Leaders on Leadership: Jaksa Pejnovic

As part of a series on leadership, we asked the executives of Toyota Material Handling what advice they have for aspiring leaders in the material handling industry. This week, we feature TMH Director of Finance, Pricing, and Planning Jaksa Pejnovic.

Advice to 25-year-old self: “Take a job that you love. Don’t worry about titles or positions. Perfect your craft, make everyone around you better, and all other things will work themselves out.”

3 Leadership Tips:

1. Business that isn’t growing is dying. Choose the business in which the market forces are supporting its growth. Even the most capable managers will not be successful in declining industries or companies.
2. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. The best leaders rarely are, but they are consistently great at surrounding themselves with people who are better than they are. That requires stepping out of your comfort zone and picking people who might challenge your way of thinking and complement your weaknesses.
3. Be great at simplifying. People are good at making easy things difficult. In our everyday work, we have all encountered needlessly complicated processes because some old habits were hard to change. The same is true with developing organizational strategies. They are often overly complex and difficult to understand. Part of Toyota’s culture is finding a practical way to achieve lofty goals by thinking deeply about a complex issue andtaking small steps to solve it.

Quote to Note: “Predicting rain doesn’t count. Building arks does.” – Warren Buffett