October 15, 2025 • 19 mins
What if the difference between stalled change and a moonshot is your mindset? We sit down with Lenovo’s Ed Soo Hoo to unpack why the best leaders aren’t defined by titles or toolkits but by authenticity, service, and the courage to “blink first.” From four decades across startups and global enterprises, Ed maps a clear strategy for building momentum: protect the core, stretch into adjacencies, and seed the future—running all three in parallel like NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Along the way, he shows how cross-trained teams, shared deliverables, and the right “boosters” turn vision into velocity.
We dig into the Sears cautionary tale and the JFK playbook to illustrate how over-focusing on the present can cost you the future, while smart portfolio design can unlock outsized value. Then we zoom out to two audacious, practical ideas tailored for the AI era: Energy-as-a-Service to stabilize growth amid constrained grids, and a national mental fitness initiative to rebuild resilience, attention, and judgment at scale. Ed’s take is refreshingly human—technology should serve people, not the other way around—and he makes a compelling case for reviving face-to-face connection and embracing serendipity as a catalyst for innovation.
If you’re navigating rapid change, this conversation offers a blueprint you can use today: adopt a servant mindset, structure work across Now–New–Next, rotate talent to compound learning, and tell stories that move people from compliance to commitment. Ready to lead with courage and design for the long game? Follow, share with a colleague who needs this spark, and leave a review with the idea you’ll put into action this week.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:13):
Welcome to Idea Gen TV.
I am honored and privileged, asalways, to have with us the
great Ed Suhu, CTO for GlobalAccounts, Innovation and
Transformation Executive atLenovo.
Ed, welcome.
SPEAKER_01 (00:30):
George, thanks so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00 (00:34):
You know, Ed, it's a transformational moment in time,
as you and I have discussed indetail pre-interview.
And what a moment to be alive onthis planet with all of the
exciting technologicaladvancement that's literally
(00:55):
happening second by second,millisecond by millisecond.
Ed, you've spent over 40 years,hard to believe when you're only
40, but 40 years leadinginnovation in technology.
Ed, what does effectiveleadership look like today in
(01:18):
this fast-changing planet?
SPEAKER_01 (01:24):
You know, uh thanks, George.
Leadership is is kind of aninteresting word, uh, leader,
etc., right?
And I find it that over the youknow four decades, it's better
than saying 40 years, but fourfour decades plus, I found that
leaders are almost not a title.
It's actually a mindset, andthey come out of nowhere.
(01:46):
I and to me, over the last youknow, few years, it's in
watching all of thesephenomenal, fast-paced changes.
And it's not just technology,right?
It's societal changes, it'smultiple things that are
happening.
And great leaders stand up andstand out.
And to me, that's where the gameis played, where you're
(02:08):
authentic, uh, you havehumility, you basically look out
for others.
And I think a great leader isalways about having a server
mindset, and when you do, that'swhen leadership really shines.
SPEAKER_00 (02:25):
You know, mindset, uh, servant leader mindset, so
critical, and it's sointeresting that you would
choose that as the example ofwhat effective leadership looks
like being a leader yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (02:40):
It's fascinating because you know, some leaders
they have the qualifications,the credentials, right?
And they go through thosequalifications and credentials
through tool sets, skill sets.
Great leaders have mindsets, andthat's the difference.
(03:00):
It's not the the background orthe school you went to or all
those things, it's the abilityto almost react in a kind of a
realistic manner, and it doesn'thave titalism, it doesn't have
all the things that sometimes weget trapped in by.
SPEAKER_00 (03:36):
I love the way you you've uh you know landed on
great leaders have mindsets.
Seems elementary, doesn't it?
But it's so profound, simple yetprofound.
And so that lesson is somethingthat we will take away right at
the onset of this interview.
(03:58):
Good.
Ed, you often talk about helpingclients think about the now, the
new, and the next.
How can organizations stayinnovative without losing focus
on what really matters rightnow?
SPEAKER_01 (04:17):
This is the hardest part, I think.
And as we think about now, ourcurrent business, business as
usual, what I call KTLO, keepthe lights on.
No matter what, you got to keepthat going.
At the same time, given what wetouched on earlier, George,
things are moving so fast,changing so quickly,
dynamically, globally,geopolitically, etc., we have to
(04:40):
be more adaptive, more agile.
