Anna N Schlegel: Elevating Cloud Experience by Imparting an Adaptive Culture of Leadership

NetApp is a global cloud-led, data-centric software company that empowers organizations to lead with data in the age of accelerated digital transformation. The company provides systems, software and cloud services that enable them to run their applications optimally from data center to cloud, whether they are developing in the cloud, moving to the cloud, or creating their own cloudlike experiences on premises. With solutions that perform across diverse environments, NetApp helps organizations build their own data fabric and securely deliver the right data, services and applications to the right people—anytime, anywhere.

As a cloud-led, data-centric software company, only NetApp can help build your unique data fabric, simplify and connect your cloud, and securely deliver the right data, services and applications to the right people—anytime, anywhere.

Mission to leverage Insights Gained with Maturity

Anna N Schlegel, Vice President of the Global Portfolio to Market Lifecycle at NetApp, was born in Catalunya, right next to the French border, where she learned to speak several languages from childhood. She arrived in the US in 1992 and started her first company in California at age 23.

Since successfully selling her startup, Anna has lent her expertise to some of the top technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Cisco, VMware, Xerox, and VeriSign. She is known for her skills in guiding large companies move into international markets, enabling them to successfully deliver and scale their products to customers all over the world.

Today, as VP of NetApp, Anna manages three Centers of Excellence within the company, including Globalization Strategy, Information Engineering, and Product Portfolio Solutions.

In her spare time, Anna has founded three global non-profits, all focused on providing upward mobility for kids and women worldwide. Anna is also the Executive Global Sponsor for Women in Technology at NetApp. She is the author of "Truly Global", a bestselling book on internal markets.

Tenets of an Uplifting Leadership

Anna's time in Silicon Valley has provided her with a wealth of experience to draw from, having been involved with product teams, marketing organizations, strategy offices, transformation offices, and engineering teams. This unique combination has helped her develop a distinctive leadership style that revolves around five central ideas:

1. Put People First

Creating an environment where a team can innovate safely and push boundaries while maintaining a work-life balance is vital, and it needs to be intentionally managed.

Family and teamwork have always been huge components of Anna's life, from her childhood in Catalonia to training with the national volleyball team for the 1992 Olympics. She advises that in everything one does, you must put your team and her people first. A strongly aligned team drives the "edge" in "cutting edge".

2. Maintain Core Values

Anna always starts new teams by working together to spell out the workgroup's values. That is a must. During the value-making process you work to define the environment you wish to create and work in. You note down what is acceptable, how to work together, what is important to that team, what happens if there is a disagreement, etc.

The core values are then used as basis for alignment and to reach shared goals. Simply writing down a list of values isn't enough. Those values have to be lived, revisited, and practiced regularly, as they are the foundation of work.

3. Innovate

This is key! For the past ten years, Anna's entire organization has been invited to participate in a monthly Innovation Lab run by her Chief of Staff, Bridget O'Brien. In this environment, the team is encouraged to constantly innovate in the fields of globalization, product management workflows, content strategies, and portfolio management.

Their innovations are then incorporated into NetApp's workflows, which consistently saves the company time, money, and headaches. Anna's teams are regularly asked to speak at forums and have received a number of awards for their innovative solutions.

4. Be Data-Driven

NetApp is known for empowering customers to do more with their data, enabling them to manage it proactively in order to gain key insights. The same is true among Anna's team.

Decisions are made on patterns, metrics, OKRs, and customer behaviours. Her team uses data to review business regularly in order to deliver for their stakeholders. The data is used to tell a story, enabling the team to address pain points and ensure that NetApp's customers have a great experience while interacting with the company. By leveraging careful business tracking, the team can understand the quarter's primary goals, identify any red flags, and strategize for success.

5. Communicate

Anna works weekly with Caitlin Phillips, her Communications Manager, to ensure that all of her communications efforts are data driven, goal focused, and in brand alignment. Anna heads a highly global team, with employees spread across countless time zones, languages, and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, communicating effectively with the team is crucial to maintaining a healthy alignment.

Diffusing the Challenges of Sexism

When Anna arrived in the United States, she was a determined 23-year-old, but an immigrant with no local work experience. However, she had a solid education, strong family values, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for working in a global environment.

