does! You know, that connectivity I think is important.
Sankar Sewnauth:
Absolutely.
Robert Mixon:
You’ve got to keep them distinct but they have to be connected. Is that right?
Okay, well thanks.
Who were your senior executive role models as you moved through your career? What qualities did they have that you admired?
Sankar Sewnauth:
It’s such a great question, and you really think about the people that have really influenced you. One of the people that really impacted my career, is a gentleman by the name of Sylvester Zielinski. He used to be the director of the local office of the state of New York that directed the services for people with intellectual disabilities. I got to know him. We actually in a way we reported that office locally for the people with intellectual disabilities and when things were really bad at CDS he stood by me and he said “Sankar, I’ll work with you together and we’ll get the organization out of the mess it’s in”… and he stayed true to his word. When he retired, I said “what are you gonna do in retirement?” and he said “I don’t know.” I said, “well, how about joining our team at CDS?” and he came here.
The thing that impressed me about Sy, is that he wasn’t just a good leader he had all of the things to back him up.
He went to school, he was a really trained leader, he had a good way about him, he listened first, listened to you really thoroughly, you know integrated what you were saying into his thinking … and then whenever he spoke you always listened, because he had something really good to say and he wouldn’t say it in just two sentences you will break down what he’s trying to tell you in its different parts so you had a complete understanding.
He just had an approach that really taught me that you know … you don’t have to shoot from the hip. You really should really take time to listen to people and provide good advice. Give good feedback when people talk to you … and as a leader you want to be in that position of explaining things to your people — constantly because they may not realize what you’re thinking and you’re making assumptions.
If you make assumptions often and then you’re in a different plane than your staff … and so, talk it through with them and you learn as they learn and you grow together. You grow together as a team.
Sy was one of those.
If you ask me as I look back, the one person I always go back to who influenced me is one of the founding fathers of the United States of America and that’s George Washington. A man who was running his farm and had some skills… and they tapped him to build the army to fight with the British and without any regard for himself he put the country first and he came forward, didn’t look for enumeration, he just wanted him to do what was right for the country and for his fellow citizens. When I look at what he sacrificed, and I compare to what we talk about these things now… I think our modern-day leaders don’t even have a clue what it takes to lead.
He truly sacrificed… like put himself in danger on a daily basis and when things were really hard to keep that militia that turned into an army together… just took you know just a groundswell of energy and talent and conviction that he had… and he stayed true to it.
I don’t know that there’s any other leader that I’ve come across that could measure up.
We all strive to be like George Washington.
Robert Mixon:
Well, I think what I understand, the more we know about him, the more remarkable he becomes in terms of who he was and what he represented.
Sankar Sewnauth:
You know I recall, there was a fellow journalist, I think was a British journalist that came in when they were in Valley Forge, when they had nothing to eat, and the men didn’t have any shoes or clothing … and he said “I came into the camp and I went to where the general was and his clothes were worn, but they were clean” and he sat there and he was so regal in his presence he said “I had goosebumps because here I was in the middle of this somewhat chaotic time and here was this man who believed in himself and believed in the cause and believed in his men and he sat there so resolute that I could I couldn’t shake it.”
That’s those are the kinds of things you think about. You know do you have that. That’s why you’re trying to aspire to be better than yourself, where you are in spite of your limitations or inadequacies.
Robert Mixon:
Thanks, that’s a pretty elegant description.
What about in your career, some mistakes you made … what are some of the strategic or operational mistakes that you made in your career, and what did you learn from them?
Sankar Sewnauth:
Another great question Robert. You came prepared with all the great questions!
You know, sometimes they say that you’re defined by your failures… and any leader that has had much success, really on the other side you’ve had equally that amount of failures.