And that means taking who weare, what we do, using that as
our baseline and our strength,and then to do kind of a
yoga-like approach, downward dogand stretch.
Stretching, I tried yoga once,downward dog hurts like a son of
a gun.
What I found though is that themore you do it, the better you
(05:02):
are able to extend capabilities,mindsets, discipline, and new
opportunities.
And I think this is where thegame is played with now to move
to new, to have adjacencies,extensions without breaking the
now.
And then to learn from both ofthose to go to the next.
(05:24):
And a great example of that iswas shared in the book uh by
Adam Grant, Think Again, wherehe talked about Sears Robuck
being a retail giant, and theyactually dabbled with some
investments of uh Discover Card,All-State Insurance, Dean
Whitter, and Caldwell BankerReal Estate.
And that portfolio, I think inthe early 90s, was valued at
(05:46):
about 16 billion dollars, notbad.
But then Sears ran into theheadwinds of a lot of
competition.
So they went back to theirparadigm, their mindset of uh
who they were, who they thoughtthey were, which is the now.
So they said, I'm a retailer.
So they divested themselves ofall those assets because it
(06:08):
wasn't core to their business,core to their paradigm.
And what was fascinating, andyou think about it, those four
assets today is about a value ofabout a half a trillion dollars.
What some companies miss is byfocusing way too much on now, a
little bit on new, and not evencontemplating next.
(06:32):
You have to do all three at thesame time, and that's building
platforms, teams, and mindsetsfor each of those vectors.
And that's what happened whenJohn F.
Kennedy said in May of 61, we'regonna land a man on the moon and
bring him back before the end ofthe decade.
He said that in May of 1961.
Russia had Sputnik, Leica theDog, and Yuri the cosmonaut, and
(06:55):
we had Bubkus.
So he had to pull together thebest of the fresh eyes and wise
eyes from NASA and engineers,designers, architects, you name
it, they were all there to cometogether to create now, new
next.
And they were called Mercury,Gemini, and Apollo, all at the
(07:15):
same time.
That's how you move from theproclamation of May 61, Man to
the Moon and Back, February 20,1962, John Glenn Friendship 7,
and July 20, 1969, Aldrin andArmstrong landed on the moon and
came back.
Is tying all those threemissions now new next at the
(07:37):
same time?
That is the new criteria forbusinesses today.
SPEAKER_00 (07:44):
Incredible.
Uh, with moonshots and how thatall came together in the analogy
with what's happening today.
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
It's fascinating, George, because the program was
about providing the mission,right?
Moon and back.
But to do that, you had to dothat in stages, and each of the
stages had to deliverpropulsion, navigation, and life
support.
All three missions had to dothat, and then they used the
same astronauts, allcross-trained across all three
(08:19):
missions.
That is the magic.
Because the astronauts couldactually go Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo, they were allcross-trained, they all had the
same kind of deliverables.
The differences were theboosters.
Atlas and Redstone repurposedmilitary rockets for Mercury,
Titan II for Gemini, and SaturnV.
(08:41):
How do you look at the boostersin your strategy of now, new,
and next to get you where youwant to go?
SPEAKER_00 (08:48):
Exactly right.
So profound, Ed.
You've shared ideas like energyas a service, in addition to
flexible energy solutions.
What steps do you believe thatare really critical and
necessary to turn these ideasinto actual real-world impact?
SPEAKER_01 (09:10):
To me, it's like a business coming up with a grand
idea, and it's always a chickenor the egg, right?
Uh, who goes first, who pays forit?
Like it's what happened to thesmart chip for credit cards.
Um, everyone kept saying, well,uh, is the merchant going to pay
for it?
Is the bank going to pay for it?
Is the user and there's this uhthis stalling mentality, right?
(09:33):
We're waiting for someone elseto blink first.
And I think I advocate that thisenergy as a service is to change
the way we look at energy, theway we store it, collect it,
manage it, and reuse it in anongoing basis because we're
running into an energy shortage.
We have a massive demand fordata centers because of the AI
(09:55):
phenomenon.
The thing is, there's not enoughenergy to really do that.
So, how do we sort of look atenergy as a service as a public
and private enterprise and orproject that we can pull
together?