One of the first challenges she faced was that when she would say her maiden name, "Anna Navarro", the first question was: "when did you cross the border?". Anna, a native of Europe who had just finished her master's degree in Germany, had never encountered this before. That experience was her first reality check here in the States. Her last name became a topic of constant discussion rather than her qualifications or experience.

Over the years, she faced a variety of situations, including:

• Societal pressure to focus on being a mom while delivering on work expectations

• Criticism for her accent: "It's so cute"

• Perpetual mansplaining and the occasional harassment

Unfortunately, these challenges are not uncommon. Anna has endured them all and worked hard to become the leader she is today. Over the years she has come to view these comments and fears as a reflection of the other person.

Talisman of a Great Mentor

Anna is passionate about the power of mentoring, meeting with her mentees weekly, and often daily. Her agenda is packed with requests for guidance, to brainstorm and to receive emotional support. Anna sees mentoring as a way to understand the issues that younger generations are facing today.

There are 5 golden rules that Anna encourages her mentees to practice:

• Envision what you want in the next 1-2 years and write it down

• Map your values. What are they? What is important to you?

• Talk through this with your mentor or sponsor

• If you want to make progress, stick to the plan.

• Take care of your health: Sleep and fitness keep you level.

Leading with Innovation

Anna's teams are focused on innovation and have even received several awards for their work. In fact, they are currently in the final stages of filing Anna's first patent, which she has developed in collaboration with team members Saurabh Kavathekar and Sourabh Suri.

Anna believes in the innovation-in-a-box and the BAIN models to help her team do this. Everyone in her team is well-trained in such methodologies and are empowered to innovate.

She suggests that part of the innovation process is to spend time thinking from the perspective of one's target audience. Therefore, companies must consider why their concept will be appealing, what it will solve, and how it will introduce the disruption. Innovation relies on the power of collaborative thinking and constructive debate.

Anna is proud to lead a team of innovators and disruptors. They are constantly urged to participate in forums, lead panels, and apply for patents. She says, "We thrive on innovation. It's contagious, and we love it, celebrate it, award it, and push for it."

Technology as Catalyst of Innovation

Anna says that disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have been coming for a long time for early adopters like her. As a result, innovation is critical.

Back in 1997, when she was invited to be one of the initials testers for IBM's new TM2 Machine Translation engine, Anna spent hours training the engine to correctly translate the name of her then CEO at Cisco, "John Chambers." However, the machine kept translating it as "Juan Recamara" or "John Room"!

According to Anna, this was the first time anyone had the brainwave to train the engines on people's names!

Many people were afraid of the technology and even blamed her team for replacing traditional jobs. Anna had to spend countless hours reassuring people, telling them that anyone whose job had been replaced was welcome to join her Machine Learning teams. She still asserts that it was the best solution. She is confident that when used for global good, AI can drastically improve people's lives by automating unnecessary workflows. This frees up people's time to think creatively about new solutions for a better world.

Even today, Anna continues to push these concepts with her teams. By leveraging these technologies, NetApp is continuously disrupting how globalization works. Earlier, where translations used to take weeks, they now take just seconds; where internationalization code revisions required special dispensation and countless hours of work, NetApp can now do it overnight without anyone realizing it.

Anna recognized this potential back in 1997, but she is more confident of it now than ever. She is sure that disruptive technologies are the future, and that the best leaders are actively searching for ways to embrace them.

Moving towards a Productive Future

With remote collaboration becoming the norm, reliance on cloud technologies to support business operations and applications has grown dramatically. It has enabled industries accelerate their digital transformation plans from years to months. NetApp, much like the industry, is leading – by shifting heavily to the cloud. Looking forward, Anna is determined to help the customers navigate this process and remove the complexity and cost inefficiencies to unlock the cloud's best. She is aware that unlike its previous status as the storage vendor of years gone by, NetApp is now a cloud-led, data-centric software company.

Words of Wisdom

Anna feels that no one should give a person a job simply because she is a woman. One must be well prepared by training oneself to be the best, identifying one's value and talent. Anna encourages people to ask themselves what their elevator pitch is and what their superpowers are. They should then work to hone these skills, using them to achieve their goals.

In a world where women are often expected to be able to juggle everything (kids, households, partners, careers, etc.) Anna suggests that women should delegate, make conscious decisions on their priorities, and choose their partner carefully.