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Thank you to the 1,400 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 questions!
I hope reading
7 Questions with Furrukh Sohail
helps you in your leadership.
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Cheers,
Jonno White
7 Questions with Furrukh Sohail
Name: Furrukh Sohail
Current title: Executive Vice President
Current organisation: NorthBay Solutions
20+ years of IT consulting/management experience, with demonstrated IT Transformation experience in customer-facing roles
Proven track record of hiring and developing the best, building teams and coaching them to success in Cloud/AWS services area and mobile application development
Demonstrated ability to work creatively and analytically in meeting customer needs
A proven track record of managing and delivering large-scale enterprise IT projects
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including group leadership and presentations

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1. What have you found most challenging as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise?
Finding the best talent is the biggest challenge.
2. How did you become a CEO or executive of a large enterprise? Can you please briefly tell the story?
Find what the biggest challenge that company is facing and no one wants to address it as the knowns are overwhelming and then sort them out. The risk of failure is very high but one should never be afraid of taking calculated risks
3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?
I had to multiple times realign the day according to the current situation. I have worked from 0800 am to 0400 am slept right on desk to work starting at 0500 pm and end at 0200 am. The most important thing is what you have committed to deliver and work to deliver.
4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?
As you grow up you need to train the next generation of leadership to take over things that you are taking care of currently otherwise someone will mess it up and you will have to come back a step down and try to address it.
5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?
I have read many, one lesson that rings every now and then is from a book called The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple. In this there is a small mention of why the revolting group of army failed and the reason mentioned was that British Army did not train any one local as an officer or leader who could control a large group but disintegrated the army. A big lesson for me in leadership to make sure that failure can also come from not training your own leadership team.
6. How do you build leadership capacity in a large enterprise?
In my view point this is like the job of a first person climbing and putting a rope along the cliff edges making it easy for everyone to follow and easily repeat what you have structured for them. Why, because you want to succeed and look good and build the confidence of people around them.
7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise so far?
Building teams and development centres is a bigger task than it appears. New branding, new culture, new environment and things not done right come back and bite you. In my experience rather than experimenting with new folks and leadership try to move a seed team in that you have already worked on.