The Newly-Minted CEO: Symantec's Enrique Salem

Posted by: Steve Hamm on June 23

Life is different when you’re the CEO. Enrique Salem, who became CEO at security software giant Symantec just 11 weeks ago found that out. (Previously he was COO) He immediately felt the weight of responsibility for running a large public corporation. He noticed that the people who report to him became very careful with his time. They won’t come to him now unless they can’t resolve a problem or resolve an issue without his input. What he enjoys best about being the boss is all of the interesting people it puts him in direct contact with. In the past few weeks, he has met with President Obama, Desmond Tutu, Jim Collins, Nancy Pelosi, Larry Summers, Michael Dell, King Abdullah of Jordan, and George Tenet, to name a few.

This kind of contact "broadens your perspective dramatically," Salem says. Before, as COO, he was head-down on developing the next waves of Symantec software and services. Now he's responsible for shaping the company's role on the world stage. Suddenly he finds that it's handy to know the latest advances in plans for airlines to use biofuels--info that's not tightly coupled to Symantec's day-to-day operations but could impact the global economy.

It's too early for fallout to come from these encounters, but Salem says he has already begun to think of the company more in a global context. For instance, former CEO John Thompson focused his CSR efforts on a us-based organization called Teach For America. For his part, Salem met recently with John Wood, the former Microsoft executive who started and pilots Room To Read, an organization that provides schools and libraries for poor communities in nine developing nations.(Salem was born in Colombia but moved to the US as at age four.) "I'm thinking about Symantec's place in the world beyond just software," Salem told me. "How do we contribute to people's lives? Having literate populations around the world is going to be important to us."

I had never met Salem before. He's a passionate guy. Shows real enthusiasm for a lot of different kinds of things. (He was raving about his Kindle, for instance. Even bought my book, The Race for Perfect, as I watched. How can I clone that behavior?) He follows into this CEO job a guy who made a bold move in acquiring Veritas. I've got the feeling that Salem will be just as adventurous, but perhaps in a different way: He'll make Symantec more of a global company.

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