And this is what I kind ofshared with a number of folks is
how do we pull this off so thatevery business can have energy
(10:19):
as a service to collect, store,manage energy.
And perhaps at midnight everynight, all excess energy is sent
back to the grid to be reshared,reused, and repurposed.
It's really taking advantage ofsome very interesting scenarios
of the idea, but then to havepublic and private partnerships
(10:40):
really drive it.
And I I think this wholeblinksmanship is where we fall
short.
SPEAKER_00 (10:48):
Yeah, and in such a great point, because in addition
to that, you've suggested amodern mental fitness initiative
similar to JFK's physicalfitness campaign.
Ed, what would that look like?
And why do you believe it's soimportant today?
SPEAKER_01 (11:06):
So I'm gonna read from John F.
Kennedy's uh he believed that anation's strength was tied to
the vigor of its citizens, andhe stated a country is only as
strong as its citizens.
And he said, I think mental andphysical health and mental and
physical vigor go hand in hand.
(11:29):
This is the time.
I think we've walked away from alot of things, and technology
has been a boon and a bane atthe same time, and I think it's
time for us to not so much walkaway from technology, but to
rethink how we use it.
And I want to have technologyhelp us become mentally fit with
certain types of programs and uminsights and perspectives, and
(11:52):
it's like exercising, you justhave to keep doing it every day.
And uh a really good exerciseregimen is that you have to
confuse your body so that youhave the kind of growth that you
want, right?
There is uh there's all sorts ofother philosophical scenarios
like Pilates and so on, weighttraining, cross-training.
All of these things are going tobe part of what I call a mental
(12:14):
fitness regimen that I wouldlove to propose to companies to
go to, let's say, RFK and Healthand Human Services.
What does this program reallylook like, public and private?
How do we get this into Kthrough 12, like John F.
Kennedy did?
He gamified physical fitness,mental uh uh and health and
(12:36):
vigor.
I think we need to go back tothat.
I think we have to go back tohumanness or humane capabilities
to prepare for these journeysthat uh we're gonna be
experiencing over the last overthe next two or three decades.
And relying on technology aloneto get us there will not be
(12:58):
enough.
I believe that mental fitness isthe key to our strength as a
country, as a society, and weowe it to everyone to kind of
prepare for this.
And I I would love to have aconversation with organizations
in the government, uh, with RFKto you know take what he uh his
(13:18):
uh uncle did, JFK, for thephysical fitness side.
Let's let's focus on the mentalfitness.
And I think that's to me, that'sa phenomenal investment for us
to kind of consider.
SPEAKER_00 (13:33):
So profound, it's it's really difficult to
contemplate you know the impactthat you're describing.
It's it's just that umimpactful.
SPEAKER_01 (13:48):
And and yeah, it's important because I want it to
be part of another uhinitiative, which is to go back
into the world again, beface-to-face, get off of all of
these, you know, uh engines thatwe use and rely on to help us
think we're communicating andconnecting.
We're not as much as we can andshould.
(14:10):
Face to face, I think is reallyimportant again.
We not we have to go, uh, likeyou mentioned about your
grandfather, go outside, findme.
I will, I'll go outside.
I want to find people, I want tohave fun conversations again,
and to rediscover almostchildlike conversations.
(14:31):
And then, you know, uh, youknow, you my title is chief
technology officer.
I'm really not a technologist,I'm more of a uh provocateur,
and it comes from being able andwilling to be an accidentalist.
I love accidental conversations,and this is where things uh are
I learned from stretching, uhlearning uh new ideas, concepts,
(14:54):
and I think this is what weshould be thinking about going
forward.
We need technology, but I wanttechnology to serve humanity,
not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00 (15:08):
Ed, again, profound perspective.
And so after decades, decades ofworking with and across the
startup spectrum, in addition toglobal companies, what Ed is the
biggest lesson you have learnedabout leading people and driving
(15:35):
meaningful, lasting change?
SPEAKER_01 (15:39):
What I found is something I've been advocating
for a few uh decades, and thatis to blink first.
In negotiation schools, theyteach you whoever blinks first
gives up a price, whatever,loses.
I absolutely disagree with that.
I think if you really want tokick off something with someone
or something about something,you give up something of value.
