{"id":227,"date":"2018-04-25T11:14:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T15:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/?p=227"},"modified":"2026-03-12T15:47:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T19:47:21","slug":"leaders-on-leadership-john-scannell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/2018\/04\/25\/leaders-on-leadership-john-scannell\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaders on Leadership: John Scannell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"John<\/figure>\n\n\n

Moog CEO offers his advice for current and future leaders<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"
John Scannell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Moog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How much of our good fortune is pure luck \u2014 moments over which we have no control? On the flip side, how much of our luck do we make ourselves, by preparing appropriately and seizing opportunities as they come?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what John Scannell, chairman and chief executive officer of Moog<\/a>, explored in his opening remarks this spring as part of the\u00a0Leaders on Leadership Speakers Series, hosted by the University at Buffalo School of Management\u2019s Center for Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on his upbringing and career, the Irish-born executive said he was lucky to have caring parents who gave him confidence to pursue his goals. \u201cI had the gift of education, health and concentration, and opportunity,\u201d he continued. \u201cI was also very lucky through my career to have three or four bosses who were supportive and encouraging. They really shaped the way I developed.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, Scannell made his own luck, taking risks to grow as a leader. In 1990, he joined Moog, a public company that designs and manufactures products for the aerospace, automotive, defense, energy and medical device industries. Since then, he\u2019s moved from Ireland to Germany and back again, finally relocating to the United States in 2003 to serve as the Boeing 787 program manager at Moog. He was named chief financial officer in 2007 and promoted to president and chief operating officer in 2010. Today, as chairman and CEO, he leads an organization well-known for its innovative, creative and employee-focused company culture.<\/p>\n

The following is an excerpt of Scannell\u2019s leadership advice from his UB presentation.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeadership is all about people.<\/strong> So, as you\u2019re going into leadership roles, build relationships up and down the organization. When somebody comes into a new job, the first thing you should do is build your team. And, after you build your team, go home and take the rest of the day off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlways hire on aptitude and attitude<\/strong>, not skill, not experience. Hire on pure talent \u2014 the ability for somebody who wants to do something to [accomplish] it because they have the aptitude and a positive attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo become indispensable, leaders have to make themselves dispensable.<\/strong> If you want to progress in an organization, you\u2019ve got to make sure there\u2019s someone behind you who could step into your job. Some people feel if they hold onto a key piece of knowledge, you can never be let go \u2014 and that\u2019s true, but you can never move up either because they cannot replace you. Every time I\u2019ve ever been in a job, the day I started I was looking for my successor, not because I wasn\u2019t interested in the job or was focused on the next job. It just seemed like the logical thing to do. It\u2019s just part of leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have different jobs, but not different values.<\/strong> There can be no little people \u2014 and no big people \u2014 in an organization. Everybody makes a difference, everybody has worth. It just happens that I have my title and you have a different title.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between a manager and a leader?<\/strong> I can make you a manager; I can give you an office, a title and so on. I can\u2019t make you a leader; the only people who can do that are your followers. If people aren\u2019t willing to follow you, you can\u2019t ever be a leader. That\u2019s what so important about leadership \u2014 that people respect you and feel like they\u2019re willing to follow you. Particularly when you change jobs or change countries, if people won\u2019t follow you, then you have no chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstand yourself, your goals, your values and principles.<\/strong> Clayton Christensen, who is a professor at Harvard Business School, was talking about his career and said, \u2018I\u2019ve found it\u2019s easier to stick to your principles 100% of the time than 98% of the time.\u2019 As you go through business, you\u2019ll always find difficult situations, but remembering what you stand for is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMake a plan.<\/strong> We talk about strategy in business, but strategy for life is also a good way to find out what you really want to achieve. Although it wasn\u2019t planned, I did this step back in 2002 when I was presented with an opportunity to come to the U.S. We were living in Ireland, faced with that possibility, and I ended up on a long flight and wrote a letter to my wife that said, \u2018Here are all the things I hope will happen if we do this\u2019 \u2014 kind of a set of broad objectives.<\/p>\n

If you have the luck to be alive in 20 years, and you look back, what do you want to say about what you did? For me, what was really important were things like my children growing up and knowing me \u2014 that I read them bedtime stories and coached their soccer team, and they knew who their dad was, felt like he was a friend and liked him when they became adults. And, I\u2019m glad to report that we have two lovely children. I wanted to have a strong relationship with my wife, and I wanted to do things in business, to create something. Once you put the plan together, invest your time in the things you think are important. So often, I don\u2019t think we invest enough time in family and friends and things that are actually really important, and when we wake up years later we discover that while we\u2019ve been wildly successful in something, we haven\u2019t invested time in what really matters. Time is the only thing we have to invest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA bonus piece of advice I\u2019ve learned along the way: The most powerful instrument in business today is a handwritten note. <\/strong>How many people here recently received a personally handwritten note from somebody, not a Christmas card where someone just wrote their name? I don\u2019t do it as often as I should, but I\u2019ve had folks come back 20 years later and say, \u2018I still have that note you wrote.\u2019 It is incredibly powerful.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moog CEO offers his advice for current and future leaders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,3],"tags":[4,26,50],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-speakers","category-leadership","tag-leadership","tag-leading","tag-luck"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}