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Our travels for The CEO Collection have introduced us to firms of all sizes and scopes, and for this episode, we went to 1 that’s simply large. Zebra Applied sciences is likely one of the most dynamic B2B expertise firms on the earth. They digitize and automate workflows for firms, have roughly 10, 000 workers and do about $5 billion in income. I had the prospect to take a seat down with CEO Invoice Burns to learn the way he leads such an enormous operation.
Beneath are some highlights of our insightful dialog, which have been edited for size and readability. Watch the complete video above.
World attain
“You see our firm Zebra in on a regular basis life. We’re a digital answer supplier that permits companies to intelligently join information, property, and other people. You see us in a point-of-sale checkout at a grocery store, when a postal employee is delivering a parcel to your home, and in so many different locations. Corporations use our cellular units to scan the package deal, get signatures, and issues like that. All the most important retailers all over the world — 86 p.c of the Fortune 500 firms — are our prospects as we speak. We consider it as retail, transportation, logistics, manufacturing and warehousing, well being care and authorities.”
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The NFL Connection
“As an organization, we help the NFL. We use the identical forms of tags that will be utilized in retail or transportation logistics to trace parcels or stock to trace each cleat, each shoulder pad, each helmet worn by a participant. The NFL’s preliminary use case was for fan engagement and to boost the published. After which the newest use instances are actually round defending the well being and security of the gamers.”
The CEO’s Journey
“I began my profession in gross sales, in a big telco gross sales into of us like Verizon and others. After which I took a task main Europe, the Center East, and Africa from a gross sales facet and expanded into advertising and marketing and companies and different areas. After which I joined Zebra about 9 years in the past to steer the acquisition piece. Zebra was a billion-dollar specialty printing enterprise. They purchased two and a half billion {dollars} in income from Motorola to the enterprise enterprise and so form of in a single day a $1 billion enterprise grew to become a $3.5 billion enterprise.”
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Management accountability
“There’s three legs of the stool, proper? That is how I view the enterprise: our prospects, our workers and our traders. In the end we’re in enterprise to proceed to develop and to generate profits. However you have to do the fitting issues first. You have obtained to have the ability to reward and appeal to and retain the most effective workers all over the world. In case you try this, then you definately’ll serve your prospects greatest. In case you serve your prospects greatest, you will develop your topline income and your profitability and your inventory will go up and you may maintain your traders.”
Main by way of robust instances
“I feel that demand for our companies skyrocketed throughout COVID, after which in 2023, demand reset again to 2019 ranges. So we have been put able the place we needed to do the conventional issues that almost all companies would do. Take a look at your actual property and your journey prices and all these issues internally. We additionally did issues like voluntary retirement packages. We considered creating new alternatives for folks throughout the group. It labored out nice, however it’s at all times laborious to get smaller. It is at all times much more enjoyable to develop. However you have to make these robust enterprise choices at instances.”
Profession recommendation to future leaders
“Nobody else cares as a lot about your profession as you do, but additionally be affected person as a result of it would not occur in a single day. And if you happen to’re at an excellent firm and you’ve got alternatives there, there’s nowhere else that you simply’re extra revered than inside that firm. They know you’re prepared, so be affected person.”
Try extra profiles of progressive and impactful leaders by visiting The CEO Collection archives.