(16:02):
See how they react to it.
And then once the once you seethe reaction, you'll know where
they where their heads are at,and how do you start to you know
reposition or rethink.
And I think this is the key uhfor around you know, a number of
conversations I had with anumber of folks.
The other is try to become agreat listener, and from that,
(16:25):
turn that into becoming a greatstoryteller.
We have so many people who relyon all of the frameworks of
different types of uhcapabilities and methodologies
and the like, but they couldn'ttell a story to save their life.
And it's storytellers that movepeople, change people, to get
(16:47):
people to stand up and rise andto become a great storyteller,
to be able to listen and toblink first.
I think those are the threecriteria that really helped me
as I expanded uh a lot ofconversations all across the
world, regardless of time,place, or language.
It's universal, right?
(17:08):
And when you start thinkingabout it, small things matter.
It's not a big bang, it's not abig thing that you come up with
and so on.
It's the small things thatmatter, much like Einstein's
magical formula that he loved,which is compound interest.
Imagine contributing day in andday out, small things, and over
(17:28):
time it increases value.
And to me, every day that I getup, I always make sure that I
give something away.
And I never expect anythingback.
As a matter of fact, I I neverask for anything back, and I
think that's really importantfor us to have as a mindset is
to be a giver, to be a listener,and to be a great storyteller.
SPEAKER_00 (17:55):
Great leaders have mindsets, not toolkits,
mindsets, mindsets, and it'simportant.
SPEAKER_01 (18:05):
You know, when Patton was talking to his team,
how to get ready, he got hesaid, train like you fight, and
fight like you train.
There is no difference.
This is life.
Live it, drive it, believe it.
And when you do, great thingshappen.
SPEAKER_00 (18:25):
Ed Suhu, CTO, Global Accounts Innovation, and
Transformation Executive atLenovo.
Thank you for your leadership.
Thank you for your inspiration,and most importantly, thank you
for all you're doing to impactthe planet.
SPEAKER_01 (18:44):
Thank you, George.
I appreciate your giving me theopportunity.
SPEAKER_00 (18:47):
How can folks find out more about you and your work
at Lenovo?
SPEAKER_01 (18:52):
You know, the best way is uh LinkedIn.
So just find me on LinkedIn,just type in my name, Ed Su Hu,
and Su Who is two two separatewords, and you'll find me.
And by all means, if you have achance, um link to me.
Um, I always take calls, Ialways blink first, and I'll
always wax poetic.
(19:13):
So more than happy to uh answerany um request to link and happy
to chat anytime.
SPEAKER_00 (19:22):
We'll close again with Ed's quote Great leaders
have mindsets, not toolkits.
Ed Suhu.
Thank you so very much.
Thanks, George.
SPEAKER_01 (19:33):
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (19:36):
Thank you.
Welcome to Idea Gen TV.
I am honored and privileged, asalways, to have with us the
great Ed Suhu, CTO for GlobalAccounts, Innovation and
Transformation Executive atLenovo.
Ed, welcome.
SPEAKER_01 (00:30):
George, thanks so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00 (00:34):
You know, Ed, it's a transformational moment in time,
as you and I have discussed indetail pre-interview.
And what a moment to be alive onthis planet with all of the
exciting technologicaladvancement that's literally
(00:55):
happening second by second,millisecond by millisecond.
Ed, you've spent over 40 years,hard to believe when you're only
40, but 40 years leadinginnovation in technology.
Ed, what does effectiveleadership look like today in
(01:18):
this fast-changing planet?
SPEAKER_01 (01:24):
You know, uh thanks, George.
Leadership is is kind of aninteresting word, uh, leader,
etc., right?
And I find it that over the youknow four decades, it's better
than saying 40 years, but fourfour decades plus, I found that
leaders are almost not a title.
It's actually a mindset, andthey come out of nowhere.
(01:46):
I and to me, over the last youknow, few years, it's in
watching all of thesephenomenal, fast-paced changes.
And it's not just technology,right?
It's societal changes, it'smultiple things that are
happening.
And great leaders stand up andstand out.
And to me, that's where the gameis played, where you're
(02:08):
authentic, uh, you havehumility, you basically look out
for others.
