Been There Done That: For CGI’s Donna Morea, richness in simplicity
May 8, 2008 by Brian Lustig
Successful executives and leaders will often, upon reflection, cite choosing the career path less traveled as a key to their success. In looking back on her accomplished – and admittedly unexpected – 28 years at AMS (now CGI) during remarks at the ExecutiveBiz “Been There Done That” lunch series, Donna Morea took that adage one step further.
Morea, president, U.S. operations and India, CGI, suggested that trailblazers do not necessarily follow a well-marked path at all, and instead forge their own trail that only becomes visible once they turn around to see it where it has led.
In speaking to a packed room of business and government executives at the Tower Club yesterday, Morea offered herself
as the quintessential example of someone who embraced an unpredictable and unmarked path that led a Studio Arts degree graduate (and race horse owner) with aspirations in photography to the executive suite of a multi-billion dollar IT services leader.
Accepting the path not marked was one of several nuggets Morea focused on during her lunch remarks. With a disarming, conversational manner, Morea breezed through heady accomplishments during her AMS/CGI tenure that included helping to lead three merger transactions, while offering attendees key tenets to her success.
One was to “be yourself.” Morea, painting herself as the unconventional executive, had an acquaintance in the audience (a tall, sharply dressed male with a full complement of coiffed white hair) stand up to demonstrate what a CEO from central casting might look like. Her point was that one must strike a balance between meeting expectations and putting on a public face with staying true to one’s self. She followed this up by highlighting that a successful leader can’t do it alone and must compose a team around each person’s strengths. She added that leaders should resist the urge to put their best people on the biggest problems (which can suck precious time and resources) and instead focus their best people on the biggest opportunities.
A fourth point Morea stressed, one based on personal experience, was to cut your losses. Recognize when a weak choice has been made in terms of a personnel hire or leadership assignment and correct it. This is not the easy choice, but can save tremendous pain down the road, she added. Morea saved the most salient point for last: the higher you go, the less you need to say. Less is more, she pointed out, and there is richness in simplicity.
While the path behind her is well marked by now for all to see, it is clear that Morea thrives on maintaining a level of unpredictability in how the next chapter of her life will play out. Right now, she is blazing a 10,000-mile trail to India, where CGI is seeking to aggressively ramp up operations. Communicating with managers and executives several time zones away is a challenge, but Morea’s goal is to grow India operations from 2,000 staffers to 5,000 over the next 24-36 months. As Morea tells it, CGI’s focus on outsourcing is a permanent one, part of its unique client services model that combines a local proximity model (where operations are arranged around the markets where CGI clients reside) and a global delivery model combining onshore, near shore and offshore capabilities. CGI India now has offices in Mumbai and Bangalore, and India revenues have been growing at a 50 percent annual clip, where the work is primarily “…high-end software design and development, application maintenance, business process services and infrastructure management.”
No matter what lies ahead, it is clear that Morea - an ExecutiveBiz Beltway Game Changer her herself - isn’t content to just play the game, but continue to change it.
Brian Lustig is co-founder of Lustig Communications, a Rockville, MD-based communications firm that works with growing technology and government IT firms. Lustig is also a contributor to local business and industry publications.
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