Santander (EFE).- The president and CEO of Mitsubishi Power, Javier Cavada, is committed to working on ambition and the “appetite for risk” and affirms that “not being curious is a terminal disease”.
“The leader must be curious and inject it into his collaborators”, he highlighted at a conference on leadership, innovation and the current situation in the Cantabria Chamber of Commerce.
His recipe, after more than twenty years of industrial experience, can be summarized in several concepts: “ambition, risk appetite, curiosity, communication and emotional intelligence”. Especially, at this juncture, “which is not rosy” and which means “change”.
But the change, although “scary”, must be conceived as a window of improvement. “Nothing important or any success is achieved if it does not cost”, he has remarked.
From a Cantabrian and Spanish perspective, he sees it as a “priority” not to avoid risk and recommends “having a certain magnet for new situations”.
Risk, a matter of survival
“As a good Cantabrian, I always believe that ambition is lacking. There is capacity but we lack ambition ”, he assured, before comparing that nature that he detects in his countrymen with a kind of syndrome of “paseoperedaismo ”.
Faced with this position, Cavada advocates being able to approach risk more than before because it is a matter of survival.
It also warns against wasting the heritage of past generations and not doing anything new or innovative because “it is time to invest and take risks to achieve a legacy for future generations.”
“If we stay as we are, we are not going to get past this wave, we have to strive for more,” he adds.
This engineer also does not believe in the success of the individual leader, but rather thinks that great bosses are built thanks to great teams.
“People who are successful are not normally because of themselves, it is because of the team they surround themselves with,” underlines this Santander resident who lives in London, adding that what must be done is “elevate” and empower the teams.