And I think a great leader isalways about having a server
mindset, and when you do, that'swhen leadership really shines.
SPEAKER_00 (02:25):
You know, mindset, uh, servant leader mindset, so
critical, and it's sointeresting that you would
choose that as the example ofwhat effective leadership looks
like being a leader yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (02:40):
It's fascinating because you know, some leaders
they have the qualifications,the credentials, right?
And they go through thosequalifications and credentials
through tool sets, skill sets.
Great leaders have mindsets, andthat's the difference.
(03:00):
It's not the the background orthe school you went to or all
those things, it's the abilityto almost react in a kind of a
realistic manner, and it doesn'thave titalism, it doesn't have
all the things that sometimes weget trapped in by.
SPEAKER_00 (03:36):
I love the way you you've uh you know landed on
great leaders have mindsets.
Seems elementary, doesn't it?
But it's so profound, simple yetprofound.
And so that lesson is somethingthat we will take away right at
the onset of this interview.
(03:58):
Good.
Ed, you often talk about helpingclients think about the now, the
new, and the next.
How can organizations stayinnovative without losing focus
on what really matters rightnow?
SPEAKER_01 (04:17):
This is the hardest part, I think.
And as we think about now, ourcurrent business, business as
usual, what I call KTLO, keepthe lights on.
No matter what, you got to keepthat going.
At the same time, given what wetouched on earlier, George,
things are moving so fast,changing so quickly,
dynamically, globally,geopolitically, etc., we have to
(04:40):
be more adaptive, more agile.
And that means taking who weare, what we do, using that as
our baseline and our strength,and then to do kind of a
yoga-like approach, downward dogand stretch.
Stretching, I tried yoga once,downward dog hurts like a son of
a gun.
What I found though is that themore you do it, the better you
(05:02):
are able to extend capabilities,mindsets, discipline, and new
opportunities.
And I think this is where thegame is played with now to move
to new, to have adjacencies,extensions without breaking the
now.
And then to learn from both ofthose to go to the next.
(05:24):
And a great example of that iswas shared in the book uh by
Adam Grant, Think Again, wherehe talked about Sears Robuck
being a retail giant, and theyactually dabbled with some
investments of uh Discover Card,All-State Insurance, Dean
Whitter, and Caldwell BankerReal Estate.
And that portfolio, I think inthe early 90s, was valued at
(05:46):
about 16 billion dollars, notbad.
But then Sears ran into theheadwinds of a lot of
competition.
So they went back to theirparadigm, their mindset of uh
who they were, who they thoughtthey were, which is the now.
So they said, I'm a retailer.
So they divested themselves ofall those assets because it
(06:08):
wasn't core to their business,core to their paradigm.
And what was fascinating, andyou think about it, those four
assets today is about a value ofabout a half a trillion dollars.
What some companies miss is byfocusing way too much on now, a
little bit on new, and not evencontemplating next.
(06:32):
You have to do all three at thesame time, and that's building
platforms, teams, and mindsetsfor each of those vectors.
And that's what happened whenJohn F.
Kennedy said in May of 61, we'regonna land a man on the moon and
bring him back before the end ofthe decade.
He said that in May of 1961.
Russia had Sputnik, Leica theDog, and Yuri the cosmonaut, and
(06:55):
we had Bubkus.
So he had to pull together thebest of the fresh eyes and wise
eyes from NASA and engineers,designers, architects, you name
it, they were all there to cometogether to create now, new
next.
And they were called Mercury,Gemini, and Apollo, all at the
(07:15):
same time.
That's how you move from theproclamation of May 61, Man to
the Moon and Back, February 20,1962, John Glenn Friendship 7,
and July 20, 1969, Aldrin andArmstrong landed on the moon and
came back.
Is tying all those threemissions now new next at the
(07:37):
same time?
That is the new criteria forbusinesses today.
SPEAKER_00 (07:44):
Incredible.
Uh, with moonshots and how thatall came together in the analogy
with what's happening today.
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
It's fascinating, George, because the program was
about providing the mission,right?
Moon and back.
But to do that, you had to dothat in stages, and each of the
stages had to deliverpropulsion, navigation, and life
support.
All three missions had to dothat, and then they used the
same astronauts, allcross-trained across all three
(08:19):
missions.