For me if I look back in my career, when CDS was in crisis, I brought in people into the organization, and invariably some of them had to leave. When I look back, when I look at myself as a leader, you always question yourself about your ability. When people leave, why did they leave? Is it because I didn’t provide something to them? Did we provide a good opportunity for them? You always come back to at times… ‘maybe I could have done that differently’…
When you’re impacting people’s lives, your employees lives, you take that seriously… and when I go back, when I look back at it, I say to myself, “you know in a few of those situations I could have done differently, I could have kept somebody here” … but because of the situation, the way it was, I made some decisions, and for that you always live with some regret.
You know, maybe I could have done it differently.
Business wise, we got into business with the US military. We entered into a contract with a vendor that supplied the US military with food products. We were very diligent about it, but the financial model wasn’t that great. It did provide some jobs to our people. At the same time, we were going through some changes at CDS… we were embracing the managed care system. We were making some some redesigns to our current system.
We were doing business in Europe and they had different requirements, and in spite of our best efforts we were still not meeting the mark. There was a lot of stress in the organization.
After a year, I talked to the team, I consulted with the board, and I looked at the financials, everything… and you know me Robert, when I get into something I’m fully committed… I hate to give up on something.
I had to make the decision. So we gave up that contract.
If you asked me today about that decision, I will tell you that it went against my core. I believe in business, that once you get into a commitment — stick with it.
I listened to my staff, and the people around me, and we made a decision for the greater good… but, in some ways I will never lose that sense that we made a mistake… that we could have we could have kept that business. Because what it’s done by giving that up, we pretty much have taken ourselves out of any major opportunity in that area for the foreseeable future.
So when you look at that you could always go back and say, “boy, we could have done it differently” … but relative to the growth of the organization, no question we’re in a better place as an organization.
So yes, it’s one of those things I could have done, but I don’t lose sleep over it… because in the greater scheme of things, the organization has morphed to this $230 million organization.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah, pretty remarkable… yeah pretty remarkable, Sankar. But, I think, from the standpoint of learning… yes, it’s tough to learn from your failures, because it’s hard to admit them in the first place, and then when you have to confront them, you realize that the problem is probably in the mirror, you know…
Sankar Sewnauth:
Yeah, exactly. And then six months later, you say to them “what do you think, because this has been gnawing at me” … and they go “you know Sankar, you’re probably right, we should have stuck it out” … Okay, no worries, we learned from it, next time we’re gonna do better.
Robert Mixon:
To me, that’s much healthier than finding someone to blame, or beating yourself up every day… you know I think we just have to move on, right?
Sankar Sewnauth:
At the end of the day, if you’re gonna blame somebody, you’re gonna blame yourself…
Robert Mixon:
That’s right!
Sankar Sewnauth:
…because the buck stops with the CEO, and once you get the input from your staff, and you pull the trigger… it’s your call.
It’s not your staff’s call.
Robert Mixon:
Yep, it’s as one of my old bosses used to say, “you can delegate authority, but not responsibility”… right?
Okay, well thanks Sankar.
Are you a subscriber to the Ronald Reagan approach of ‘trust but verify’ as an executive leader?
Sankar Sewnauth:
Yes. He said it pretty simply, you know, ‘trust but verify.’
I look at it this way… you really have to trust the people that work for you. If you don’t trust them, they shouldn’t be in your organization. At the same time, when you give them responsibility, you have to hold them accountable.
So there’s an accountability process that you have, where you can say, “yes,, okay I trust you.” People sometimes they don’t understand. The word empowerment is used so loosely… “I want to feel empowered.”
I asked some staff, when they say “I don’t feel empowered,” I said “please talk to me about that…what do you mean?”
“Well, I can’t make decisions…”
“What kind of decisions do you want to make? What is your job?”
Then they get flustered… I say “let’s peel the onion here…”
The way a person feels empowered… is that you’re hired for the right job, you’ve been trained, you’ve been observed, you have demonstrated initiative, responsibility, and you deliver outcomes.
Once you do that, then your organization can say “okay, you are now empowered to make decisions that we used to make before for you.”
That’s when that happens. So it’s that ‘trust but verify,’ but also you’re moving your person along to say, “look we trust you, but you have some growth to do, you have some learning to do… you do those things well, and at some point you’re gonna be empowered, and you can take responsibility… at the end of the day, though, we’re gonna hold you accountable for your job.”
