Lead the Team (Top 2% of Podcasts)
Sep 1, 2026 · 37 min · 12 segments
**How do you lead through uncertainty when the path forward isn’t clear?** Manoj Leelanivas has done it at extraordinary scale. Today he’s **President of HP Solutions**. Before HP, he helped lead a…
Manoj LeelanivasGuestBen FanningHost
One thing I can definitely say One thing definitely that comes to my mind is that I used to be, you know, you may know this, I used to be an engineer by training.
I used to be a technical person who loved to do the technical widgets and technical software programming and all that stuff.
And as I built towards my engineering leadership career also, I strongly held this belief that Technical excellence is paramount.
And while I still value technical excellence enormously, technology alone doesn't determine the success.
Once I went into the business role, I started realizing there are different aspects.
Markets change, you know, technologies change, customers change, organizations change.
It's about... having the right sort of listening, curiosity definitely beats certainty.
You need to know things are going to change and you've got to be curious about the changing things.
Similarly, instead of assuming based on a whole bunch of principles or strategic assumptions or what the consultants have told you, you've got to listen.
Listen to your first-line employees, engineers, marketing, whatever, sales.
And it's also about helping smart people solve problems together, right? So all of these new beliefs were quite different from the old belief, which was purely about technical excellence.
Versus now you really got to adapt to customer outcomes and deliver customer outcomes.
Do you remember what caused you to make that shift in your thinking? Was there a certain moment or a project that you were working on?
One thing I can definitely say One thing definitely that comes to my mind is that I used to be, you know, you may know this, I used to be an engineer by training.
I used to be a technical person who loved to do the technical widgets and technical software programming and all that stuff.
And as I built towards my engineering leadership career also, I strongly held this belief that Technical excellence is paramount.
And while I still value technical excellence enormously, technology alone doesn't determine the success.
Once I went into the business role, I started realizing there are different aspects.
Markets change, you know, technologies change, customers change, organizations change.
It's about... having the right sort of listening, curiosity definitely beats certainty.
You need to know things are going to change and you've got to be curious about the changing things.
Similarly, instead of assuming based on a whole bunch of principles or strategic assumptions or what the consultants have told you, you've got to listen.
Listen to your first-line employees, engineers, marketing, whatever, sales.
And it's also about helping smart people solve problems together, right? So all of these new beliefs were quite different from the old belief, which was purely about technical excellence.
Versus now you really got to adapt to customer outcomes and deliver customer outcomes.
Do you remember what caused you to make that shift in your thinking? Was there a certain moment or a project that you were working on?
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