That is the magic.
Because the astronauts couldactually go Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo, they were allcross-trained, they all had the
same kind of deliverables.
The differences were theboosters.
Atlas and Redstone repurposedmilitary rockets for Mercury,
Titan II for Gemini, and SaturnV.
(08:41):
How do you look at the boostersin your strategy of now, new,
and next to get you where youwant to go?
SPEAKER_00 (08:48):
Exactly right.
So profound, Ed.
You've shared ideas like energyas a service, in addition to
flexible energy solutions.
What steps do you believe thatare really critical and
necessary to turn these ideasinto actual real-world impact?
SPEAKER_01 (09:10):
To me, it's like a business coming up with a grand
idea, and it's always a chickenor the egg, right?
Uh, who goes first, who pays forit?
Like it's what happened to thesmart chip for credit cards.
Um, everyone kept saying, well,uh, is the merchant going to pay
for it?
Is the bank going to pay for it?
Is the user and there's this uhthis stalling mentality, right?
(09:33):
We're waiting for someone elseto blink first.
And I think I advocate that thisenergy as a service is to change
the way we look at energy, theway we store it, collect it,
manage it, and reuse it in anongoing basis because we're
running into an energy shortage.
We have a massive demand fordata centers because of the AI
(09:55):
phenomenon.
The thing is, there's not enoughenergy to really do that.
So, how do we sort of look atenergy as a service as a public
and private enterprise and orproject that we can pull
together?
And this is what I kind ofshared with a number of folks is
how do we pull this off so thatevery business can have energy
(10:19):
as a service to collect, store,manage energy.
And perhaps at midnight everynight, all excess energy is sent
back to the grid to be reshared,reused, and repurposed.
It's really taking advantage ofsome very interesting scenarios
of the idea, but then to havepublic and private partnerships
(10:40):
really drive it.
And I I think this wholeblinksmanship is where we fall
short.
SPEAKER_00 (10:48):
Yeah, and in such a great point, because in addition
to that, you've suggested amodern mental fitness initiative
similar to JFK's physicalfitness campaign.
Ed, what would that look like?
And why do you believe it's soimportant today?
SPEAKER_01 (11:06):
So I'm gonna read from John F.
Kennedy's uh he believed that anation's strength was tied to
the vigor of its citizens, andhe stated a country is only as
strong as its citizens.
And he said, I think mental andphysical health and mental and
physical vigor go hand in hand.
(11:29):
This is the time.
I think we've walked away from alot of things, and technology
has been a boon and a bane atthe same time, and I think it's
time for us to not so much walkaway from technology, but to
rethink how we use it.
And I want to have technologyhelp us become mentally fit with
certain types of programs and uminsights and perspectives, and
(11:52):
it's like exercising, you justhave to keep doing it every day.
And uh a really good exerciseregimen is that you have to
confuse your body so that youhave the kind of growth that you
want, right?
There is uh there's all sorts ofother philosophical scenarios
like Pilates and so on, weighttraining, cross-training.
All of these things are going tobe part of what I call a mental
(12:14):
fitness regimen that I wouldlove to propose to companies to
go to, let's say, RFK and Healthand Human Services.
What does this program reallylook like, public and private?
How do we get this into Kthrough 12, like John F.
Kennedy did?
He gamified physical fitness,mental uh uh and health and
(12:36):
vigor.
I think we need to go back tothat.
I think we have to go back tohumanness or humane capabilities
to prepare for these journeysthat uh we're gonna be
experiencing over the last overthe next two or three decades.
And relying on technology aloneto get us there will not be
(12:58):
enough.
I believe that mental fitness isthe key to our strength as a
country, as a society, and weowe it to everyone to kind of
prepare for this.
And I I would love to have aconversation with organizations
in the government, uh, with RFKto you know take what he uh his
(13:18):
uh uncle did, JFK, for thephysical fitness side.
Let's let's focus on the mentalfitness.
And I think that's to me, that'sa phenomenal investment for us
to kind of consider.
SPEAKER_00 (13:33):
So profound, it's it's really difficult to
contemplate you know the impactthat you're describing.
It's it's just that umimpactful.