And there’s a way for us to hold you responsible.
Robert Mixon:
So that empowerment is a graduated process for you, right? Trust is there, but the empowerment… have to earn it, right?
Sankar Sewnauth:
The mistake that people have is that you have leaders that will say “I hired you, now I delegate you to do all these things”… and without any regard for the fact that the person’s a new employee. They have to understand your culture, they have to understand their responsibilities, they need the training, they need for you to support them… through time… coach, mentor… and then make that decision about empowerment later.
The biggest disservice we do to our employees is when we tell them, “look I’ve hired you and now I’m empowering you to go to your job”… there’s no such thing.
Robert Mixon:
Do you think sometimes we promote people before they’re prepared for that next level of responsibility?
Sankar Sewnauth:
Yes, and then something that’s another example is promoting people when they are at their capacity… For example, we have several layers of leadership in the organization, so you have a frontline leader who’s doing his or her job and they do it so well, we make an assumption that that person wants leadership.
Then we put that person in a leadership role, person fails, person exits the organization.
So we’ve learned from that in the past. It has to be up to the employee what they would like in their career and in their life.
So you can be in a job, but should demonstrate to us that you want more, and then we’ll work with you and have you succeed.
Robert Mixon:
And prepare them for success.
Sankar Sewnauth:
Exactly. That’s right.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the hallmarks that I noted about the CDS Life Transitions culture was that… you’re focused so heavily on preparing leaders before they’re in a position… and they have to do it, they need to learn about it first.
Sankar Sewnauth:
You know people think it’s a science, but it’s really a mix of science and art. You’re dealing with people. A person might tell you that “I’m ready,” and they may show all the signs of being successful, and they get into the job, they’re overrun by it. That’s why you really need to stay close to that person, to give them that soft landing if it doesn’t work.
It’s to say, “look, you gave it a shot, it didn’t work.” You don’t want to get too far down the road where the person is having to exit the organization.
I think that, personally, when my people who I’ve given promotional opportunities don’t succeed, and we have to ask them to leave… I’ve said to my team, “shame on us for taking good people who have worked so well for us, promote them, and then have them struggle, and then have to leave. Why did that happen?”
So, we learn from our mistakes in this organization.
We have one of the lowest turnover rates in our industry, because of that.
I say to the staff, “you have to really demonstrate to me that this was this person’s fault, in spite of all the things you did to support them, and if you can’t do that, then we won’t let that person go, and you have to live with it, and you’re gonna have to go back and work with that individual.”
Robert Mixon.
It makes a lot of sense.
So, Sankar, what advice would you give aspiring leaders who dream of becoming executive leaders — to help them prepare for that day?
Sankar Sewnauth:
Again it’s another great question. We all face in the organization, is that invariably when I walk around the organization, and I have conversations with the staff, every once in a while you have a staffer who will say, “sir, I would like your job one day” … and then I’ll say to them, “so, how are we gonna get there?” and they’ll say, “well…I’d like to do some things” and I said, “what things? Let’s talk about it”…
I said, “if you ask me, what I’d like to have you do… is number one, be the best employee that you can right now. Do the best at it. What I mean by that is perform your duties well, take initiative, demonstrate that you can work with your peers, collaborate with each other, and drive your outcomes — for your current job. If you tell us that you want a leadership role in the organization, to move to the next level… there’s so much opportunity here, we will put you on the path, and you tell us where you want to go, but at every level we’re gonna evaluate your capacity. You’re gonna have to show us that you can do this.
Because it’s not just a dream, right? It’s how you build a dream. It’s taking a step every day.
I always tell the staff, “don’t talk to me about the job that’s three layers up, talk to me about how you’re doing today.”
If I ask you how you stay how your supervisor feels about you, what do you say? If you can pick on your fingertips your accomplishments for the last year, what are they… right?