SPEAKER_01 (13:48):
And and yeah, it's important because I want it to
be part of another uhinitiative, which is to go back
into the world again, beface-to-face, get off of all of
these, you know, uh engines thatwe use and rely on to help us
think we're communicating andconnecting.
We're not as much as we can andshould.
(14:10):
Face to face, I think is reallyimportant again.
We not we have to go, uh, likeyou mentioned about your
grandfather, go outside, findme.
I will, I'll go outside.
I want to find people, I want tohave fun conversations again,
and to rediscover almostchildlike conversations.
(14:31):
And then, you know, uh, youknow, you my title is chief
technology officer.
I'm really not a technologist,I'm more of a uh provocateur,
and it comes from being able andwilling to be an accidentalist.
I love accidental conversations,and this is where things uh are
I learned from stretching, uhlearning uh new ideas, concepts,
(14:54):
and I think this is what weshould be thinking about going
forward.
We need technology, but I wanttechnology to serve humanity,
not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00 (15:08):
Ed, again, profound perspective.
And so after decades, decades ofworking with and across the
startup spectrum, in addition toglobal companies, what Ed is the
biggest lesson you have learnedabout leading people and driving
(15:35):
meaningful, lasting change?
SPEAKER_01 (15:39):
What I found is something I've been advocating
for a few uh decades, and thatis to blink first.
In negotiation schools, theyteach you whoever blinks first
gives up a price, whatever,loses.
I absolutely disagree with that.
I think if you really want tokick off something with someone
or something about something,you give up something of value.
(16:02):
See how they react to it.
And then once the once you seethe reaction, you'll know where
they where their heads are at,and how do you start to you know
reposition or rethink.
And I think this is the key uhfor around you know, a number of
conversations I had with anumber of folks.
The other is try to become agreat listener, and from that,
(16:25):
turn that into becoming a greatstoryteller.
We have so many people who relyon all of the frameworks of
different types of uhcapabilities and methodologies
and the like, but they couldn'ttell a story to save their life.
And it's storytellers that movepeople, change people, to get
(16:47):
people to stand up and rise andto become a great storyteller,
to be able to listen and toblink first.
I think those are the threecriteria that really helped me
as I expanded uh a lot ofconversations all across the
world, regardless of time,place, or language.
It's universal, right?
(17:08):
And when you start thinkingabout it, small things matter.
It's not a big bang, it's not abig thing that you come up with
and so on.
It's the small things thatmatter, much like Einstein's
magical formula that he loved,which is compound interest.
Imagine contributing day in andday out, small things, and over
(17:28):
time it increases value.
And to me, every day that I getup, I always make sure that I
give something away.
And I never expect anythingback.
As a matter of fact, I I neverask for anything back, and I
think that's really importantfor us to have as a mindset is
to be a giver, to be a listener,and to be a great storyteller.
SPEAKER_00 (17:55):
Great leaders have mindsets, not toolkits,
mindsets, mindsets, and it'simportant.
SPEAKER_01 (18:05):
You know, when Patton was talking to his team,
how to get ready, he got hesaid, train like you fight, and
fight like you train.
There is no difference.
This is life.
Live it, drive it, believe it.
And when you do, great thingshappen.
SPEAKER_00 (18:25):
Ed Suhu, CTO, Global Accounts Innovation, and
Transformation Executive atLenovo.
Thank you for your leadership.
Thank you for your inspiration,and most importantly, thank you
for all you're doing to impactthe planet.
SPEAKER_01 (18:44):
Thank you, George.
I appreciate your giving me theopportunity.
SPEAKER_00 (18:47):
How can folks find out more about you and your work
at Lenovo?
SPEAKER_01 (18:52):
You know, the best way is uh LinkedIn.
So just find me on LinkedIn,just type in my name, Ed Su Hu,
and Su Who is two two separatewords, and you'll find me.
And by all means, if you have achance, um link to me.
Um, I always take calls, Ialways blink first, and I'll
always wax poetic.
(19:13):
So more than happy to uh answerany um request to link and happy
to chat anytime.
SPEAKER_00 (19:22):
We'll close again with Ed's quote Great leaders
have mindsets, not toolkits.
Ed Suhu.
Thank you so very much.
Thanks, George.
SPEAKER_01 (19:33):
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (19:36):
Thank you.
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