What deliverables do you have for the organization? How have you grown as a person and as a professional?
You need to be able to articulate that every step of the way, and when you do that, you will find yourself moving through the organization and be given all kinds of opportunities.
You do your job well, and you won’t have to find us — we’ll find you, because people will talk about you.
Robert Mixon:
You’ll be noticed, right?
Sankar Sewnauth:
You’ll be noticed in the organization.
Robert Mixon:
Word gets around.
Sankar Sewnauth:
That’s right. We will prepare you. We will invest in you. We’re one of the few organizations here, that not only give you incentives for being safe in the organization, being healthy, but for going to school… You want to go to school, we’ll help you with your tuition.
For example, Robert, the leadership development program you help us with on a regular basis, we tell staff, “you go to that class, and in six months we’re gonna find your promotional opportunity…” if we don’t, we’re gonna give you a 5% increase to your salary anyway, to show good faith to the employees.
That’s what’s made the organization what it is today, because we know who our biggest resource is, it’s our employees.
Robert Mixon:
Well, that’s an excellent point. The development of people is a priority. Obviously it seems for you as an executive leader, and you know it every day when you when you come in in my experience with you you’ve always been somebody who was thinking about people and developing people even though…
Sankar Sewnauth:
You know me, sometimes it’s a tough meeting! It’s done with the perspective that I want you to learn and grow. I want you to ask those questions that you could that are gonna make you uncomfortable, but it’s gonna make you a better person in the end.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah, it’s a journey of maturity too, isn’t it, don’t you think, as a leader?
Sankar Sewnauth:
Absolutely. You know, the staff too they take it so personally when I challenge them.
They make the mistake of taking it so personally did that it hurts them. I have had to remember as the executive leader to go back to that staffer, circle back, and say, “you know I challenged you in that meeting, how do you feel?”
“I was feeling like you really had me on the mat.”
“Please don’t take that personally, it was there to help you. If I didn’t think you were doing a good job you wouldn’t be in this organization, right? So when I give you feedback, it’s to make you a better person. So let’s keep that simple.”
Robert Mixon:
Great points.
What thoughts do you have about your journey and what it’s meant to you to be a part of a vibrant organization, now that CDS Life Transitions represents… from a point in time where really the organization was on the brink of failure?
Sankar Sewnauth:
Well you know Robert, the word I use frequently nowadays that there’s humility is necessary, right?
You don’t take things for granted. You were given these opportunities in your life.
Who would have thought that a young man from a third world country would come over here… and the force of his energy and his focus would build a life for himself without much around him to support him. And then to come into CDS and be in the organization for 10 years and see a leadership that was just floundering and lost.., and then to be able to give get the opportunity to run it… I felt so inadequate but just again by the force of just… just my being somebody who wants to succeed and who appreciates being given the opportunity…
I’ve always said I am NOT the brightest guy in the room, but I know how to get things done. I know how to get people to believe in the mission, to attach themselves to it and help me. That’s been the success, because I’ve looked for other people to help me. The organization has grown and the credit to all the people around me because I’m just a messenger. I’m just the messenger.
Robert Mixon:
Well, thanks very much Sankar for sharing your thoughts on leadership today and on strategic leadership, but also on the framework of building a world-class culture, because I think that’s what we’ve been talking about today.
I’ve certainly learned a lot, and I would say to to our audience that you know the opportunities to learn from people like Sankar should never take them for granted because many of us have been fortunate to be around people who have this level of character, and I thank you for that and I will say that as we go forward in our journey Sankar, I look forward to more opportunities to learn from you.
We’ll certainly have some other executives on the Level 5 podcast to share their experiences because I think to our audience of leaders who are seeking to grow, those shared experiences are tremendously valuable… so thanks again Sankar, and I wish you all the best.
Sankar Sewnauth:
Thank you Robert, and thank you for doing this because, I think it’s so needed in the business community … to constantly be giving our leaders things to think about — and this is just a great way to do it.
Robert Mixon:
Okay Sankar, thanks very much.
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